I’ve started the Design Connections Doctoral School in January, 2010. Before starting as a full time researcher, I have worked in the fields of furniture design, graphic design and exhibition coordinating. I’m a founding member of Imu design (www.imudesign.org), which is an organization that represents Finland based designers in international exhibitions. Working with Imu has been one of the inspirations for starting this research.
The working title of my research is The roles and expertise of emerging designers – in the context of networking and internationalization. My study concentrates on designer entrepreneurs and design collectives based in Finland and escalates to a few other countries (such as Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands) to explore different perspectives.
The study aims to explain what type of expertise is characteristic and essential to the designers in applied art & design, how the designer acts in his network and how he could position himself in the design field in order to strengthen his national and international competitiveness. The interest of this study is to get state-of-the art information from the design field in order to find successful operation models and define possible new roles or positions for the designers.
The research pursues to increase understanding of the designer’s work and networking for parties that interact with designers. By using the research findings, also practical tools can be developed to benefit the cooperation between designers and industry, in developing design-intensive businesses as well as in planning the design education.
If you’re interested in the research, don’t hesitate to contact me!
krista.kosonen( )taik.fi
krista( )imudesign.org
Postal address:
Aalto University
School of Art and Design
P.O. Box 31000
FI-00076 AALTO
FINLAND
Visiting address:
Aalto University
School of Art and Design
Hämeentie 135 C
Helsinki