Courses.

Photo & Information: Courtesy of the University of the Arts London

Course Description

Design for Sustainability is a course for designers and people who work with design, and offers a hands-on introduction to integrating sustainability within the design process. It is multi-disciplinary, and so is applicable to all design disciplines (fashion, product, service, business model, architecture, UX, strategy, etc.).

This four-week course will introduce practical ideas, concepts, and processes through which designers can create more sustainable outcomes at all levels. Design for Sustainability takes you through the basic tools of designing for sustainability: Systems mapping, design thinking for sustainability, circular economy and an understanding of impacts. All aimed at defining and integrating sustainability in your work and you taking ownership of “sustainability”.

You will learn through a combination of discussions, short lectures, inspirational case studies, introduction to tools, and practical application of tools through hands-on assignment briefs.

Who is Design for Sustainability Online Short Course for?

This is a course for designers and people who work with design, seeking an introduction and experience in working with sustainability in the design process. Design for Sustainability is suitable both for experienced professionals and for recent graduates wanting to make the sustainability agenda their own, as well as for both sustainability novices and sustainability passionistas, who have already taken the first couple of steps.

Level: All levels welcome

Course Outcomes

By the end of the course you will:

• Gain an overview of the main drivers of sustainability, internationally and cross-sectoral

• Know the main strategies for sustainability

• Explore the sustainability potential in your work

• Establish fluency in the jargon jungle

• Understand the sustainable impact in your own value chain

• Have insight into designing processes for sustainability

• Understand the tools to advocate sustainable design and create better or more sustainable designs yourself

• Work on a live project of your choosing, designing for sustainability

• Present your design for sustainability to the group and receive tutor feedback

Photo & Information: Courtesy of the Fashion Institute of Technology

Course Description

This program gives design entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, and access to resources they need to build a viable business based on sustainable design practices. A total of 10 courses (8 required and 2 personal choice) is needed to complete this certificate.

Part I: Required Courses

SUS 001   Introduction to Sustainability
SUS 002   The Sustainable Organization
SUS 003   Sustainable Marketing (on-campus/ remote only)
SUS 004   Sustainable Design Thinking (on-campus/ remote only)
SUS 005   Sustainable Material Sourcing
SUS 006   Navigating Sustainable Manufacturing (on-campus/ remote only)
SUS 007   Circular Product Lifecycle
SUS 200 The Purpose Driven Company

Part II: Personal Choice Courses

(choose at least 2)
SUS 012   Ethical Fashion I
SUS 013   Ethical Fashion II
SUS 014   Natural Dyeing (on-campus only)
SUS 016   Clothing Reconstruction (on-campus only)
SUS 017   Social Responsibility and the Apparel Industry
SUS 018   Hand Sewing: Traditional Sashiko Mending
SUS 019   Repurposed and Upcycled Design
SUS 022   Collaborative Design With Artisans
SUS 024   Vintage: The First Sustainable Fashion Business(on-campus/ remote only)
SUS 026   Sustainable Fashion Through History
SUS 027   Current Events and Innovations in Sustainable Fashion

Photo & Information: Courtesy of the University of the Arts London

Course Description

This course is an introduction for fashion marketing professionals and strategists as well as fashion sustainability activists to the increasingly important trend towards fashion sustainability. The course covers promotion opportunities, the changing consumer, and risks and issues through the value chain.

During the course you will explore critical approaches to fashion marketing and communications from a sustainability perspective and address the question of whether marketing is hindering or helping tackle the sustainability challenges faced by the industry. This understanding will help you develop more sophisticated sustainability strategies.

Who is Promoting Sustainability for Fashion Online Short Course for?

This course will be invaluable to individuals seeking a comprehensive understanding of sustainability issues, how they are affecting the consumer, and, as a result, the fashion industry. This course will best suit individuals already active in the fashion industry, and some overall knowledge of the industry will be useful to participate fully in the course.

Course Outcomes

By the end of this course you will:

• Gain a developed understanding of the issue of sustainability in relation to the fashion industry

• Explore if sustainability can create a a competitive advantage for a brand

• Investigate how sustainability issues are being communicated to the public

• Understand consumer attitudes towards sustainability and how this can impact a fashion brand

• Receive tutor feedback on your weekly assignments

Photo & Information: Courtesy of Parsons School of Design

Introduction

Sustainability is the way of the future for fashion. The sustainability movement allows to reimagine their work so that it has a positive impact on people and the planet. This certificate program takes an open, inclusive, and empowering approach to sustainability, enabling learners — irrespective of experience — to overcome barriers to change and shape fashion careers in alignment with their personal and professional values.

Courses 

Putting Sustainability into Practice:

This course is geared to people working in the fashion industry at any level.  In the course, you can use your business, project, or idea as a case study or “tester” to contribute to driving change in the fashion industry.

New Roles for Fashion Designers

This course enables you to go beyond the designated lines of operation for fashion designers, to forge your own path, connecting the whole system.

Slow and Regenerative Fashion

In this course, we consider principles of regenerative agriculture and regenerative economics, permaculture, circular thinking, transition design, systems thinking, localism/relocalization, biomimicry, and slow fashion to add a new dimension to fashion, allowing for a reconsideration of our relationship with the earth and its limited resources.

Sustainable Wardrobe Practices

This course is designed to foster the use of fashion in our everyday lives. It asks: Can fashion designers formalize and scale systems and services to improve the human-product relationship and ensure ongoing satisfaction, enjoyment, and well-being for the user?

Who Should Enroll

• Anyone with an interest in the fashion industry or working in the fashion industry

• Creative individuals who want to understand how to incorporate sustainability into their own work

• Professionals from the fashion industry who are seeking to make their systems sustainable

What You’ll Gain

• An understanding of the broader sustainability movement and of the need for sustainability in fashion

• The ability to develop and apply your own values-based framework for creating sustainable fashion

• The opportunity to employ sustainable design strategies across the value chain in a project

• An understanding of the need to transform the role of the fashion designer to promote sustainability

• The opportunity to share your vision of sustainability with a class through presentation of designs and to receive feedback and critique

How You’ll Learn

• Engaging video lectures

• Direct interaction with faculty practitioners at the top of their field

• Online collaboration and video conferencing

• Project-based learning focused on developing real-world skills and portfolio assets

Photo & Information: Courtesy of the Fashion Institute of Technology

Course Description

Sustainability goals are complicated and difficult to achieve. Goals include pivoting to circularity, implementing social fairness and ensuring self-sustaining environments. What's needed is an emotional anchor with a unique narrative that engages people's passions—customers, employees, and investors—in a singular direction. What's needed is for sustainability initiatives to be branded—a brand identity, brand symbols, brand persona, brand voice, brand tone, brand language, and brand strategy. Without these, it is almost impossible to create a community of brand loyalists who can unite in a common objective.

This 6-week certificate course provides a deep dive into how branding is serving the purposeful economy and what else can be done to move the needle in today's marketplace. It does so by introducing neurologically based archetypes the "caregiver" and the "creator" and how successful sustainable brands have captured and communicated the sustainability values implicit in these archetypes.

What You Will Learn

• Why branding is needed for CSR/ESG and circular economy (CE) success

• How to develop your own brand focused sustainability strategy

• How branding sustainability increases brand value and market caps

• How branded supply chains increase relevancy and ROI's for stakeholders

• How to brand sustainability values for CRM and achieve customer loyalty

• How to measure a brands contribution to CSR/ESG and CE initiatives

Why FIT?

• Program developed and taught by professional brand experts

• Earn a certificate from FIT/SUNY, a world renowned college of art and design, business and technology

Course Outline

Module I: The Challenges and Necessity of Branding CSR/ESG and CE Objectives

Module II: Branding Corporations For The Purposeful Economy

Module III: Re-Branding Capitalism: Purposeful Economics and Reshaping Finance

Module IV: Branding Supply Chains: Brand Values Must Define Supply Chains

Module V: Branding Products, Textiles, and Certification/Sustainability Initiatives

Module VI: Using Branded Sustainability Strategies to Increase CRM Outcomes

Module VII: Sustainability Branding: Case Studies of Failures and Successes

Photo & Information: Courtesy of the University of the Arts London

Course Description

This course will give you an overview of the considerations to be made in the current climate for professionals and fashion start ups alike. Customers expect increasing levels of transparency and sustainability from their fashion brands, where is your thinking and how can you progress? This includes knowledge of the issues faced by our industry and the planet, and how to tackle them.

Who should take this course?

People working in fashion or starting up new brands.