Product & Furniture Design MA
Subject and course type
- Architecture and Interiors
- Design
- Postgraduate
Unleash your creativity and shape the future of design with Kingston University’s Product & Furniture Design MA. Choose the No.1 ranked course in the UK by the Guardian University Guide 2023.
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Build a future in innovative design and sustainability
Collaborate with industry professionals and refine your craft in state-of-the-art facilities.
From innovative product development to sustainable furniture design, this course empowers you to explore new materials cutting-edge techniques, and entrepreneurial strategies.
This course will support you to build a portfolio that showcases your unique vision, addressing design challenges beyond the University.
Dive into a creative and collaborative environment that challenges conventional thinking. The Product & Furniture Design MA at Kingston University empowers you to:
- Develop forward-thinking solutions for modern-day design challenges
- Explore the intersection of creativity, materials, and functionality
- Learn from experts and engage with industry through workshops, live projects, and exhibitions
- Shape your career with this globally respected course, situated at Kingston's inspiring Knights Park campus
Whether you're reimagining everyday objects or pioneering bold new concepts, this programme will equip you to make a lasting impact on the design world. You can focus on product or furniture design for the real and imagined space. Our goal is to create positive change for people, communities, spaces and places.
Student work
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Oscar Feria Bright
A Sense of Nature
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Oscar Feria Bright
Minimo
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Jana-Aimee Wiesenberger
See Tang
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Matthew Perchard
Tide
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Angela Ford
Raw Origins
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Natchar Sawatdichai
Qualified
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Martin Cremer
Kleptopoly
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Jiseon Kim
Future Insect Chocolate
Why choose this course
At Kingston, you’ll join a community of designers who are passionate about innovation and sustainability. This course encourages experimentation and collaboration across disciplines, preparing you for leadership in the design world.
You'll gain insights into areas such as material exploration, digital fabrication, and the cultural implications of design. Through live projects with industry partners, you'll develop a professional edge and an entrepreneurial mindset.
With access to state-of-the-art facilities and the guidance of leading academics, you'll refine your ability to craft products and furniture that are both functional and future-ready. Regular critiques, group discussions, and workshops ensure you develop a portfolio that showcases your unique vision.
We ‘make' and ‘do' through a studio and workshop culture that is experimental and evolves both the theoretical and practical. Beyond practical work, you’ll examine the economies of design and who can access it. We’ll also review how design responds to current and emerging needs and behaviours.
At Kingston, you'll build skills in:
- Innovative thinking and problem-solving
- Advanced prototyping and manufacturing techniques
- Entrepreneurship and business acumen for designers
Kingston is ranked No.1 in the UK for Interior Design* in the Guardian University Guide 2023. (*covers interior design and product and furniture design)
The Art School Experience
As part of Kingston School of Art, students on this course benefit from joining a creative community where we encourage collaborative working and critical practice.
Our workshops and studios are open to all disciplines, enabling students and staff to work together, share ideas and explore multi-disciplinary making.
Student work
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Elena Kasabova Petkova
Make Rainbow Play
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Simon Roberts
StickBrick
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Diana Moon
Mira
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Irene Paltre
Drawn
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Emily Rubin
The Bowel Movement
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Pin Chun Shih
Be
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James Fender
Insieme
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Advait Naik
Alt-eractive
Course content
The course offers a hands-on approach to designing, including research techniques, participatory methods, experimental making, prototyping, and testing with intended audiences. You'll work in the studio and workshops on specific projects reflective of the modules comprising the course. Activities can include specialist lectures, workshop inductions, group and individual tutorials, seminars, and symposiums.
You'll be expected to think critically about product and furniture design and your developing practice, engaging with related theoretical and contextual studies. You'll be encouraged to bring your interests and experiences to the project briefs – to explore aspects of the product and furniture design discipline that resonate with you. You'll need to be self-directed, reflective, and practical in your approach, with direction and purpose. This course is part of the Design School's postgraduate programme.
The structure, shared with students from other design courses, enables you to explore your specialist interests within an integrative learning environment that provides an understanding of the value and role of interdisciplinary methods and ways of working. The influences and impact of thinking from other related design subjects on your specialist study is an important aspect of the identity and the community of interdisciplinary practice at masters level in the Design School.
Modules
The two shared modules of the Design School's postgraduate framework both commence with a symposium, in which high-profile external speakers present their work and contribute to a debate on a topic of relevance to all courses in the Framework.
Core modules
30 credits
The aim of the module is to give you an understanding of the design research tools and methods that are available to you, to inform and support the development of your practical study, and to provide the basis of your further study on your course. Practical research methods are explored, with an emphasis on the development of creative and evidence-based approaches to experimentation, and critical reflection on practical design work.
30 credits
This module is based on the assumption that the best jobs/careers in the creative industries do not exist – they are invented from individual creative ambitions. The module explores how this can be approached in practical terms. The programme of study encourages you to develop a personal and critical approach to your future career, and how this can inform the development of your individual major project for the Major Project.
30 credits
This module provides a dedicated product and furniture design study opportunity. It occurs in Teaching Block 1. Students are offered a number of optional and compulsory briefs engaging both practical and theoretical design faculties.
Briefs are open to individual interpretation, designed to promote creative independence and establish the benchmark of Level 7 critical expectation at the outset of the student experience.
The briefs encourage engagement with a number of key principles and processes that students need to develop to prepare them for a capstone project later in their studies.
30 credits
This Teaching Block 2 module extends and builds directly upon the dedicated product and furniture design study experience of Teaching Block 1. It runs in parallel with the Creative Futures module DE7301 on the full time mode and exercises independent, focused practical design research to underpin the Major Project proposal undertaken within DE7301.
The module aims to prepare students to begin realisation of their Major (capstone) Project upon completion. Students take responsibility for either continuing to develop their thematic practical design enquiries already established in Context I, refining and editing material and developing new research and study as necessary, or embarking upon new self-initiated enquiries.
The module consolidates the role of practical design experimentation as a key element of the design research process and helps establish credibility for progression on to the Major Project. Students should become increasingly confident about moving into realms of uncertainty and exploring unfamiliar design territory, taking risks and articulating personal viewpoint. They are encouraged to explore and use industry networks and contacts outside the Faculty to expand their knowledge and outlook, further lending their study rigour and credibility.
60 credits
The Major Project – the capstone project – consolidates the knowledge gained in earlier modules, and is informed by your prior learning within the Design School's postgraduate interdisciplinary framework and course-specific specialist study. You will extend your work on the course thus far in the form of a practical design proposal, defining and developing a substantive solution to an individually defined design-related problem. In so doing, you will demonstrate advanced understanding and application of contemporary design practice.
Optional placement year
Many postgraduate courses at Kingston University allow students to do a 12-month work placement as part of their course. The responsibility for finding the work placement is with the student; we cannot guarantee the work placement, just the opportunity to undertake it. As the work placement is an assessed part of the course, it is covered by a student's Student Route visa.
Find out more about the postgraduate work placement scheme.
Optional modules
120 credits
The Professional Placement module is a core module for those students following a masters programme that incorporates professional placement learning, following completion of 120 credits. It provides you with the opportunity to apply your knowledge and skills to an appropriate working environment, and to develop and enhance key employability skills and subject-specific professional skills in your chosen subject. You may wish to use the placement experience as a platform for your subsequent major project module, and would be expected to use it to help inform your decisions about future careers.
Career opportunities
Graduates of this MA have gone on to design innovative products for global companies, launch their own design studios, progress to PhD study, and lead sustainability initiatives in the design sector.
Graduates work in:
- product design
- furniture design
- social design
- circular design
- biophilic design
- strategic design
- CMF design
- in-house and at design consultancies
- Start-ups
- social enterprises
- government organisations
Employers of recent Product & Furniture Design MA graduates include, Asus, Bill Amberg, Cassina, CircleSquare, the Design Museum, FINH, Glithero, Goldfinch, Ice Breaker, Lenovo, Made, New Territory, Notpla, Pentatonic, and Surrey County Council.
You will collaborate with students from other courses in the Design School, as well as renowned brands, organisations, and manufacturers. Previous project partners include IKEA, Camden Town Brewery, Magis, Travel Things Museum and Herman Miller.
The course concludes with an external London exhibition – attended by design professionals and the press. Our proximity to London allows students to engage with world-famous museums and galleries, design consultancies, start-ups and social enterprises. We encourage students to be inspired and make themselves known within creative professional environments.
Teaching and assessment
Assessment will be made at the completion of each module. Module marks are added to achieve a total final mark. Assessment will be made through practical design projects, presentations, main masters project and exhibition.
When not attending timetabled sessions, you will be expected to continue learning independently through self-study. This typically involves reading and analysing articles, regulations, policy documents and key texts, documenting individual projects, preparing coursework assignments and completing your PEDRs, etc.
Your independent learning is supported by a range of excellent facilities including online resources, the library and CANVAS, the University's online virtual learning platform.
At Kingston University, we know that postgraduate students have particular needs and therefore we have a range of support available to help you during your time here.
A course is made up of modules, and each module is worth a number of credits. You must pass a given number of credits in order to achieve the award you registered on, for example 360 credits for a typical undergraduate course or 180 credits for a typical postgraduate course. The number of credits you need for your award is detailed in the programme specification which you can access from the link at the bottom of this page.
One credit equates to 10 hours of study. Therefore 180 credits across a year (typical for a postgraduate course) would equate to 1,800 notional hours. These hours are split into scheduled and guided. On this course, the percentage of that time that will be scheduled learning and teaching activities is shown below. The remainder is made up of guided independent study.
- 16% scheduled learning and teaching
The exact balance between scheduled learning and teaching and guided independent study will be informed by the modules you take.
Your course will primarily be delivered in person. It may include delivery of some activities online, either in real time or recorded.
Assessment typically comprises a practical project, visual summary, critical reflection and report
The approximate percentage for how you will be assessed on this course is as follows, though depends to some extent on the optional modules you choose:
- Year 1: Coursework 100%
We aim to provide feedback on assessments within 20 working days.
To give you an indication of class sizes, this course normally enrols 25 students.
External exhibition
View images from the Product & Design MA external exhibition held in 2023 at Herman Miller, London.
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James Fender
Objects in Motion
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Emily SK
Feeling Noughty
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Pin Chun Shih
Be
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Sneha Gayathri Kamarapu
A 'Cha'
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James Fender
Insieme
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Martin Cremer
Kleptopoly
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Rosa Tooke-Cheesbrough
Tune In
Fees and funding
| Fee category | Fee |
|---|---|
| Home (UK students) | |
| Full Time | £12,400 |
| Part Time | £6,820 |
| International | |
| Full Time | £21,800 |
| Part Time | £11,990 |
| Fee category | Fee |
|---|---|
| Home (UK students) | |
| Full Time | £11,900 |
| Part Time | £6,545 |
| International | |
| Full Time | £20,900 |
| Part Time | £11,495 |
Funding support for postgraduate students
If you are a UK student living in England and under 60, you can apply for a loan to study for a postgraduate degree on the government's website.
Scholarships and bursaries
For students interested in studying Product & Furniture Design MA at Kingston, there are several opportunities to seek funding support:
The Inspire the Future Scholarship offers a 40% reduction in fees for taught masters or postgraduate diploma courses with September start dates. 20 scholarships are available for progressing Kingston University graduates.
For more information on how to apply for this scholarship, visit the Inspire the Future Scholarship page.
International postgraduate students could receive up to £5,000 towards tuition in their first year of study.
For more information on how to apply for these scholarships, visit the International Scholarship page.
If you are a Kingston University 2024/25 undergraduate progressing to a 2025/26 postgraduate degree (taught or research), you could get a 15% reduction in tuition fees.
For more information on how to apply for this scholarship, visit the Postgraduate Progression Scholarship page.
Kingston University offers a 10% discount on full and part-time postgraduate degree course tuition fees to our alumni.
For more information on how to apply for this discount, visit our alumni discount page.
Additional course costs
Some courses may require additional costs beyond tuition fees. When planning your studies, you’ll want to consider tuition fees, living costs, and any extra costs that might relate to your area of study.
Your tuition fees include costs for teaching, assessment and university facilities. So your access to libraries, shared IT resources and various student support services are all covered. Accommodation and general living expenses are not covered by these fees.
Where applicable, additional expenses for your course may include:
Our libraries have an extensive collection of books and journals, as well as open-access computers and laptops available to rent. However, you may want to buy your own computer or personal copies of key textbooks. Textbooks may range from £50 to £250 per year. And a personal computer can range from £100 to £3,000 depending on your course requirements.
While most coursework is submitted online, some modules may require printed copies. You may want to allocate up to £100 per year for hard-copies of your coursework. It’s worth noting that 3D printing is never compulsory. So if you choose to use our 3D printers, you’ll need to pay for the material. This ranges from 3p per gram to 40p per gram.
Kingston University will pay for all compulsory field trips. Fees for optional trips can range from £30 to £350 per trip.
Your tuition fees don’t cover travel costs. To save on travel costs, you can use our free intersite bus service. This route links the campuses and halls of residence with local train stations - Surbiton, Kingston upon Thames, and Norbiton.
If you choose to do a placement year, travel costs will vary depending on your location. These costs could be up to £2,000.
How to apply
Before you apply
Please read the entry criteria carefully to make sure you meet all requirements before applying.
How to apply online
Use the course selector drop down at the top of this page to choose your preferred course, start date and mode, then click 'Apply now'. You will be taken to our Online Student Information System (OSIS) where you will complete your application.
If you’re starting a new application, you’ll need to select ‘new user’ and set up a username and password. This will allow you to save and return to your application.
Application deadlines
We encourage you to apply as soon as possible. Applications will close when the course is full.
Information required to confirm your place
If English is not your first language, we will require proof of your proficiency to allow us to confirm your place on the course. This will generally be either an IELTS or TOEFL test certificate, which can be forwarded to us after you have submitted your application. If you do not hold a formal English language qualification, please indicate how you have acquired your proficiency in written and spoken English.
After you have applied
For courses that select on application alone, applicants should normally receive an initial decision or a request for more information within four to six weeks of receipt of their application. Our admissions team will notify you of the decision by email.
Course changes and regulations
The information on this page reflects the currently intended course structure and module details. To improve your student experience and the quality of your degree, we may review and change the material information of this course. Course changes explained.
Programme Specifications for the course are published ahead of each academic year.
Regulations governing this course can be found on our website.
