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SoFA Design Institute Partners with IE University to Expand Opportunities for Filipino Design Students
SoFA Design Institute has established itself as one of the Philippines’ leading centers for creative education. It is dedicated to equipping students with the skills, perspective, and confidence needed to succeed in design both locally and internationally. Last March 11, this vision was brought into sharper focus through the launch of SoFA’s academic partnership with IE University in Spain.
Leo Santos, Growth and Strategy Director at SoFA Design Institute, shares: “The partnership emerged from a shared recognition that design education must prepare students for genuine global practice, not just global aspiration.”
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What Does the SoFA Design Institute and IE University Partnership Offer Filipino Design Students?
This academic partnership serves three key functions: it provides students with frameworks and competencies that may not be available within a purely domestic curriculum, creates a network of students and faculty across countries, and measures SoFA against internationally recognized standards.
Through this partnership, students gain access to study opportunities abroad, such as the Summer School program. Students spend two to six weeks in Madrid taking specialized modules like Fashion Styling & Media, Digital Marketing, and Entrepreneurship. These are intensive programs that enable students to build portfolios alongside global peers.
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Other programs are already in development, such as the Bilateral Exchange program. This will enable SoFA students to spend a full semester at IE University. There, students will immerse themselves in IE’s business school ecosystem: from presenting creative decisions to securing funding for innovative projects.
For Santos, SoFA needs to cultivate these international partnerships “because isolation is the greatest risk to relevance.” He further explains, “Design doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it’s shaped by markets, technologies, cultural movements, and regulatory frameworks that increasingly operate across borders. A designer trained exclusively within one educational system, one market context, one set of industry norms will struggle when those boundaries inevitably dissolve.”
Equalizing International Design Education
This partnership is vital because it helps students develop a broader design perspective and understand their place within the wider creative ecosystem. By expanding their reference points beyond Philippine design, they can recognize the cultural intelligence they bring as Filipino designers.
Santos states: “It’s only through comparison, through seeing how Spanish designers leverage heritage, how Scandinavian designers approach sustainability, how Japanese designers think about materiality, that our students can identify what’s unique about the Philippine design perspective and how to translate that into competitive advantage.”
Beyond a global perspective, it is also important for SoFA to establish a more equitable approach to design education. International design education has long been seen as a luxury accessible only to students from wealthy families who can afford to attend universities in Europe or North America.
“A two-week summer program in Madrid is still a significant investment, but it’s achievable for a much broader range of students than a four-year degree abroad. We’re trying to make global exposure a standard part of design education at SoFA, not a privilege reserved for a few,” Santos shares.
Promoting the Creative Spirit and Talent of the Philippines
“Philippine design education is at an interesting inflection point,” Santos notes. The country has deep craft traditions, strong studio culture, and designers who understand how to create with limited resources. SoFA students are also creative and resourceful. However, the design education infrastructure was not originally built to support the realities of today’s creative industries.
Design education in the country has historically positioned Filipino designers primarily as executors for international markets rather than leaders who help define them. A shift has occurred in recent years, where the new generation of designers sees Filipinos as leaders of innovation. SoFa is adapting to meet these changes.
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Santos shares the partnership’s vision: “We want to challenge the assumption that Philippine design education is inherently derivative—that innovation happens elsewhere, and we simply adapt it to local conditions. That’s a colonial hangover, and it’s empirically false. Filipino designers are already doing world-class work; the question is whether our educational infrastructure supports that or constrains it.”
Explore SoFA and IE University’s Academic Partnership
The academic partnership between SoFA and IE University has a straightforward mission: to position SoFA students to compete and lead in international creative industries, not just participate in them.
For more information on this partnership and the SoFA Design Institute, visit sofa.edu.ph/, and follow the college’s Facebook and Instagram pages.
Article header photographed by Ed Simon.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
The SoFA Design Institute is located on the 2nd Level, Proscenium Retail Row, Rockwell Center, Makati City, Metro Manila, Philippines.
IE University has universities located in Madrid (E Tower, Paseo de la Castellana, Madrid, Spain) and Segovia (C. Cardenal Zúñiga, 12, 40003 Segovia, Spain)
Aspiring SoFA students can visit SoFA’s website to view its admission process.
Key Contacts:
Admissions Email: [email protected]
Registrar Email: [email protected]
Front Desk Email: [email protected]
Mobile Numbers: +63 917 501 8136 / +63 917 539 7574 / +63 917 595 9428
Telephone: +63 02-8244-1073
Finance/Cashier: [email protected]
Marketing: [email protected]
Human Resources: [email protected]
SoFA currently offers three college programs: BA Fashion Design & Marketing, BS Interior Design, and BS Interior Design Professional.
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