Higher Certificate programmes serve as a bridge for students who do not meet the entry requirements for degree programmes, providing an opportunity to acquire the essential skills they may be lacking to complete or gain access to undergraduate studies of their choice. For these programmes to be effective, curriculum design must fully consider the Higher Certificate students as individuals with specific and unique learning needs, who often enter with varying levels of academic preparedness. Curriculum designers often assume that students already possess certain skills, including digital competencies and soft skills such as planning and time management. However, a lack of these skills might contribute to poor academic performance.

This paper explores learning experience design as an iterative, reflective, and inclusive praxis through the development and application of the African Abacus, a visual taxonomy designed to map and evaluate inclusive learning design processes. Responding to gaps in the literature on collaborative reflection within non-formal learning contexts in the Global South, the study examines how multidisciplinary design teams conceptualised and created online short courses for a newly established architecture school in South Africa. Anchored in Freirean praxis and ecosystem-of-learning theory, the research adopts an autoethnographic approach in which seven contributors reflected on their roles, decisions, and projected student experiences.

In 2006, author Howard Gardner published a book titled Five Minds for the Future. The book considers how global trends in contemporary society, such as the increasing power of and reliance on technology, will affect the future of education and the development of human intelligence. The book goes on to outline a theoretical model of five different types of intelligences and the pertinent role each will play in the future. While the book was written and published nearly two decades ago, many of Gardner’s trends, forecasts, and analyses have proven useful over the progression of time, and continue to increase in global influence.

In the current milieu approaches to the design and creation of visual art and design artefacts by Afrikans, no longer follows the application of Euro-American ideologies and methods, stylised with Afrikan-inspired effects so that they are palatable to a Western audience. Colonial era atavism attempted to erase Afrikanness from Afrikans' cosmologies, citing the superiority of Western Enlightenment reasoning and their more 'sophisticated' society as preferable. Afrikan aetiologies now supersede in contemporary creative practice in Afrika, grounded in values, heritage, genealogy, mythology, prolepsis and systems that are intrinsically Afrikan, and favour that which is authentically representative of the continent.

Traditional garments are not merely clothes; they are objects transmitting our stories and the expertise of skilled artisans. Tradition is also passed down in the creation and construction of our clothes, and the way artefacts, like clothes, are made, including the materials and the processes, are all embedded into our communities and cultures. In South Africa, consumers obtain personalised garments, such as traditional dress, from informal clothing manufacturing micro-enterprises (CMMEs). These CMMEs cater to local customers’ needs, providing them with individual and exclusive garments. However, little is known about how informal CMMEs design and develop apparel for their customers.

Government-led policies operate within distinct ‘National Contexts’, with implications from other policies. These contexts are critical for structuring innovation policies for design support. They preserve distinctive qualities such as cultural heritage and ingenious knowledge systems, and they work within socio-economic levels of maturity, autonomy, governance, market conditions, and appropriate infrastructure for design. In addition, effective innovation policy for design requires coordinated engagement of diverse stakeholders—spanning government, industry, academia, and design communities, constituting an integrated ecosystem referred to as a ‘National Design System’.

The South African higher education landscape has become progressively diverse since the onset of democracy, with students emanating from different racial, cultural, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds. As such, the country’s multicultural context highlights the need to focus on pedagogical approaches that promote inclusivity when designing learning experiences for diverse student needs and backgrounds. Cross-cultural interactions exist between educators, students, and instructional designers. Given that both implicit and explicit awareness is said to impact learning, it can be assumed that developing cultural competence affects the way learning is designed and experienced.

Media consumers' behaviour is shifting due to increased digital activity, the ubiquity of converged digital technologies, and the rise of on-demand platforms. This convergence democratises content production, allowing individuals and communities outside mainstream media to create and share their own narratives, transforming how we consume and interact with digital content. This technological evolution interacts dynamically with aesthetic progressions and viewer expectations. In digital video production, applying multimedia aesthetics involves analysing elements such as light, colour, space, time, motion, sound, and visual narratives.

Animation is a medium that is increasingly being used in the documentary genre for its symbolic and metaphoric functions; the reenactment of events for which live action footage is missing or non-existent, the recreation of phenomena not accessible to normal human vision (such as those that were pre-photographic or are cosmically distant or microscopic), as well as the portrayal of subjective psychological states. This paper proposes that in addition to these established functions of animation in a non-fiction context, we should also consider its potential as a form of public history, giving voice to individual perspectives in a novel and  symbolically-rich medium.

Design education within the Higher Education sector must recognise its critical role in preparing students to design solutions for the challenges of the future. This paper explores the theoretical and conceptual similarities and differences between design and futures thinking that can be integrated for more socially and economically impactful design practice that shapes the future. The role of future-focused design can also play a significant role in the teaching of disciplines and subjects outside of the design field.

In the Anthropocene, evidence points to humans depleting Earth's resources at an unsustainable rate. Designers unwittingly contribute to resource depletion through traditional design approaches. As a lifelong designer-researcher, like many of my peers, our collective aim is to effect positive societal, environmental, and stakeholder impact through design. While global design frameworks often rely on purpose-driven foundations, their applicability within the South African visual communication design context is underexplored.

This research investigates the transformation of studio-based learning environments within spatial design education, focusing on the increasing need for adaptability, immersion, and sustainability. With roots in Interior Design and Architectural Education, traditional studio models have historically centred on fixed, institution-bound environments. However, shifts in ecological consciousness, technological advancement, and pedagogical priorities demand a rethinking of the studio typology. This paper proposes an alternative: the immersive nomadic studio.

This design research explores the intersection of traditional African textile heritage and contemporary design practice through the reinterpretation of the Swahili khanga.

Game design education is often framed around theoretical frameworks or technical skill development, frequently separating academic knowledge from industry practice. This paper challenges that separation by exploring the cyclical knowledge exchange that occurs when a practitioner actively engages in both teaching and game development. Through a co-authored autoethnographic reflection, the paper examines how the ongoing development of an independent digital game has shaped one educator’s teaching approach, while classroom experiences have simultaneously refined his professional design practice.

Lived experiences are central to preserving Indigenous cultural heritage, shaping identity, and enabling knowledge transmission. Globalisation creates major challenges for Indigenous communities by pressuring them to conform to dominant cultures, leading to the loss of traditions and practices. For the ≠Khomani San of Witdraai, Askham, in the Northern Cape of South Africa, roadside conversations are essential forms of informal knowledge exchange that enable storytelling, cultural adaptation, and identity assertion. These spontaneous interactions at roadside stalls provide unique sites for authentic knowledge transfer that are distinct from formal museum narratives or heritage tourism encounters.

This paper examines how sustainability and future-focused design can be effectively integrated into design education through a case study of a third-year Industrial Design project in South Africa. As part of an international design competition, students were challenged to critically engage with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by identifying and addressing actionable problems. Working in teams, they developed technically refined product solutions within a computer-aided design (CAD) environment, applying human-centred and sustainability-driven design principles. The project outcome analysed in this study tackled organic waste management in lower-income urban areas under the competition theme of “sustainable habitat/city infrastructure”.

As the built environment continues to evolve in response to global and local challenges, design education must prepare students to envision and shape sustainable futures. This paper explores how student-centred design education advances social sustainability by fostering critical engagement with the spaces students inhabit and design. Using Project-Based Learning as a framework, we discuss a series of pedagogical projects implemented at various levels of an interior design curriculum. These projects empowered students to reflect on their own lived experiences of built spaces, using these insights as a primary design driver rather than relying solely on external references.

This paper proposes a hybrid developmental Design model for innovative research, practice and learning in complex socio-technical systems by combining topical theories and methods. It begins by challenging the problem of exclusive Design approaches and typical Design models which use centralised development and beneficiation. The model asks Designers to rethink their future role and relinquish control via a Participatory Design approach where Designers are responsible for demystifying the value impact of Design through a process of ongoing engagement (Lasky 2013, p. 24). The model’s framework combines three Design theories that have common themes: ‘Socio-Technical Systems Design’, ‘Appropriate Technology’ and ‘Design for Sustainability’.

Mass intervention is crucial when tackling pressing social issues, such as gender-based violence. One method in approaching this is the use of the public service announcement (PSA). Traditional PSAs, such as posters and short films, are linear media forms. They rely on passive viewership and an assumption of audience behavioural change, following engagement with the artefact. This limits the PSA’s potential to inspire long-term, sustained, societal change as the effectiveness is highly dependent on the cognitive engagement of the viewer with the content. My research suggests that media employing the use of decision-based fictional narratives, such as interactive film, is more effective in enacting change.

In this paper I discuss opportunities for creative collaboration in sustainability science, more specifically Social-Ecological Systems (SES) – in which social and ecological concerns are treated as having the same weight. These transdisciplinary fields involve ‘non-scientists’ in solution-oriented approaches to sustainability challenges. The purpose of this paper is to highlight for design educators the potential of building stronger networks and partnerships in sustainability science contexts. The deep and attentive focus on nature, systems and communities in sustainability science offers a well of inspiration and purpose for creative practitioners, who in turn offer novel pathways for scientists and communities to imagine and share their work and knowledges.

This paper reflects on multidisciplinary, collaborative engagement projects conducted over the past five years, initiated in 2021 during the global COVID-19 lockdowns. These projects – primarily facilitated between our University’s School of Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) and Engagement Office – saw collaborations between Graphic Design students, Photography students, faculty members, Engagement Office staff, and community partners. These collaborative engagement projects provided unique challenges and opportunities, allowing for the emergence of meaningful lessons in response to the question “how are we designing for engagement through collaborative, dialogical, or multidisciplinary approaches to design education, practice, and community building?”

The inaccessibility of global cultural heritage limits its potential to shape identities and inform design, a challenge compounded by historical power imbalances in knowledge production. This paper proposes a design education framework integrating Indigenous knowledge systems, critical theory, and human-centred design. It addresses digital cultural heritage preservation in a postcolonial context using a South African case study. Drawing on a Title Sequence Design Module at a South African university in a Digital Design department, we developed a project collaboration with a South African art museum that explores motion-based digital narratives to democratise access to heritage, preserve culture and traditions, disrupt colonial legacies, and cultivate ethical designers.

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence and digital technologies is prompting significant shifts in fashion design education, aligning with global transformations under the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). This paper examines how generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Midjourney and DALL·E are influencing early fashion design ideation and concept formation, especially at the sketch and exploration stages (Särmäkari & Vänskä 2021; Zhou et al. 2023). These tools are reshaping creative workflows by supporting faster visual exploration, expanding conceptual possibilities, and encouraging sustainable practices.

Over the years, the standard Indian school curriculum has increasingly marginalised arts, crafts, and design education. This has led to the neglect of interdisciplinary approaches and creative problem-solving skills, which are essential not only in professional fields but also in everyday life. The influence of Western science and technology on design education, along with the shift from local to global perspectives, has also impacted the preservation of indigenous handcrafts, cultural diversity, traditional knowledge systems, identities, and natural resources in craft-rich communities.

This paper explores how the principles of Cosmopolitan Localism, specifically the Small, Local, Open, and Connected (SLOC) framework, can be operationalised within sustainability-focused fashion design education. Drawing on a practice-based, qualitative research study conducted within an undergraduate fashion design programme at a South African university, the paper analyses a pedagogical intervention aligned with the global Fashion Revolution movement. The intervention included a three-week experiential learning module, the Fashion Revolution Designathon, and a campus-wide clothing swap event to embed ethical awareness, material circularity, and critical design thinking into the student learning experience.

Decolonisation in museums is an urgent and evolving discourse that challenges dominant historical narratives, interrogates Western authority over cultural artefacts, and seeks to restore voice and visibility to marginalised communities. In Britain, museums continue to hold vast collections acquired through imperial extraction. Their displays often obscure these colonial origins, reframing artefacts as universal heritage under a Eurocentric gaze. As Abungu (2019) notes, decolonisation requires structural change, rethinking display, interpretation, and who is authorised to tell these stories. Ahamed-Barke (2024) sharpens this provocation by claiming that “to decolonise is to decontextualise”.

Design for social good refers to the application of design knowledge and skills to solve problems to enable a better future. From a fashion perspective, design for social good could refer to the pursuit of environmental sustainability and to uplift communities. Design education, at undergraduate-level aims to encourage students to apply design knowledge to improve the world and potentially introduce research methodology. However, literature concerning pedagogical strategies for design for social good in a South African fashion design higher education context is lacking. To fill this gap, a design for social good teaching and learning project was presented to third year Fashion Diploma students at a South African fashion higher education institution.

Global society demands continuous modification and enhancements to traditional teaching and learning to prepare students for the complex 21st century world. Higher education (HE) instructors in South African institutions are faced with unique challenges as the student populace is often culturally, socially, and linguistically diverse and also comes from varying socioeconomic backgrounds. To ensure student success, HE instructors should employ innovative human-centred design (Human-Vogel and Du Plessis 2024) strategies to respond to diverse student needs, improve performance and knowledge retention, and to increase motivation levels.

Sustainability has become a defining imperative for brands and consumers in an era of intensifying environmental and social challenges. Organisations increasingly turn to visual storytelling as a strategic communication tool to foster environmental consciousness, drive behavioural change, and shape public perception. This paper investigates the role of visual storytelling in advancing sustainable advertising practices. It explores how such techniques can be integrated into design education to prepare emerging creatives for purpose-driven communication. Grounded in a dual focus on environmental and social responsibility, this study responds to two central questions: (1) How can visual storytelling techniques influence consumer engagement and action toward sustainability?

This paper investigates the disruptive power of extended reality (XR) technologies, synergistically combined with artificial intelligence (AI), on creative art and design education in South Africa. Informed by an integrative literature review and insights derived from research conducted for the EU-funded Metaverse Academy Project with students and industry representatives, this study demonstrates how these technologies are altering established paradigms within artistic practice and design methodologies.