Strate College: Design is more a question of individuals than of matter

"The work of designers must participate to the innovation process," explains Jean-Paul Cournillou, noting that design does not only limits itself to creating "nice looking" objects but mostly of "placing the use and the user at the heart of the design process"

Individuals more than the matter

In fact, it is more life than the matter itself that is at the heart of the designer’s creative process. "The core question is: what is happening between the human being and the object?" adds Cornillou.

The Strate College students therefore learn to develop scenarios of use incorporating all stages of the interaction of a product with a user: from the moment of the discovery of the object to its end of life, including its purchasing, its unwrapping, the entering into contact with the product, and of course its use.

This implies the cross-cutting of courses. “Even if the Packaging and Retail fields require learning specific knowledge, they are also complementary and call for common skills."

Courses at the Strate Collège therefore include two core years of training and three years of specific training depending of the orientation chosen by students. "Even if the designer must be able to address different activities," stresses Cournillou.

Transversality

Indeed, creating products that perfectly answer uses or life styles is not enough; products also have to be adopted by a final user who is permanently sought-after. Left to his own devices, to the shelf and retail spaces, the consumer must be convinced of the quality of the products he is offered, by the sole strength of the graphic speech, by their packaging shape uniqueness, by their responsible approach and by the quality of their point of sale staging.

In this regard, the Strate Collège’s Packaging Branding & Retail department trains tomorrow’s point of sale designers. While integrating of course, constraints of cost, feasibility and industrialization.

Eco-design

If the race for innovation and the fierce competition at the point of sale have greatly contributed to the awareness of the importance of design among marketers and to a better understanding of its role, environmental issues have also played a part in the setting up of key scenarios of use.

According to Isabelle Chasseriault, as regards this subject, the role of the designer overlaps several parts: the matter and its implementation on the one hand, and designing the object on the other. The choice of the necessary materials (recycled or recyclable materials, for example) is a first step, but the designer’s role cannot be limited to this only. He must also integrate a multitude of options in the use of the object to enter into an ecological approach: help to reduce the quantities of product used, promote the packaging’s effective recyclability, etc... "In an eco-design approach, the designer will optimize the scenarios by taking account of both the choice of materials, transport costs, terms of use and the end of life," she details.

Of course neither the designer nor the manufacturer can do everything. "The difficulty of an ecological design approach is that it can be reduced to nil by the consumer’s behaviour. That is why designers are tempted to introduce some pedagogy or even some fun in their scenarios of use".

Chasseriault provided her help to the seventeen 3rd grade students of the Strate College who participated to the workshop initiated by the BeautyFULL Club on the theme "How to create distinctive signature packaging to reveal the sustainable positioning of a cosmetic brand/beauty sector”. In this context, the goal was not only to design products taking part to a sustainable approach, but also to make sure that it would be visible. "And it is obviously a very tricky issue," explains Chasseriault." Within the week’s time we had been granted, there was no place for providing answers, but more of presenting areas of work on."

Markers or signs immediately associating the product to a sustainable approach may concern both, packaging, the point of sale, the visual identity or the interactivity. Their importance is paramount since, obviously, they can significantly impact sales. Designers are not finished being called upon!