Design Management Program (Postgraduate) (G401)

Program Description

Program Overview

The postgraduate Design Management program prepares you for a career managing design strategically. This program builds the skills needed to lead a multidisciplinary design team to develop products and services based on strategic business objectives. The program also teaches the business skills necessary to manage a consultancy or corporate design division.

Full Description

This postgraduate program in Design Management builds the skills needed to lead a multidisciplinary design team. You will learn how to develop design strategies for products and services based on business objectives. This program teaches practical tools and interpersonal facilitative skills, as well as the business knowledge required to manage a consultancy or corporate design division.

Who should take this program:

  • Design professionals with a global perspective who want to become active partners in helping firms develop and grow through expanded participation in strategic management.
  • Designers looking to enhance their career opportunities in supervisory or management positions.
  • Designers seeking to integrate strategic design into the workplace.
  • Designers with an entrepreneurial spirit looking to start their own company.

Courses in design process and strategy, project management, finance, team management, design research, contracts, business planning, communications and intellectual property protection complement a major studio course featuring real-world design projects. The courses cover the essential elements of a business strategy and how design contributes to the definition and realization of the strategy.

Your Field Education Options

A mandatory Design Management Internship (DESN1031) course is taken in semester 2. An external field placement role is not guaranteed in this course; students who are not placed externally will engage in a Work Integrated Project. The work term is a total of 120 hours, part-time, over an 8-week period. The Design Management Internship provides students with exposure to a Design Manager in a Canadian workplace environment.

Learn more about Experiential Learning at the School of Design including how to apply, important dates, workflow, and PLAR eligibility.

Career & Postgraduate Study Opportunities

Career Options

Graduates will go on to careers managing design in the corporate sector, in a design consultancy or in their own business.

Educational Pathways

Students can enter the design management program with a design diploma or other college diploma or a degree, either directly or after working. Upon completion of the Design Management Program, students can go onto careers as Design Managers for a corporation, become a manager in a design consultancy or become a design entrepreneur.
Divleen Narula

“My journey at the School of Design, George Brown College was filled with creative decisions. The course provided me with many opportunity areas in Design Strategy, developing Creative Design Briefs, managing Multidisciplinary Design Teams and Collaboration… This course has helped me develop design management traits with versatility and resilience.

Design Management makes us believe in the value and power of collaboration and flexibility when we talk about creative disciplines. I now find my inspiration through dynamic team synergies. I believe in learning from and designing for experiences. It is all about Creative Commitment.

I am grateful to have been taught by such inspiring faculty members at the School of Design. I am also thankful for the Best Major Project Award for my research insights related to collaboration between industry and academia. Thank you for imparting me with the analytical business knowledge required to integrate strategic design into the workplace.”

Divleen Narula
Ontario College Graduate Certificate

Visit and discover life in our campus

Book campus tour

Get answers to your questions

Book info session

Sign up to receive tailored resources to make your application, your way.

Sign up and learn more about your options, our programs, and life at George Brown.