Have you always been an inventor at heart? Now is your chance to transform yourself into a professional designer by following the Industrial Product Design programme at Howest.

You will learn how to invent new solutions and optimise existing ones to improve daily life today and tomorrow. You will innovate, experiment, and design sustainable products that are beautiful, functional, and ready for production. This hands-on programme combines state-of-the-art technology, technical skills and a solution-oriented approach together with your creativity.

In our Industrial Design Center, you will experiment with a wide range of techniques: wood, metal and textile processing, 3D printing, laser and water jet cutting, welding, ceramics and more. In our makerspace and studios, you will grow step by step into a true creator who invents prototypes, tests, and fine-tunes their designs until they are ready for production. After three years, you will have mastered each step of the design process and you will be prepared to start working in companies, design agencies or as a freelancer. Before you know it, you will have your first product on the market, and maybe even your first award...

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Programme structure

The first three semesters are the same for all students. During this time, you will be introduced to the fundamentals of the programme while learning the must-have skills of every designer. In these first semesters you will discover what suits you best: are you more of an aesthete driven by form and function, a change agent / solver of world and everyday problems, or a techie mainly interested in producing a design? Your answer to this question will help you choose a minor in semester 4, allowing you to put your own accent on your studies and giving you a taste of the direction you want to go.

Each minor focuses on a different context: industry (Design for Industry), the end user (Design for Identity) or society (Design for Impact). In semester 5 and 6, students form their own design bureaus in teams. Together, you develop new products from A to Z and bring them to the market. In your final year, you will also complete an internship and a graduation project.

Career opportunities:

With an Industrial Product Design diploma, you can work in almost any sector: lighting, mechanical engineering, interior design, and more. You will be able to work in multidisciplinary teams with R&D managers, designers, technicians, and experts from other fields. You could also work as an independent designer.

The professions we prepare you for are very diverse: product designer, work planner, materials expert, industrial designer, production super visor, visualizer, CAM programmer, prototyper, stand designer, (re) designer, CAD draftsman, creative brain, mechanical designer, etc. 94% of our graduates work as designers in a self-creating company, a design agency, or their own studio. Their creations regularly win awards at home and abroad.