Prof. Ben Santo

Design Principles and Project Work

Design and pedagogy, design as an interdisciplinary field, communication design

Career history

Ben Santo studied communication design at the university of applied sciences in Dortmund and at Utah Valley University in the USA. He worked as a designer for various agencies on accounts such as Citroën, Thalia, Persil, Schwarzkopf, Kia, Hyundai, BMW, Coca-Cola, Bosch and Bayer-Schering. Through his design studio, bensanto.com, he has worked with clients such as Southpole, the Madeira Promotion Bureau, Literaturbüro Ruhr, Koch-Chemie, Deilmann-Haniel Mining Systems, the City of Cologne, the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and DDB Germany.

As a designer and consultant, he continues to work on cultural and business projects. Projects in which he has been involved have won design awards such as the Good Design Award in Chicago, the Red Dot Award and the ADC Award in Germany.

Ever since completing his diploma in ‘Learning to Design’, he has been exploring the teaching of design fundamentals for several years. He held a number of lecturing posts before being appointed Professor of Design Fundamentals and Project Work at the Department of Design in 2012. A particular focus of his teaching is a didactic, interdisciplinary approach to design education that can serve as a starting point for various specialist design disciplines. Every design medium and design problem requires both specific abilities and cross-disciplinary competences. In his work, he seeks to create learning situations within study projects in which students develop and integrate theoretical and practical design abilities.