Clear Channel and Central Saint Martins kick off their new five-year partnership

Clear Channel, one of the UK’s leading Out of Home media and infrastructure companies, has re-joined forces with students from the BA Product Design course at\nworld-renowned arts and design college Central Saint Martins, University of the\nArts London.

The new five-year partnership will see students taking on\nclient briefs from Clear Channel and will challenge them to come up with future\nproducts that the media owner may then develop for deployment across its UK\nestate, to the benefit of the public.

The first brief of the extended partnership, “Enhancing the\nRetail Environment”, set for the next generation of Product Designers, was\ngiven at Clear Channel’s HQ earlier this month.  The unique brief asks the\nstudents to design a product that enhances the shoppers’ experience of a\ndesigned retail space or shopping mall. In the coming months, the 16 students\nwill be researching and exploring how shoppers interact with the 57 shopping\nmalls that make up Clear Channel’s market-leading estate.

The best designs will be scrutinised by the Clear Channel\nteam, with the most compelling, viable, scalable,\nand affordable, potentially being brought to life in retail spaces as part of\nexisting and future contracts.

Clear Channel’s Managing Director,\nWill Ramage says, “We’ve already seen the exceptional ideas that the Product\nDesign students are capable of dreaming up and we’re really excited to see how\nthe group approach the new retail brief. Millions of shoppers visit malls each year and we’re committed to enhancing the\nexperience they receive, as well as adding social and environmental benefits to\nthe spaces.”

The two organisations first partnered last year for “Future\nof the High Street”, a brief that saw students designing products to\nrelieve a genuine concern or pain point for the public, improve a citizen’s\nexperience of the high street, and tackle issues\nthat communities face.

You can find out more about last year’s project in the\nhighlights video below:

 BA Product Design Course Leader,\nPaul De’Ath says, “To build a\nlong-term collaborative relationship with Clear Channel is an industry\ndevelopment that the course is really excited by. Our desire to enable students\nto thrive and become designers delivering positive social impact, is encouraged\nand inspired by the trust and investment that Clear Channel have placed in the\nnext generation of creative shapers.”

 CSM’s BA Product Design promotes the belief that product\ndesign solutions should meet the wants and needs of real people. Widely\nrecognised externally as an environment in which rigorous thinking generates\ncreative and commercially relevant work, the course teaches the intellectual,\nacademic, and subject-specific skills needed for students to define their own\nprofessional practice. 

The course’s lecturers and alumni have been associated with\nthe production of ground-breaking products since 1947, including the first\nproduction laptop, the original London Routemaster bus, and the Apple\niPhone.  It has produced more Royal Designers for Industry in the subject\nthan any other undergraduate course in the world.

The course was recognised for world-class excellence by the\nQueen’s Anniversary Prize for Further and Higher Education in 2013.