Four years after the launch of the Packaging department, how has the pedagogy of the department evolved?

Considering the students’ works, we can conclude that the third year enables the students to get acquainted with the various components of the packaging approach, and in fourth year, with the partnerships, they can put into practice this knowledge. This leads to different objectives: the third year aims at developing creativity and concept-making, so that in fourth year, the students can finally conceive more concrete and semi-professional projects.

What are the eventual ambitions for this curriculum?

My first concern is to settle the credibility and the legitimacy of the curriculum. Our ambition is therefore to simply build a similar notoriety to this of the transportation design department. The packaging department is only four years old. It has just entered into « adolescence». It constantly needs to evolve in terms of relevance and quality, and to consolidate its exterior image.

How does the training need to evolve?

I am convinced that packaging has a large range of enforcement, but in order for the training to evolve, it will have to keep wondering about the evolution of the profession of the packaging designer. This is why our reflections at school lead us to settle down tomorrow’s references.

However, the fundamentals remain branding, marketing, package and materials, concept and creative methodology.

The content’s added values: mainly sustainable development, with its environmental constraints.

There only remains to develop the activities derived from Packaging, such as point-of-sale promotion or stage design.

For the moment then, what profile do the students offer on the work market?

I want them to be able to apply as junior artistic managers, according to today’s professional terminology. They can be entitled as such, as they are able to comprehend all the components of the packaging approach that our training has brought them. However, there are still industrial designers who are specialised in packaging design. Contrary to what they used to be, they are no longer mere graphic designers, they combine to their usual skills, some in packaging and materials, acquired as industrial designers.

Is there a special profile as packaging designer?

Most importantly, they are above all designers: therefore curiosity, the ability to listen to their time, to meet its needs with a prospective view on uses, products and tendencies are as many qualities expected from a packaging designer. They are also expected to be quite polyvalent, in terms of knowledge and skills, as they are to deal with problems of packages, images (products, brands) and of society. They above all need to have one important quality: enthusiasm.