I am a design researcher from Berlin currently living in London where I am a PhD candidate in the department of Critical Writing in Art & Design at the Royal College of Art. In my thesis, I investigate the impact of the open-source-movement on design with a special focus on the methods of crowdsourcing.

In 2008, I obtained my diploma in Communication Design from the Berlin School of Arts Weissensee. In 2009, I initiated and organised the conference Volkssport Design at the Museum for Communication in Berlin. I have written for magazines such as eye, form, design report and bauhaus and I am the author of the award winning book Parallel Realitäten (Niggli, 2006) on the design of virtual worlds, co-author of the book Kritische Masse (form+zweck 2010) on amateurism in design, and editor of the book The Edge of Our Thinking (2012), a publication of selected research papers by the RCA. I am a frequent speaker at conferences, I have teaching experience on various levels from private tuition to design classes on Master’s level and I have worked as a tutor in design theory at different art schools in Germany. When I find the time, I sometimes work as a caricaturist.

I am a member of designjournalists.com, the Design Research Society and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Designtheorie und Forschung.

The best way to contact me is via email: mail(at)florianschmidt.co
I am not on Facebook, but on Twitter @floparallel.