Graduate Certificate in Strategic Design
Rapidly advance your design career and gain a design qualification in as little as one semester, backed by immersive workshops, studios, and learning intensives.
Explore the courseGraduate Diploma in Strategic Design
Elevate your design skills and career potential. Learn through immersive workshops, studios and real-world assignments to solve innovation problems for industry, government and communities.
Explore the courseMaster of Design (Strategic Design)
Be prepared to identify emerging opportunities, complex challenges, and drive forward-thinking solutions in this course that mirrors the complex nature of real-world projects.
Explore the courseWhat is strategic design?
Strategic design allows you to translate your creative skills into strategic thinking and prudential decision making. This includes the consideration of ethical decision points when weighing up commercial and sustainability aspects, and developing intermediary skills to facilitate a mutually beneficial outcome for stakeholders while recognising competitors in the market.
Gain accreditation
Our graduates qualify for membership at the Design Institute of Australia (DIA), the professional body for Australian designers.
Members have exclusive access to a range of services, products and discounts to advance their careers.
Why study design?
Drive meaningful change
Learn to lead the creation of holistic and sustainable solutions that address complex challenges in a range of contexts including social services, health, advanced manufacturing and infrastructure.
Solve real-world problems
Our design courses are embedded with real-world briefs direct from industry. Our research addresses challenges at the intersection of design, technology, creativity, place, and health.
Blend classroom with career
Address the increasing market demand for people with strategic design capabilities to work as leaders. Take advantage of the many strong partnerships with local and international players including Adobe, BMW Group, and Brisbane City Council.
Expert teaching staff
Learn from teaching staff who are active in their fields and are ready to share their insights. QUT teaching staff research alongside major institutions and bring their wealth of knowledge back into the classroom.
Industry connections
Address real industry briefs and form valuable connections with local and international organisations.
Here are some of the organisations and brands our students regularly work with.
A university with real-world partnerships
Led by QUT Design Lab Chief Investigator Associate Professor Rafael Gomez, the BMW Group + QUT Design Academy is the School of Design’s R&D hub in future mobility with a mission to strengthen and expand the strategic partnership between BMW and QUT through three bespoke programs: student internships, applied research, and special projects.
The Academy focuses on innovation in future mobility by fostering design excellence and advancing cutting-edge transport and automotive technologies. We position design and creativity as an unparalleled and indispensable skillset the world’s best organisations use for strategic and sustainable outcomes.
News
QUT fashion lecturer given fellowship to join global costume research centre
A QUT fashion lecturer and acclaimed theatre costume designer will spend 2025 in Finland on a fellowship funded by the European Union to explore new technologies in her field.
Improving social inclusion for battler citizens of Townsville
QUT researchers have collaborated with a local software solutions company on a community and participatory design initiative to address social isolation and loneliness in socially disadvantaged communities in Townsville.
Explore QUT design graduates’ creations online
QUT’s design class of 2023 has launched a new website to showcase their talents to industry and all lovers of great design.