Leads its Students to Explore Asia’s Contemporary Design City - Singapore

AOD continues its winning education model that brings in first-hand international exposure, which helps in setting its graduates apart as the most-in-demanded design professionals in Sri Lanka

One of the most essential components in educating young designers is exposing them to a wide breadth of experiences that enrich them. Parallel to practising local industry standards and studying our own creative heritage, experiencing other cultures, ideas and their advances in design and technology plays a critical role in producing a well-rounded and balanced design professional. This is the philosophy that AOD incorporates into its education, which has earned its graduates an impressive reputation for being designers with an updated and balanced worldview. AOD, the leading name for international design in Sri Lanka, also offers the only British design university experience in the country, driven by a powerful partnership with the UK’s Northumbria University. As part of this internationally accepted education model, AOD students were recently guided to explore Asia’s leading design hub Singapore. This group of over fifty students was led by two experienced international designers from AOD’s faculty who guided the students through the most contemporaryinnovation in fashion, interior architecture and graphic design in Asia.

Singapore, which is known for its unbelievably sophisticated architectural design and fashion culture, gave AOD students new inspiration on using modern technology for environmental and social sustainability through design. Some of the highlights of their visit to Singapore included the National Design Centre, the Red dot Design Museum, Gardens by the Bay, Hassel Design Studio and The National Gallery Museum. The students also got the opportunity to visit the world IFFS International Furniture Fair which brings together the biggest furniture design and retail names from all over the world. In addition, they also got to experience some of the world’s most beloved retail brands such as IKEA, Louis Poulsen, W. Atelier - Fritz Hansen to understand the dominant market trends in interior and fashion design.

One of the senior faculty members who guided the students on this study tour was AOD principal Karen MacLeod. As a designer herself, MacLeod found the tour incredibly inspiring and as an educator, she commented on how this experience has helped the students to emerge crea- tively mature, internationally rounded and more inspired than ever before; “During international studytours I always observe how the students evolve by leaps and bounds because they are charged with new inspiration and are also able to gain a deeper understanding of how modernity can evolve from heritage and culture by actually seeing it in reality than on a digital screen. Many think that just seeing images online and reading about it is sufficient for designers to learn about international design – as much as this is better than being completely unaware of global trends, it is really not the same thing as being present in a global design hub and being surrounded by it in every sense- this is what a true experience is. And this is exactly the unique education experience that AOD sets out to deliver.”

This kind of well rounded education that allows students to form rich experiences, gain a real understanding of how global design cultures work and observe creativity in the context of changing face of tech and scientific discovery etc. is what makes the AOD graduates stand out among the rest. This incredibly important difference that marks the AOD design graduate has now been recognised by the businsses and industries in Sri Lanka, earning these young designers wide respect and demand. This in turn, has positioned AOD as the design educator most trusted by local industries, allowing he institute to maintain an impressive record of 100% employment over the past seven years. To find out more about AOD

study tours overseas, the Northumbria UK design degrees at

AOD or to discover more about design careers in Sri Lanka, reach AOD on 0775980141, 0115867772, e mail info@aod.lk, walk in between 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday to AOD, 29, Lauries Road, Colombo 4

or visit www.aod.lk