Useful School pushes the boundaries of design education

Global – Designed specifically for people of colour, Useful School is a new pay-what-you-can online design curriculum championing a next-gen approach to education.

Launched in response to the sustained under-representation of people of colour in the design sector, the school follows a curriculum that is built from the ground up to focus on equity. As its founder Ritesh Gupta explains: ‘We’re divesting – we have classes centring people of colour the whole way through, from constraining certain projects to utilise fonts by people of colour to helping students rally around answering questions that people of colour face at work.'

Kicking off with two classes based around product design, Useful School intends to help students build a portfolio and hone their personal style, while ensuring it's accessible to all. To do this, it operates under a pay-what-you-can model.

With everything from its syllabus to branding diverging from traditional academia, Useful School is an inspiring example of the emerging education frameworks we identified in Modern (Un)learning, a trend that makes up the Reformation Generation.