Design Innovation Course
Ideas that sparked innovation in design, and those that are shaping its future.
Early bird: €375 | Regular price: €480 | Free for yearly members
Summer intake is full. Next intake: September, 2026 (date TBC)
WHAT IS THE COURSE ABOUT?
Design Innovation is an 8-week journey through the turning points that redefined what design could be — not a timeline of styles, but a search for the ideas underneath them. Plus, a dedicated look at where AI and emerging tools are taking design and creativity next.
From Thonet’s steam-bent chair to the generative tools reshaping practice today, we trace nine recurring patterns behind design’s biggest leaps: material breakthroughs, systems thinking, democratization, protest, craft’s ongoing negotiation with industry, constraint as a creative engine, cross-cultural collision, identity-building, and the manifestos that redirect practice.
Every pattern comes paired with a Move: something concrete you can try in your own work, not just a story to admire.
Delivered as short, self-paced audio-and-written stories — in the spirit of our Design Rewind series — with weekly live discussions facilitated by Egle Karalyte and an always-open chat for questions and reflection along the way.
Who it’s for: designers, creative thinkers, design aficionados, and the plain curious — anyone who wants to understand not just what changed in design, but how change actually happens, so they can make it happen again.
8 weeks, self-paced
Weekly 45-minute live group discussion
Always-open community chat
Free for yearly members
Optional field trip add-on.
This course covers
Eight weeks, eight questions — each one built around a set of landmark ideas, and a set of moves you can take back into your own work.
Week 1: Defining Design Innovation
What actually separates a breakthrough from a trend? The manifestos and ideas that gave design a vocabulary for change, and the rubric you’ll use for the rest of the course.
Week 2: Industry, Production, and the Modern World
How new materials and manufacturing turned single objects into entire systems — and what got negotiated, gained, and lost along the way.
Week 3: Visual Language and Cultural Change
Grids, typefaces, and logos as systems in their own right — and what happens when visual languages from different cultures collide.
Week 4: Disruption, Counterculture, and New Expression
Design made without permission — protest graphics, DIY zines, and what scarcity makes possible when institutions won’t.
Week 5: Objects, Desire, and the Designed Life
What makes an object desirable, and who gets to own it — the long-running argument between accessibility and spectacle.
Week 6: Place, Craft, and Cultural Identity
How design builds — not just reflects — a place’s identity, and what happens when craft tradition meets industrial scale.
Week 7: Technology, AI, and New Possibilities
From the first graphical interface to generative AI tools — what’s genuinely changing in design practice right now, what’s hype, and what skills stay durable either way.
Week 8: The Meaning of Design Innovation
A closing toolkit: nine moves, each tested across a century of design and a dozen cultures, ready to take into your own practice.
ABOUT THE FACILITATOR
Egle Karalyte
Egle Karalyte is a brand strategist, facilitator, and creator of Bloomerangas. Her clients include Adobe, Vinted, Google Campus London, Nike, Web Summit, and Happy Socks. She has launched multiple creative products on her own and helps others bring their ideas to life.
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