100% online MDes Design with Fashion Design

Dress for career success with an MDes Design with Fashion Design from a global university

Apply By 31 December 2024

To Start 7 January 2025

180 credits •
Complete within 24 months •
£6,780 total fees •
5 star QS Teaching Rating (2023)

Why Sunderland?

100% online MDes within 24 months
5 star rating for teaching, inclusiveness, employability and facilities*
Top 40 UK University**
70% of university research rated as ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’***
12th in UK for Art and Design****
£6,780 total fees, option to pay £565 per module

*QS Stars World University Rankings 2023
**Guardian University Guide 2025
***Research Excellence Framework 2021
****The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2025

Make a statement with a career that will never go out of style

Careers in fashion combine art, aesthetics and versatility to support the creative world around what we wear. Put your business nous and artistic flair to good use in this exciting and enduring industry with the University of Sunderland’s 100% online MDes Design with Fashion Design.

This course is meticulously crafted to nurture highly skilled and ethically conscious designers who grasp the influential role of design in shaping society and the world.

Become immersed in the critical aspects of fashion design through a dynamic curriculum blending theoretical frameworks, historical contexts, practical exercises, and case studies, and develop the skills and acumen needed to critically analyse and creatively address design challenges.

A fusion of design theory and practice, your studies will be supported by specialised online tutors dedicated to your successful completion.

Designed for adaptability and global applicability, the course covers a diverse array of media, materials, techniques, and processes, so you can align your learning to your passions and career aspirations. Finally, you will be equipped with the technical proficiency and creative ingenuity, career-oriented mindset, and full understanding of the creative industries landscape needed to excel in the exciting world of fashion.

Fully flexible learning crafted to your needs

We’ve crafted our online courses to break down the barriers working professionals considering postgraduate study experience with 100% online learning that means you won’t have to attend campus to complete your studies.

You will study in our custom-built online learning platform and be able to access your course materials anywhere and anytime around day to day activities including your job, family appointments, sport and other recreational events and more.

Pick a pace that suits you from either full-time or part-time study methods and learn asynchronously for maximum flexibility.

Finally, we offer six intakes per year, so you can get your studies started within weeks of admission, unhindered by the traditional academic calendar.

What will you study?

Fashion design professionals contribute their work to positively impact society and the world. Through this course will gain a full understanding of this impact, as well as a systemic understanding of design knowledge and awareness of the current challenges and new insights of modern design practice.

As a graduate you will have gained a broad knowledge of the creative industries and can use this understanding to confidently recognise and pursue career paths as well as position, promote and assess the likely demand for your work as a creative.

Key knowledge and skills taught on this course:

How to generate creative ideas and apply them to design concepts
Develop creative brand awareness concepts using research
Ethical design issues including sustainability, inclusive design and social responsibility
A body of work showcasing original ideas, skills and knowledge application
Producing creative and technically advanced materials to generate paid work
Strategic design thinking and design leadership and management
Knowledge of smart fabrics, interactive garments and wearable electronics
Design, illustrate or represent fashion garments through digital means

LINKS THAT SPAN THE GLOBE AND ARE EQUIPPED TO THE NEEDS OF ONLINE LEARNERS

The University of Sunderland’s experience teaching international students spans 40 years and our global reach extends across campus locations in Hong Kong, Sunderland and London, as well as links in the Caribbean, Greece, Kenya, Malaysia, Lanka, Oman, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tashkent and Vietnam. We champion the diversity of our online learners who benefit from a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds and graduate with truly global professional networks.

We have international students in all corners of the globe and a high percentage of our student cohort are distance learners. Our work in UK widening participation is also highly regarded and we have been awarded 7th in the UK for social inclusion (The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2024).

Our expertise, our cutting-edge technology and our vast experience delivering excellent online learning experiences to global students is key to what sets the University of Sunderland and our online MDes Design with Fashion Design apart.

Admission requirements

Applicants must be of age 19 and above and should have or be about to complete:

And have

At least a UK 2.2 honours undergraduate degree in a design or related subject (or international equivalent). If you have a third-class honours or ordinary degree in a design-related subject, you will need to submit a digital portfolio of your design practice. This may include previous project work and must include current work-in-progress. It can take the form of a link to your blog or website and/or be presented as an interactive PDF. This will help the academic team assess your suitability for the programme.

Applicants with an undergraduate degree outside of a design-related discipline are also eligible if they can demonstrate relevant design skills. You will need to submit a digital portfolio of your design practice. This may include previous project work and must include current work-in-progress. It can take the form of a link to your blog or website and/or be presented as an interactive PDF. This will help the academic team assess your suitability for the programme.

Applicants who do not hold a recognised degree will be asked to provide evidence which demonstrates a minimum of 3 years’ relevant work experience alongside their portfolio.

Software requirements for studying this course

Students will need their own access to some software licenses. (The University could provide guidance with the students pricing)

Adobe Creative Cloud
Microsoft 365
Clo3d (MDes Design with Fashion Design)
ToonBoom Essentials, Advanced or Premium (MDes Design with Animation Design)
Maya (MDes Design with Animation Design)
3D Studio Max (MDes Design with Animation Design)
Maxon One Student (Cinema 4D, ZBrush, Red Giant, Red Shift, Capsules, Training, etc) (MDes Design with Graphic Design)

Fees

Total course fees: £6,780
Per 15-credit module fee: £565

If you are based in the UK, you may be eligible for a government-backed postgraduate loan to cover the full costs of the course.

In addition, if you have successfully completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Sunderland, you are eligible for a 10% tuition fees reduction on our postgraduate programmes.

You pay tuition fees for each module taken, either module-by-module or in full at the start of your course.

If you pay module-by-module, you will pay in instalments of £565.

Modules

What’s the Big Idea?

Gain a critical understanding and experiment with a range of ideation techniques and approaches to developing creative ideas. Finetune your understanding with input from top professionals and understand how to honestly rate an idea. Learn to build a hook to captivate your audience, whether through storytelling and narrative, surprise and novelty, authenticity and passion or clever copywriting.

Effectively present and communicate your ideas. Select and apply your ideation techniques to produce imaginative concepts for a live or envisaged project.

Design for the Planet

Develop a critical understanding human activity’s impact on this planet, and the intentions of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Learn how to be more sustainable in your own design practice, and how to use the power of design to influence other people to live more sustainably. Explore sustainability through a variety of lenses such as climate action, reversing poverty, good health and wellbeing for all, gender equality, affordable and clean energy, sustainable cities and communities, life below water and more.

Apply your design skills to address one of the many important global challenges in SDG. Aim to win a University Sustainable Futures Prize through your work in trying to make the world fit for future generations.

Masters Approaches to Research and Methodologies

Boosting the Brand: Getting noticed in a micro-attention world

Learn how to make a brand stand out in an increasingly a micro-attentive world. Capture attention across different media and platforms including social media. Understand and experiment with key design approaches such as micro-content and snackable design, interactive and immersive experiences, multi-sensory branding, brand storytelling and associations and more. Develop a deeper understanding of brand personality, tone of voice and maintaining authenticity.

Apply your design knowledge and skills to an exciting branding project and document your creative journey through a module journal/design diary.

Design Futures: New and Emerging Technologies in the Creative Process

Experiment with a range of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and new technologies designed to generate text, images, video, sound, computer code and other key outputs. Gain a critical understanding of the copyright and ethical considerations in the use of AI. Develop a robust understanding of how AI tools and new technologies can be used ethically in the process of creative design, without replacing the need for human expertise, decision-making and ingenuity. Apply your developing skills with AI to creative outcomes.

Design Activism

Gain the critical knowledge, skills, and tools necessary to lead and manage design-driven initiatives in various industries, fostering innovation, and driving business success through design. Gain insights into strategic design thinking and the leadership and management of design.

Develop an understanding of practical applications by learning from real-world examples of successful and unsuccessful design management practices. Understand some of the key considerations and issues around intellectual property and copyright.

Recognise some of the issues around managing teams and external partners, and better understand the role of a designer in the bigger picture of the design process. Use your creative design skills to explain or illuminate important aspects of design management to a non-specialist audience.

Design Management: Effective Control of the Creative Process

Design for Social Impact

Develop a critical understanding of the role and power of design to change hearts and minds, perceptions and behaviours, and create real impact on society. Develop your study skills and research methodology. Investigate and critically evaluate how key approaches to design for social change have succeeded or failed in your own specialism, in past and contemporary work.

Identify important societal or global issues that you are passionate about, and apply what you’ve learned to develop your own ideas, concepts and creative designs for a project that will help make the world a better place.

Employment, Entrepreneurship and Professional Practice

Gain a critical understanding of strategies to maximise the chances of interview and employment including common shortlisting processes, and key interview questions and responses. Critically evaluate approaches to self-employment and the pros and cons of different types of structure. Understand some of the key profit/loss, tax implications and impacts on lifestyle, of being employed or self-employed.

Develop strategies for identifying employers or clients that would value your style of work and those you would like to work with. Fine-tune how you describe your skills and knowledge and align it to your ideal career path.

The Portfolio/Showreel and Design for Self-Promotion

Gain a critical understanding of what constitutes good self-promotional materials in differing contexts, such as showreel, portfolio and online profile. Understand the power of interaction with your audience and plan to harness unpaid promotion and advertising. Learn the language of self-description, that allows the highlighting of strengths while avoiding appearance of arrogance.

Apply your advanced skills to design self-promotional materials that will give you the best chance of gaining the kind of work that you aspire to do as a career.

Fashion Technologies and Wearable Tech

Gain an awareness of how technologies and wearable tech have evolved in the fashion industry and their current state of play. Develop an understanding of smart fabrics, interactive garments and wearable electronics, as well as bio-fabrics and recycling fashion electronics, and how fashion tech can work in terms of sustainability. Gain a critical understanding and discuss evolving forms of digital fashion as well as NFT’s (Non-fungible token), AR (Augmented reality) and VR (Virtual reality) in fashion.

Apply your skills to a tech-based fashion design project.

Digital Approaches to Fashion Design

Gain a critical understanding of how to design, illustrate or represent fashion garments through digital means. Explore software such as Clo3D to design and visualise garments sustainably, or design garments for avatars and characters in an online space. Develop an understanding of sustainability issues through digital design, and how digital designs can shape fashion identities. Gain a critical awareness of copyright, ownership and ethical considerations in digital design as well as some knowledge of digital fabrication and prototyping.