Master of Design degree
The Master of Design is a postgraduate design degree that advances your design expertise and empowers your decision-making.
You can specialise in industrial design, fashion design and textile design, communication design, digital design or spatial design, and will work on interdisciplinary design projects. You'll research a topic of your interest, and continue to develop expertise in your chosen field of design.
As a postgraduate design student, you'll contribute to a vibrant, collaborative design culture. You further your creative research skills, become ethically responsible and socially aware, and explore the implications of working as a designer across cultural, social and industrial contexts.
Download programme guides
Minimum entry requirements
- Bachelor of Design or equivalent with a B grade average or higher in the courses at level 7 or above
- In exceptional circumstances, an applicant who does not meet the requirements above, but who has an appropriate combination of academic and professional experience may be considered for admission*
International student entry requirements
*Subject to CUAP approval
Other requirements
- Applicants may be required to submit a portfolio of work and attend a selection interview
English language requirements
- IELTS (Academic) 6.5 overall with all bands 6.0 or higher; or equivalent
Download application documents
You can research design by choosing 60 points of coursework and a 120 point thesis, or 90 points of coursework and a 90 point research project. Each option can be tailored to suit your research interests (not all courses are offered each semester). We suggest you discuss which course combinations when you apply for the Master of Design degree.
Option 1 - by thesis
Courses you study
And 45 points from the elective courses listed below
Complete a thesis
Enrolment in a thesis is subject to achieving at least a B- average in coursework courses, including a pass in Research Methods and approval of research proposal.
Option 2 - by project
Courses you study
And 75 points from the elective courses listed below
Complete a design research project
Enrolment in a research project is subject to achieving at least a B- average in coursework courses, including a pass in Research Methods and approval of research proposal.
Elective courses
Please note that not all of the courses listed below may run each year/semester.
- ARDN801 Ethics in Research (15 points)
- ARDN802 Directed Studies Project (15 points)
- ARDN803 Reading Paper (15 points)
- ARDN804 Collaborative Design (15 points)
- ARDN807 Coding for Artists and Designers (15 points)
- ARDN808 Contextual Review (15 points)
- DESN800 Design Practice I (15 points)
- DESN801 Design Practice II (15 points)
- DESN803 Design Histories (15 points)
- DESN804 Design for Social Impact (15 points)
- DESN805 Design Practice for Health (15 points)
- DESN806 Design for Health and Wellbeing (15 points)
- DESN808 Game Design Practices (15 points)
- DESN809 Virtual Production Practices (15 points)
- DESN810 Strategic Design (15 points)
- DESN811 Design Innovation (15 points)
- DESN812 Design Futures (15 points)
More details about courses in the Master of Design
Email the Postgraduate Coordinator
Enrolment in courses is subject to meeting all requirements and availability of courses.
Develop your expertise in communication design, design for health and wellbeing, spatial design, strategic leadership in design, textile design and virtual production. Within each discipline, there are potential study and research pathways.
Explore how communication design can transform and enrich human experience. You develop expertise in analysing, researching and applying master's level thinking and design practice in a range areas, including visual language, information design, wayfinding, typographic design, interactive and augmented design, layout, social media and web-based design propositions.
We promote a collaborative design approach responsive to the needs of users, the environment and business; enabling a conceptually driven approach to design concepts. You can hone your design skills and acquire knowledge and experience with cutting-edge technologies through design research. We challenge you to think creatively and push accepted boundaries.
Focusing on the wide range of specialist areas within the digital realm – including animation, cinematic and post-cinematic practices, virtual production and immersive technologies, screendance, gaming and photogrammetry – offers exciting possibilities for research.
Develop expertise in analysing and interpreting narrative and creating a compelling sense of immersion. Communicate complex ideas, data and visual forms to a wide range of audiences and participants.
This pathway blends storytelling, information and interaction with cutting-edge technologies to produce creative outputs that push innovation and boundaries within the digital arena. Research projects can focus on either individual or collaborative projects; encompassing bespoke projects to industry related projects, re-thinking what digital design can be on a local and global level.
Virtual Production Gallery
Postgraduate study in fashion design will enable you to expand your personal design style. Through this practice-led pathway you’ll develop a conceptually robust, multifaceted approach to your practice.
Explore the different ways you can incorporate craft-based skills with cutting-edge technologies to produce bold approaches that re-position local and global fashion trends. Inspire change and counter-cultural, social, historical and political issues related to the industry.
Facilities you can access:
- Industrial seamless knit computerised knitting machines
- Dubied hand-flat and domestic knitting machines
- Industrial 18 colour intarsia knitting machine
- Apex Shima Seiki Design Systems
- Industrial seamless accessory machine
- Flat proto-type industrial digital print machine
- Screen printing facilities
- Felting machine
The Good Health Design pathway focuses on design that has a positive impact on people's health and wellbeing.
Our team of transdisciplinary researchers and creatives collaborates with clinical experts, healthcare professionals and researchers from other disciplines to share and test ideas, and develop unique solutions.
The studio works on a project-by project basis, incorporating all design disciplines to create solutions across spaces, environments, communication, services, digital and physical products. Through this pathway you learn to customise your approach to health and wellbeing problems by using human-centred design approaches.
Good Health Design Gallery
Postgraduate study in industrial design enables you to hone your critical and creative thinking, design thinking, ideation, prototyping and communication skills.
Research solutions to real-life problems, and produce research that explores tangible, three-dimensional manufactured objects like consumer products, furniture, packaging, medical and sports equipment or systems, services and interfaces.
Facilities you can access:
- Digital fabrication facilities
- Virtual production facilities
- Textile design laboratories
- 3D laboratories
- Moving image and photography facilities
- Wet laboratories for prototyping ceramics and other media
Focus on the specialist areas of spatial experience, material narratives, visual production, and explore how space transforms and enriches us. You develop expertise in analysing and interpreting existing conditions and sites to build a sense of place, visualising immersive spaces and helping others to visualise space.
We work with what already exists, refitting, reusing, reworking and adapting. We're detail-oriented, attending to materials, surfaces, pattern, fabrication, and connections.
This pathways blends craft-based skills with cutting-edge technologies through creative design outputs that push innovation and boundaries within spatial design. Research projects can focus on either individual or collaborative projects; encompassing bespoke projects to industry related projects, re-thinking spatial design on a local and global level.
Facilities you can access:
- Digital fabrication facilities
- Virtual production facilities
- Textile design laboratories
- 3D laboratories
- Moving image and photography facilities
- Wet laboratories for prototyping ceramics and other media
Spatial Design Gallery
Successful design leaders integrate imagination and tactics to create meaning, design experience and commercialise value through product, service and organisational innovation. This pathway combines creativity with strategic design thinking to create significant competitive advantage that is desirable, feasible and sustainable in a business context.
It aims to develop, bridge and enhance students’ creative potentials by instilling potent theoretical, tactical and design comprehensions to undertake leadership roles in strategic design in the creative industries, government sectors, and institutions.
Strategic Leadership Gallery
The Textile Design pathway focuses on print, knit, laser cut, and 2D or 3D technologies; incorporating multimedia and fabrication approaches to re-think textile design on a local and global level.
It blends craft-based skills with cutting edge technologies through creative design outputs that push innovation and boundaries within textile design.
Individual research supervision will be offered across a range of textile design projects, including textiles for architectural design, seamless knitted textile applications, digital and analogue print design, e-textile design applications and developments, local textile innovation design solutions, and global textile issues and design innovation.
Textile Design Gallery
Facilities you can access:
- Industrial seamless knit computerised knitting machines
- Dubied hand-flat and domestic knitting machines
- Industrial 18 colour intarsia knitting machine
- Apex Shima Seiki Design Systems
- Industrial seamless accessory machine
- Industrial digital print roll to roll machine
- Flat proto-type industrial digital print machine
- Screen printing facilities
- 3D printing facilities
- Laser cutting facilities
- Felting machine
($9,461 tuition fees + $1146 student services levy)
($43,200 tuition fees + $1146 student services levy)
- Fees shown are based on a full-time workload for the points indicated next to the fee. The exact fee charged will depend on which courses you select at the time of enrolment.
- Fees are subject to change year to year. If you are planning for study beyond the current year, fees may vary from those stated.
- There may also be other fees and charges you need to pay.
- International students' tuition fees reflect the full cost of tuition. Domestic students' tuition fees are less due to a proportion of the tuition fees being funded by the New Zealand Government.
The information on this page was correct at time of publication. For a comprehensive overview of AUT qualifications, please refer to the Academic Calendar.