BTK is a private university of art and design, located in the center of Berlin, one of Europe‘s most vibrant cities and a global center for design, culture and the arts.

BTK offers cutting-edge facilities and a highly qualified, dedicated teaching staff with extensive contacts to the creative industries. 

BTK is a member of Laureate International Universities, a leading international network of quality, innovative institutions of higher education.

A changing professional landscape

The rapid emergence of digital media, in last ten years, has brought about a steady transition in the profession of communication design. Earlier ‘graphic artists’ were mainly concerned with craft, style, looks and the delivery of unified messages to mass audiences. However, today‘s educated consumers increasingly demand complex, multi-layered, highly interactive and personally involving brand experiences with products and services that are tailored to individual requirements and tastes.

As a consequence, young professionals in the creative industries need to broaden their competencies to reach beyond the domain of a traditional design education without compromising the foundations that allow them to develop and maintain a creative vision in the first place.

Combining art, design and technology – traditional and new

At BTK, we consider this shift evolutionary rather than a rupturing. While digital media will generate entirely new professional fields and pose new design challenges, it is still based on the fundamental ingredients of communication: language, type, text, color, images, sounds, motion and their respective (re)combination and application.

Thus, the curriculum at BTK is designed to create a unique and synergistic blend of ‘old’  and ‘new’ media. We currently offer BA programs in Motion Design, Interaction Design, Communication Design and Photography. During the first two semesters, all programs are structured around the same foundation-level classes in order to provide students with a common artistic and technical toolbox which forms the basis for further creative development.

From the third semester onward, students focus on a career track of their choosing. In four semesters of specialization, they nurture their conceptual, intellectual and problem-solving skills in compact seminar groups with close, individualized support from our instructors.

Project-based learning modules combine theory and practice, art and economics, media technology and management with a special focus on the requirements of respective disciplines. The classroom curriculum is complemented by a mandatory internship in the fifth semester which familiarizes students, early on, with the conditions of their future professional environments.

The goal of the program is to educate individuals who seek to innovate in the fields of visual arts and new communication technologies and who strive to extend the boundaries of their own profession beyond the classic company-customer relationship. Graduates contribute to our contemporary cultural and social landscape and push the boundaries of communication as a whole.