Welcome to BMW Group + QUT Design Academy blogs: A New Design Horizon
Welcome to the BMW Group + QUT Design Academy online blog. We are very excited to be launching this as a channel to feature some of the interesting, unique and behind-the-scenes stories that inspire the academy team, our interns and BMW Group colleagues and friends. The purpose is to give you an insight into our world and reveal what motivates our passion - so as to connect in a more meaningful way.
As the Founder + Lead of the BMW Group + QUT Design Academy I would like to say how proud and excited I am to lead such an exclusive partnership between BMW Group and Queensland University of Technology’s Industrial Design department. The partnership has been many years in the making - and earlier this year we reached a significant milestone with the launch of the academy at QUT in Brisbane. Formally, the academy is a design hub founded on three pillars (we call Programs) including Internships, Research and Special Projects. The vision is to foster design excellence, explore knowledge horizons and advance cutting-edge technologies across emerging technologies including virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and robotics among others. In short, we do some seriously cool work with one the world’s best companies - and help catapult design careers at the same time. You can learn all about this, and more, on our website and by registering for our newsletter where you will read all the latest news, events and activities of the academy.
Beyond this the academy will host a variety of external outreach activities throughout the year. These will include Huddles that will bring specialists from various industries together to discuss cutting-edge skills, techniques, projects, etc. We will also host Debriefs by inviting research labs, special programs and other initiatives from around Brisbane to learn about what we do and to explore collaborations. Alongside this we will arrange Sessions where we will open our doors to school groups as well as current and prospective QUT students to showcase some of the exciting projects we are working on with BMW Group and the amazing career that is Design.
We aspire for the blogs to be a space for you to get to know about our initiatives, our work and what we do here at the BMW Group + QUT Design Academy in a more casual and exciting format. In the next two blog posts you will hear from our super talented Design Associates, Jordan and Michael, as they talk about their experience in Germany at BMW Group and reveal what drives them as young emerging designers. In the meantime make sure you check out our website and follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram!
All the best,
Rafael Gomez
Founder + Lead of BMW Group + QUT Design Academy