Creative Designer

It would only take a quick glance in the cupboards of any home to spot a brand which product designer Sarah Sage has worked with during her career.

It would probably be harder to find one she hasn’t been involved with in the 12 years since she graduated from London’s Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication, a specialist in the field of creative industries. The 34-year-old has designed products and packaging for some of the UK’s, if not the world’s, best-loved brands – Impulse, Guiness, Galaxy, Colgate, Cif and Durex, to name but a few.

Having started out as a junior structural packaging designer, Sarah has worked her way up through the ranks of various agencies to design director, a position she only left last year when she became a mum and decided to go it alone, putting her skills and knowledge of the industry to the test as a freelance product designer.

It is a career which Sarah absolutely loves, regularly throwing up challenges which satisfy the creative bug within, but even she admits it is a job she fell into by chance. So now, Sarah is giving her full backing to the Diploma in Manufacturing and Product Design, a new qualification for 14-19 year-olds which seeks to engage more youngsters with the world of product design and manufacturing and open their eyes to the vast opportunities the industry holds.

Sarah, who is based in London, said: “The best thing about this Diploma is its ability to bring together the world of work and the classroom, allowing students to see and try for themselves the huge array of jobs and roles within the manufacturing and design industry.

“I’ve always had a creative gene and knew I wanted to use that in my career when I left school, but I really didn’t know what specific job I actually wanted to do. I’d got A-levels in art and design but I didn’t know where to go from there. I chose to go to Ravensbourne College because it’s a specialist in creative courses and it wasn’t until I actually began my degree in product design that I decided that was the career for me. I followed quite a traditional route through school and luckily managed to fall into a job I love. I am incredibly fortunate, but I do feel that I wasn’t made aware of the many job opportunities out there. I didn’t even know that there was such a job as a product designer, let alone what I needed to do to become one.

“One of the strengths of this Diploma is that youngsters will come away with knowledge and experience of an industry that is widely misunderstood. The truth is, the opportunities to work in a job connected to designing and creating new products are vast, and the work itself is varied and exciting. By the time they have graduated, students taking the Diploma in MPD will have greater knowledge about so many aspects of manufacturing and product design. They will be more commercially aware, more informed about what is going on in the industry and more hands-on. All these are great assets which are sure to open doors for them, and impress prospective employers.”

The Diploma in Manufacturing and Product Design has been developed in close consultation with leading manufacturing companies to give young people a realistic, practical understanding of industry. It is taught through consortia, or partnerships, of schools, colleges and employers, allowing students to divide their time between the classroom, workshops and the workplace. Companies can assist by hosting site visits, giving talks and lectures and setting topics for projects, as well as keeping teachers and tutors up to speed with industry developments, and offering work experience placements.

The Diploma in Manufacturing and Product Design will be available to all school pupils in England by 2013 at three levels – foundation, higher and advanced. It is intended to open up a variety of progression routes to participating students, including employment, apprenticeships, Further and Higher Education.

All students taking the manufacturing diploma will study business and enterprise, product design and materials science, and production systems as core themes or ‘principal learning’. Additional and specialist learning options will allow students to choose from a range of specialist manufacturing qualifications, as well as GCSEs and A-levels which supplements their principal learning. This will be further complemented by work experience, a project, and assessment in functional skills in English, maths and ICT, as well as employability skills such as self-management, team working and reflective learning.