Bachelor of Design

Design is a discipline that sits at the intersection of problem-solving and creativity, concerned with giving form to ideas and shaping the objects, environments, communications, and experiences that make up the fabric of daily life. It is a field that has expanded dramatically with digital technology, encompassing product design, graphic design, interaction design, service design, sustainable design, and many other specialisms, while retaining at its core the fundamental questions of what design is for, who it serves, and what values it embodies.

The Open University offers this bachelor of design degree through distance learning and part-time study, making it accessible to people who are managing work, family, or other commitments alongside their education. The OU's approach to design education at a distance combines rich visual and material learning resources with project-based work, online studio discussion, and feedback on your developing design practice. The flexible structure suits practising designers who want to formalise or extend their knowledge, career changers developing new creative skills, and anyone for whom full-time campus attendance is not practical.

You will engage with the history and theory of design, developing critical and analytical frameworks for understanding how design has changed over time and how it functions in cultural and economic contexts. Alongside this intellectual dimension, you will develop your own design practice through projects that require you to research, ideate, prototype, and evaluate solutions to design problems. The combination of theory and practice is central to what makes a design degree, rather than just a training in technical skills, genuinely valuable.

Graduates in design work across the creative and commercial industries as designers in a wide range of specialisms, as design managers, as freelancers, and in roles where creative thinking and visual communication are central. The part-time route means many graduates already have professional experience in design or adjacent fields when they complete the degree. Postgraduate study in a specialist design discipline is an option for those who want to develop either their practice or their research career further.