Meet Design for People alumnus Anna Kersig
Where do you work at the moment? What is your role and what are your tasks?
I work as a Research Assistant / Social Designer at Design School Kolding. I teach, research, manage and create - a mixture of a lot of roles and tasks. My projects range from developing workshops for and with high school students to creating webpages with material libraries to preserve European craftmanship for future generations. Right now, I am part of the management and creative staff of an Interreg project that works on connecting attractions across the Danish-German border.
What role has the Design for People Master’s programme played in getting you where you are today?
The study line opened my eyes to the value of designing with people. My education until then had focused mainly on my own experience when developing an idea. Design for People made me question my whole Design Process, and it led me towards a much more sustainable and valuable way of creating. Every project I am working on now involves people in one form or the other, so the skills, methods, and processes that I practiced during my master studies on how to engage, motivate and create together with people, I make use of everyday.
What is an important memory from Design School Kolding?
I do like to remember the times with my co-creators - my fellow students. This includes not only the Design for People students but rather our whole year. I remember we had a truly open, tolerant, and fun 2 years with a lot of support for each other. A lot of my good memories have to do with them and how we helped each other along the way - again, something I hadn’t experienced in my education before.
Do you have any advice to give to someone undertaking this educational path?
If you are more of a design generalist like me, I would encourage you to use those two years to also test the different roles you as a designer can have. It is a focus in the courses as well but most important about this is your own perception of those roles. How do you like managing a team? How do you like creating the graphics? How do you like letting someone else to call the shots? Use the experiences and projects to reflect on what brings you joy and what doesn’t and put yourself in those different roles on purpose, whilst being brutally honest to yourself. With the exciting amount of different design roles out there, this might help you find your first focus on what you’d like to proceed on working with during and after your studies.
