NOT DESIGN SCHOOL will realize a society where designers who can create value through essence can thrive.

As part of the April Dream project, NOT DESIGN SCHOOL announced its vision to cultivate designers who can survive the AI era by focusing on 'upstream design' and 'thinking skills', rather than just creating aesthetics.
キャンペーンNQ 64/100出典:PR Times

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  • 📰 Published: April 2, 2026 at 01:58
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This school supports April Dream, a project intended to make April 1st a day to broadcast dreams. This press release represents the dream of 'NOT DESIGN SCHOOL'.

NOT DESIGN SCHOOL, which develops design education businesses, is a design school providing a 'second step aiming from junior designer to mid-level designer'. Rather than just teaching the techniques of creating designs, it provides a fully customized learning program as a place to foster the architectural and judgmental skills to explain 'why we are creating it'. We will break away from superficial design and realize a society where designers who can fundamentally create value thrive.

## The reality designers face in the AI era
Currently, with the evolution of AI, the very nature of design is about to change significantly. Much of the work that humans have spent time doing can now be replaced by AI. In other words, this is an era where designers who 'only create the look' will certainly be weeded out.

Amidst this, many junior designers are struggling with unstable work due to a 'lack of skills'. The field is overflowing with voices saying they graduated from school but lack confidence, they get rejected at the document screening stage even with a portfolio, or they went freelance but their rates aren't rising and they worry about next month's work.

However, what is truly demanded is not the ability to move one's hands, but the ability to think thoroughly about 'why we are creating it'. Environments where one can systematically learn this skill are not yet widespread.

In response to this situation, NOT DESIGN SCHOOL emphasizes cultivating designers who can explain 'why they create it', rather than simply nurturing people who can 'do design as a task'.

## Specific initiatives to date (HOW)
Based on the idea that '90% of design is determined by upstream architecture', NOT DESIGN SCHOOL emphasizes learning at the architectural stage. By repeatedly asking questions like 'Why this design?' and 'Why this color?', we thoroughly train the ability to verbalize one's own design philosophy.

To achieve this, we provide a fully customized 'Personalized Design Curriculum (starting every month)' that combines only the necessary learning according to each student's skill level, desired career, and objectives.

We design a dedicated curriculum based on pre-enrollment hearings, and by assigning expert mentors from each field, students efficiently build up only the necessary skills.