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 world-renowned arts and design college Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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