The Bachelor of Industrial Design is a new innovative program at Griffith that was written by Program Leader of Industrial Design and 3D design, digital media, Dr Jennifer Loy and Head of School, Griffith Engineering, Professor Geoff Tansley.
“The program started in semester one of this year and is a really innovative program that works across faculties to bring the best of engineering and the best of design in to one degree,” Dr Loy said.
The program has a popular point of difference where it focuses on being a designer now and understanding that industrial design and manufacturing has changed to become worldwide and students will be apart of the digital revolution.
“The focus of industrial design program is on advances and in particular 3D printing and additive manufacturing with a real digital media focus which is unique around the world,” she said.
Students learn 3D printing from day one and then learn the other processes in relation to it.
“Students learn the constraints and opportunities of 3D printing before we move on to injection molding, rotation molding and benching manufacturing. We see that there is a growing demand for students with these skills world wide.”
The program was created out of concerns from the Queensland Manufacturing Institute that students graduating from industrial design at the moment from other programs are very good at what they do however; their knowledge and skills are targeted towards what has happened in the past.
“We saw a real gap in supplying graduates who can meet today’s needs and wanted to create a really rigorous industrial design program that has engineering as its basis so students can choose to do an extra two years of study to become accredited engineers, which is also unusual especially because it is coupled with design background,” Dr Loy said.
Most universities introduce 3D printing and prototyping as post-graduate program. Griffith’s undergraduate offering has been highlighted around the world.
“The Industrial Design program has been very well received. I was honoured to present 19 talks in four countries, over a two week period to highlight what we are doing at Griffith,” Dr Loy said.
Professor Tansley agrees that the offering of the Industrial design program is unique.
“Industrial designers think about people and products but don’t traditionally have an understanding of how to make those products work whereas engineers focus on making things work, and not so much of the design aspect. This degree combines the two disciplines so we will produce graduates who can do it all,” he said.
Would you like more information on what Griffith and the Industrial Design program can offer you? Visit our program page online.
