During my Bachelor’s, I had the opportunity to go on an exchange period to a partner University of TU/e. I chose Singapore (NUS) because of it’s elegance, striving mindset, International reputation and interesting courses at the faculty of Industrial Design (ID) NUS.
Singapore is well-known for it’s diverse culture, offering many inspiring landmarks, museums, neighbourhoods and parks. During the exchange semester, I visited a lot of these insightful places and activities. Especially doing so with people I met at the NUS campus and other people in Singapore turned out to be very interesting because of the different backgrounds and perspectives.
Designerly thinking and technology were key points within the ID NUS courses. Having a strong interaction and learning goal in class, next to in-class group assignments and related field trips, the courses had a great focus on creating a personalized way of designing in addition to be able to communicate with other designers and specialties.
During one of the courses, I discovered the design field of CMF (colors, materials and finishing). I analysed CMF-trends within the market, and designed new products for an existing brand in the final assignment. I learned to analyse CMF-trends within the market, and as a follow-up, designed new products for an existing brand.
In the final challenge, I compared the CMF-styles of 2 rivalry brands and added CMF-elements to each of the brands. I learned to add CMF details, whilst maintaining the identity of a brand. Moreover, I learned a lot new Adobe Photoshop features, in order to visualize the new brand designs.
I really enjoyed a branding & storytelling course, where I analyzed the heritage and marketing strategy of a own-selected brand. Here, I re-branded the cycling company “Dutch-ID” for a new target group, whilst maintaining their core values. Additively, I created an own brand with a strong branding and storytelling focus; “Flowt”. This brand makes conceptual pool/water toys and accessories for kids. This relates to my vision, to facilitate the allowance for expression and playfulness. The brand expresses freedom for joy and fun.
The course “Materials & Production” outlined various high-fidelity production processes and a wide variety of materials, finalized in an exam. Next to that, a group assignment aimed to design and build a self-driving car which competed with the other groups. I used my exploratory ideation style to discover the types of vehicles possible for the challenge. The final design presented a self-driving train, mainly produced with 3D printing techniques.
