FIRST LEVEL ACADEMIC DIPLOMA
THREE-YEAR DESIGN PROGRAM EQUIVALENT TO A BACHELOR’S DEGREE
The Three-Year Design Program equivalent to a bachelor’s degree in Design, offers comprehensive and multidisciplinary training in the main areas of design:
Product, Interior, Exhibit, Graphic, and Visual Communication.
The course of study is designed to train professionals capable of:
• Designing interior and exterior spaces
• Creating installations and exhibitions
• Developing innovative and sustainable products
• Creating brands, logos, and visual identities
• Communicating effectively through design
The Istituto del Design di Matera adopts an educational approach based on the balance between creativity and technique, theory and execution. Students learn to use the most in-demand professional software in the industry, including tools for 3D modeling, graphic design, and product modeling.
The three-year Design course includes workshops and collaborations with companies, public entities, design studios, and artisanal workshops, allowing students to engage with real-world cases.
Indeed, IdD offers unconventional, revolutionary, and innovative learning: it believes in the constant interaction between the academic system and the professional world, which is why numerous laboratory activities, research projects, as well as internships and traineeships at partner companies and studios are promoted.
Why choose the Istituto del Design di Matera?
IdD is a laboratory of ideas where the designers of the future are trained: creative, versatile, and ready to conceive sustainable products and projects. Our Design degree course in Matera is designed for those who want to transform their passion into a concrete profession that keeps pace with innovation.
Career opportunities
Upon completion of the Three-Year Design Program, you can pursue careers such as:
• Product Designer
• Interior Designer
• Graphic Designer
• Visual Designer
• 3D Modeling Designer
• Packaging Designer
• Brand Designer
Course Information
DEPARTMENT:
Design and Applied Arts
COURSE START DATE:
October 2025
LOCATION:
Matera
DURATION:
3 Years
Academic Credits:
180 CFA – ECTS* | EQF Level 6
DEGREE AWARDED:
First Level Academic Diploma in Design (DAPL06) equivalent to a bachelor’s degree
1st YEAR
The course aims to develop, both on a theoretical and practical/project level, a learning path of drawing techniques (metric scales and graphic elements, drawing tools and graphic construction representations, etc.) fundamental to support the ideation-design process and to structure development in the realization phase.
The program will concern the design of furnishings for a residential unit or a work space (studio/office) to be agreed upon with the students. The work will be set up as a design laboratory, where students will compare their own ideas and solutions.
To this end, we will study the tools of artistic and technical representation, the principles and elements of composition, the structural and technological-constructive aspects necessary for the generation of spaces and objects.
The materials covered range from the most traditional such as metals, ceramic materials, plastic materials, to the most innovative, with particular attention to eco-sustainable materials. During the laboratory hours, meetings and visits are organized with reference companies in the various sectors involved in order to understand in depth and precisely how the characteristics of materials find application in different industrial sectors.
2nd YEAR
The course aims to provide a knowledge base on the world of graphics, giving information, both historical and practical, on the role and work of the visual designer, starting from the fields of action in which they operate, and then discussing the design process and how this profession has changed over time. With a predominantly practical activity, knowledge of graphic composition will be communicated, case histories will be analyzed to develop an aesthetic taste and awareness of the communicative meaning of each graphic element.
The course aims to develop knowledge of Design as a system capable of creating value. Through a historical excursus of Made in Italy, we will delve into the relationship between culture and business, and explore the connection between design knowledge and know-how. Finally, a project theme will be assigned, and we will collectively proceed with the analysis and definition of the methodological process for developing a concept.
The main objective is to promote English language learning, bringing the student to at least a B1 level, based on the CEF (Common European Framework) evaluation scale. In particular, knowledge of specific vocabulary related to the world of Design and communication puts the student in a position to find and consult informative documentation of a technical and/or descriptive nature of market products, formulate a curriculum in English, conduct a job search interview, present a project.
The course aims to deepen the operational and pragmatic aspects that characterize design activity. In this way, it intends to help students acquire a multidisciplinary approach to the project aimed at improving people’s quality of life, and methodological skills for managing the various phases of the project coherently, without neglecting expressive and functional values. In this perspective, interior design projects (public and commercial spaces) will be developed, taking into account the physical, typological, and functional characteristics of the spaces under consideration and the different needs of users in relation to them.
During the course, the student will acquire basic information on modern 3D rendering software, rendering engines, and will be able to set up a scene and elaborate the environment for the purpose of a realistic final product. The course will focus on environment setting, the ability to render in all lighting conditions through the use of rendering and camera settings, nature environment, interior design, textures and alpha channels, displacement and bump, the issue of reflection/glossiness, and the ability to replicate any material effect, from velvet to silk to all materials present in construction.
The course aims to introduce three-dimensional modeling techniques using the most modern modeling software. Starting from an idea, a sketch, or a two-dimensional project, during the course, the student will be provided with all the key information to elaborate and design in a three-dimensional manner. From solid construction to NURBS, from design with components (serial design) and parametrics to the creation of complex objects, the student will acquire all the information of 3D modeling in order to be able to independently create a project, create exploded axonometric views, and extract useful information through section planes for possible reproduction, fabrication at the desired scale.
The course illustrates the main trends in design and creativity and their impact on people’s habits and businesses: from a product-focused design towards a systemic design, which replaces traditional linear supply chains with circular models; from product ownership to the satisfaction of desires.
The course aims to provide students with basic knowledge and skills for designing a product intended for the market. The lessons delve into a methodological approach to design, with the aim of providing students with useful tools for all phases of ideation, development, and communication of a new project. Starting from a project brief, the designer breaks down the identified need into sub-problems to arrive, through creativity, at finding an innovative solution. The design process continues through experimentation with materials and production technologies, to create product study prototypes and then technical executive drawings (CAD). Finally, the project is rendered through 3D modeling and rendering techniques.
The course provides the conceptual tools to grasp the connections between the study of psycho-perceptual and semiotic processes and one’s own design and artistic interests, related to Visual Communication and Design. The lessons cover both theoretical orientations on perception and the fundamentals of Design Semiotics and focus on cases of semiotic analysis on Design objects, with the aim of transmitting to the student the knowledge and skills necessary to make conscious use of signs, for the understanding and communication of design products and their design processes.
The body as a symbol, metaphor, means of artistic communication.
Being able to trace interferences, relationships, connections, interweaving between the arts understood both as visual arts (painting, sculpture, performance, cinema, theater) and as arts of the written word (specifically poetry and novel) to trace contiguity in poetic conception and semantic structure. Observe and understand how the representation of the body in art changes through centuries and styles, starting from antiquity to the present day, through the imaginary, mythological projection of the body. The body as an object of narration and symbolic suggestions.
Style is like a rainbow: it is a phenomenon of perception subject to the coincidence of certain physical conditions.
The course will reflect on the concept of style and will do so from a historical, sociological, and philosophical perspective. “Maximalist” definitions (Panofsky) and “normative” definitions (Focillon) will be analyzed, and then we will ask ourselves whether the notion of style has now dissolved or, on the contrary, persists in another form in the context of artistic, aesthetic, and costume phenomena such as fashion (Simmel, Fink, Svendsen) and music (Rosen, Goehr, Noë, Harper).
3rd YEAR
Exhibition design deals with the space in which the event will take place, giving it a form and an image that enhance the content, thus becoming a fundamental part of it. The visitor, through the work of the exhibition designer, is brought into a real but at the same time virtual place and there sees, through their own eyes, the consequential unfolding of a series of events (story) that then transforms into an exhibition of the subjects to be displayed.
The Exhibition Space Design course will allow students to train with a more attentive and aware look at how to exhibit and narrate an exhibition, deriving from a greater mastery of design technique and knowledge of lighting materials and the peculiarities of exhibition spaces.
The course aims to provide historical and theoretical knowledge of 20th-century avant-gardes, from individual architects and designers to the most important movements, providing the student with food for thought that will make them autonomous in their ability to recognize a particular architectural style and have the critical capacity to analyze architectural and formal languages of art.
During the lessons, topics such as the Viennese Secession will be covered, discussions will include Gaudí, leading up to the Chicago School and the masters of the Modern Movement. The Dutch School and Northern European architecture with Aalto will be explored; passing through Italy, the focus will be on the architecture of the Twentieth Century, Carlo Scarpa, and all architecture from the post-war period to the present day.
The course aims to analyze international artistic research in recent years, from 1970 to 2020, starting from Process Art, Antiform, and performance languages that involved corporeality and the role of identity, reaching current research, up to the expressions of young and emerging artists on the Italian and international scene.
The course aims to enable students to independently manage projects, using all the skills acquired in previous years.
The course is developed through theoretical lessons and laboratory design based on constant interaction between students and the teacher, structured in a research and analysis phase, a concept development phase, and a final project elaboration phase. All necessary tools will be used for this purpose: graphic and photographic surveys, environmental analysis, project data collection, data analysis, interviews, research on materials and technologies, investigation of user needs, and interpretation and synthesis of collected information.
During the first part of the course, students will be required to conduct an in-depth study of a historical case study of an exhibition, agreed upon with the teacher, and present it both visually (through drawings, diagrams, projections) and orally.
The second part of the course will focus on the creation of a site-specific exhibition project, where, following the necessary analysis phase of objects and context, a design idea will be developed, capable of respecting and enhancing the characteristics of both, adhering to the constraints imposed by the teacher in terms of time and cost.
The protection of Designer rights prepares students to distinguish creative expression from the idea, functional models from aesthetic ones, and how to establish ownership or protect copyright. The course also analyzes a series of case histories on Design projects related to legal disputes, to understand the boundaries within which the Designer must operate in compliance with the law.
Product Design 2 – ABPR17 | CFA: 5
Web Design – ABPR19 | CFA: 5
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