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Centre for Design and Creative Industries - Research Groups

• Birmingham Design Research Group
• Jewellery Research Group
• Visual Communication Research Group
• Architecture Research Group

Contact

• Darren.Newbury@bcu.ac.uk

Centre for Design and Creative Industries

The Centre for Design and Creative Industries fosters individual and collaborative staff research in the form of exhibitions, publications of designs, as well as articles, conference contributions and books. It is also strongly committed to research with industry, particularly in relation to design, management and technical innovation. The group is at the national forefront of innovative work within the broad field of product design innovation. Research is being conducted in the following areas: the role of design in wealth creation, collaboration with industry, design and innovation and design impact studies, and the generation of living archives derived from company assists.

This centre exhibits excellence in the creation, execution, promotion, management, development and evaluation of the design process and it does this across the broad range of design disciplines. Design innovation is always closely related to critical reflection, experimentation and practical delivery. In this Centre we operate at a number of levels, from exploration of the aesthetic and communicative potential of the medium right through to applications. We provide research into new design solutions as well as transdisciplinary take-up of new procedures and processes. This grouping of cognate disciplines is broader than normally found elsewhere and gives us the opportunity to build genuinely interdisciplinary design research.

Research Themes

The Centre for Design and the Creative Industries (CDCI) fosters mutual support between four research groups (Design Innovation, Jewellery, Visual Communication and Architecture) which are all concerned variously with three themes:

• The Nature of Design - The Nature of Design including innovation in new product development, the role of the designer in the cycles of production and consumption and virtual design (including usability and haptics).

• Technology and Knowledge Transfer - Technology Transfer and Design Impact, particularly in the high value-added sectors. A major focus is on furniture industry research, jewellery and case studies of design impact on small and medium size enterprises.

• Interdisciplinary work in Creative Industry - In particular, how technologies and professional practices impact on production in radio, music and screen-based media and how consumption practices relate to popular arts produced within the creative industries.