Bachelor of Arts - Product Design (Honours)

BA (Hons) Product Design approaches designing objects from the human side: user research and design thinking, sketching and ideation, model-making and prototyping, CAD and visualisation, materials and manufacturing awareness, and the sustainability questions now central to consumer product development.

The arts-faculty framing distinguishes this route from its engineering-leaning sibling elsewhere in this sheet: emphasis falls on user insight, aesthetics, meaning and cultural context, with technical feasibility taught as a constraint on good design rather than as the starting point — a difference applicants should choose between deliberately.

A note for counselling families who question creative degrees: product design sits closer to commercial industry than most arts subjects, with graduates working for manufacturers, consultancies and consumer brands on products that go to market — a tangible outcome parents readily recognise. Applicants should nonetheless self-assess against the science-badged product route in this sheet, since the two suit different temperaments at the same £16,800 fee. September entries run across all three recorded cycles, with prototyping materials an additional cost.

Workshops and prototyping facilities support making throughout, and projects run from rapid concept exercises to extended live briefs with external partners, culminating in a final major project taken from research through resolved prototype and presented at the degree show.

Graduates enter consultancies, in-house design teams and consumer product businesses at £22,000–£26,000, with design-research and CMF specialisms offering less crowded entry points. As a completed honours award the degree qualifies for the Graduate Route’s 18-month allowance for post-2026 applicants, and dependants cannot accompany taught-route students.