In front of eyes , yet unseen for years : Designing changing lives since forever

As an eighteen year old , look around you . The entrance of your door has lock , you use when you leave the house. You enter and sit on a couch . You pic up the remote and start a TV. The serials you watch are all decked up as the character demands. The news anchors in formals , the sport channel highlighting different updates simultaneously while the players in definite uniforms , the cartoons all different & oh god ! If are watching a Bollywood movie or a TV-soap a large plethora of colours and makeup,clicking away a tab on watsapp , the other on an app you recently downloaded . And there comes ad , super drool-worthy daily milk ad, the one that makes you crave for one!

What has all this got to do with designing ? You might be wondering. Let's take a little rewind. A door's essential and primary purpose is to provide security , by controlling access to the doorway (portal),incorporating locking mechanisms to ensure that only some people can open them .History of mechanical locks started over 6 thousand years ago in Ancient Egypt which also records earliest history of doors , where locksmith first managed to create simple but effective pin tumbler lock that was made entirely from wood. While thousands on different kinds of doors have already been developed since years , a lot more are developed each year thanks to the guidance of Interior Designers & the really enthusiastic furniture designers. In 2019 , Danish architecture firm BIG , has branched into Smart Home products with "Friday Lock" which combines a minimal form and enhanced security features. Controlled via smartphone, the Friday Smart Lock can automatically unlock a door when it senses the resident approaching, lock it as they leave, or allow them to remotely control who has access to the property. These can be developed via product designer & the app via the integration of UI & UX.

"Friday Lock" is controlled via smartphone, the Friday Smart Lock can automatically unlock a door when it senses the resident approaching, lock it as they leave.

If you were to look up “ergonomic” in the dictionary, you’d be given the following definition: Designed to minimize physical effort and discomfort and hence maximize efficiency. While you binge watch your serials/ TV , you are more likely to be in the most comfortable sitting condition. You might look around your home and find out different kinds of chairs solving different purposes ; the chair along with the dining table would be different that the one you sit on while you working on your computer. Ergonomics is a science, which involves looking at how objects can be 'designed' and/or arranged to best compliment easy and safe human interaction.

Have you ever closely looked at any remote? Which is one button that you , for sure , without looking can achieve results ? The 'red' coloured Power Button . The Von Restorff effect (also known as the isolation effect) predicts that when multiple similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered! While you get to know via colour psychology that the colour red creates alertness .

Due to “psychology of color” , marketers are able to use the to create more persuasive logos and branding materials.

A crucial element all design specializations bases itself in the foundation years. In an app , you would notice something similar , a differently , more brighter coloured button is the main reason why all call-to-actions (CTAs) look different from the rest of the action buttons on a site or application.Key secret every UX or User Experience Designer knows about you (a customer)!The main purpose is to create an unobtrusive and understandable product, giving the opportunity to the potential user to get easily familiarized with it. Therefore the final product is expected to have a great appeal to various target groups including elders, people with disabilities or even people with a little experience in using electronic devices.

While different 'unifoms' are worn by people of different professions , the only conclusion a layman derives about fashion is that these characters , whether the Saas- bahu soap leads & maids , sportpersons or news anchors are presented so because of the Image consultants or stylists , the actual story goes way beyond what we perceive fashion in the most amateur way.While a costume designer desiced to dress a character a particular way . Broadly the categorized , these come under womenswear , menswear , casualwear , Smartcasual ,Formalwear , Sportwear , Uniforms etc. The people involved in designing the structure , colour , pattern , print , look and the fabric to be used in the making constitute a segment of the fashion industry while each of the sectors employs lakh of people across India and the more throughout the world.

A sector that involves understanding of client psychology (where the client can be Victoria Secret as buyer to a common man looking for a kind of cloth for a definite occasion their ethnicity , purchasing power and crucial details ) ,using different raw materials &producing apparel , goods , jewelry , home decor / lifestyle products for high -end customers to mass market that employs , involves specializations like Textile Design , Fahsion Design , Knitwear Design , JewelryDesign , Leather Design , Accessories Design and likes. An industry that involves staggering 60 million people indirectly alone in India , is Indian Textile Design which is said to have crossed 223 Billion $ Industry by 2023.

Yes ! Do remember about different logo's printed on T-shirts of players belonging to different teams , the embroidered logo on pockets of anchors , the beautiful etching of logos on different items made up of wood, leather and metal. That's another vertical to design industry as a whole , which contributes to beautifying the design .

As we go through the logo etched on the bar of the chocolate , the Iconic packaging would have caught your eyes. The company was founded in the 1890's &with its popularity beginning to soar, Dairy Milk moved to using a purple and gold wrapper—the same style that would stick with the brand permanently.With their recipe perfected, Cadbury quickly became the brand leader in the United Kingdom. Leaving the chocolate unchanged, they focused on improving and updating their Dairy Milk packaging to reflect the changing times. Moving from just a paper wrapper in the 20s, they introduced a layer of silver foil in the 30s, eventually graduating through the 60s and 70s to a layer of eye-catching gold foil. Who else would you think designs all the packaging of all the things in the world , whether or not from the fashion world! You just name it .. Samsung TV, Nord Phone , Cutlery's boxes & all the covers of things you purchase online & offline.

The Iconic Cadbury dairy milk packaging , designed by a Packaging Designer.

Oh and we just forgot to mention , the places you sell are major burgeoning sectors for all the designers in the world !

IMPORTANCE OF DESIGN EDUCATION

By 2021, India is expected to generate $100 billion online retail revenue, out of which $35 billion will be through fashion E-commerce. Apparel online sales are set to grow 4 times in coming years.” Online retail is currently one of the biggest absorbers of NIFT/Design grads with a promise of a fine career ahead.

Think of a sector and see if a design graduate is not contributing to the sector. From working with grassroot level of artisans & weavers to extravagant HCL , Adobe , Adidas ,Ashok Leyland, Cognizant , D decor ,ebay ,Future Group, Nykka , TATA , Caratlane , JJ Vallaya , Sabyasachi mUkherjee , Lollypop Design Studio , BATA , Zara , Band Baja Baarat , Vogue , Van Huesen , Myntraa, ITC ; you name it ! While an aspirant is just looking at the extravagant campus and the 'happily ever after' life after being enrolled , it would be an utterly smart move to know where you are putting your first foot forward that would customize the 3/4th of your life !

Often Designing is inappropriately used as a synonym for Fashion design , wherein ' Fashion ' is a specific specialization under the umbrella of design . Majorly rooting it's significance on the basis of raw materials & / or the final product created , there are various courses for anyone looking forward to take an educational qualification / learn the nuances of designing with. A study based on different kinds , properties , handling & techniques of fabric is called Textile. While constructing a garment out of a fabric is what , in simplest terms Fashion Designing is all about. Likewise Ceramic Design , Knitwear Design , Glass Design , Leather Desighn , Jewelry design etc , as the name suggests are studies based on the handling of respective raw materials to make different products. Another segment of Designing deals with service sector.

Communication Design , Packaging Design , Graphic Design , App Design , UX /UI are all service based industry core segments. And then there are those courses which seem pretty new , but started since the earliest setup was made in India around 1966 - Product Design & the Industrial Design which infuses designing with technology to develop various problem solving products that helps survival of daily lives of community , bringing updation in agricultural & industrial growth.

Product Design was incorporated as course back in 1966 .

Sadly Designing often masks itself with an imposter syndrome in students who are creative but do not draw well. It is often considered that you draw / sketch well if you are wishing to be a designer or enter into a premier design institute. While it's and important criteria , it's not the only criteria for one to be a designer. The recent years have shown a gradual drift from the ever loved - Engineer or Doctor dilemma for Std. XII students. While entering into a 'different' type of study that provided break from a 15yrs extensive study & mugging up technique , enrolling into an art school is said to be a breather for many. Awareness & more evidently the glamour associated with fashion has lured thousands of students each year into the fashion & Design Industry. It becomes important to know what is it that you are vouching your future for!

Industries ranging from making of a yarn to developing 7million clothing items , a company with 300 stores across the globe , a startup with exclusive design service , Magazines binding different worlds in one thread & freelancers who can illustrate , sew , make a garment , make a 3D design of an automobile to a model wearing a dress , a 3-D clone of a jewelry you drool over on e-commerce sites , the newbie NFT's on the way , Design industry is ever evolving and spreading across the world in million forms and companies employing many.

What's important as a Design enthusiast is to to chose WELL among the large plethora of design Specifications colleges are providing each passing year. Do the specializations have a good scope ? Is the employment rate good ? Can that specific study help enhance your exposure? Can they add value to your journey ? Do you as a person are attached to what you are taking up next ? Guess it's time to ask the right questions!

THE ORIGIN OF DESIGN EDUCATION

The Rhode Island School of Design was founded in 1877. But, it was not until the Carnegie Institute of Technology opened its design program in 1934 that historians began to recognize design as a profession.

Bauhaus, a German art school founded by German architect Gropius after World War I, is now a hundred years old.The devastation of World War I resulted in a rethinking of art and architecture in Germany and led to the first concrete foundations of modern design. In the midst of the People who fled Nazi Germany to other parts of the world, particularly Bauhaus artists, took the art with them and established it in cities around the world where they sought refuge.

Bauhus resisting the Nazis

Among them was Walter Gropius , who years later founded the Bauhaus school in Weimar in 1919 after becoming the he Chair of the Department in 1938. As per the Ulm model , the students were taught in cross-disciplinary subjects, including art, architecture and crafts. The influence of Bauhaus to modern architecture in India or the'The First Generation of Modernist Architecture' was well known till around 1940's. In 1913, Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore had set up Visva-Bharati University – a liberal arts school in Santiniketan, Calcutta, with the prize money from his Nobel Prize in Literature where an Austrian art historian Stella Kramrisch,the then-educator at Shantiniketan , invited the Bauhaus to send some representative paintings and graphics for a joint exhibition with leading Indian artists from the Bengal School.The exhibition featured over 250 works by Bauhaus teachers and students.By the 1960’s, India’s first industrial design institution was being established in Ahmedabad.

By 1947, newly independent India had only about 300 trained architects in a population of what was then 330 million, thanks to the flagbearers, the only training institute for aspiring architects Indian Institute of Architects in Bombay which was set up in 1920’s, While JJ School of Bombay preceded the norm.National Institute of Design (NID), IIT Bombay and CEPT were amongst the several specialist institutions being created by free India to ensure that its youth were at the frontiers of knowledge.NID was amongst the first to adopt the teaching principles of the Bauhaus through the Ulm Model which focussed on approach of integrating arts, crafts and technology through a focus on multi-disciplinary and humanistic education.National Institute of Design ,an autonomous body under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Government of India has been declared an Institute of National Importance by virtue of the National Institute of Design Act, 2014 .It was located first in capital Delhi before being moved to Ahmedabad to be away from political interference.

NID was deliberately is placed under the Ministry of Industry and Commerce because design was seen as an essential service to the industrial development of India. Kumar Vyas started the Product Design Program at NID in 1966.

Industrial Design Center ;which works on infusing tech with design elements , was set up in 1969 by the Government of India under the auspices of IIT Bombay.It began with an academic programme in industrial design as it was marked that industrial design in a developing country with its varied cultural heritage has a vital role to play in national development.Responding to the changing conditions in the visuals domain in society and the country at large, the first Master's Program (M.Des) in Visual Communication (1984) started. Further, to meet the liberalized economy's demand, specializations in Interaction Design and Animation Design (2006) derived from the Visual Communication discipline. The Mobility and Vehicle Design (2010) from the Industrial Design discipline.

Set up in 1986, NIFT is the pioneering institute of fashion education in the country ,providing continuous professional human resource to the textile and apparel industry since decades now.

Rathi Vinay Jha, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, the founded the National Institute of Fashion Technology . Under the under the Ministry of Textiles, Government of India , NIFT has encouraged the rich Indian Heritage, traditional arts and handicrafts sector mainstreaming the craft communities through engaging students in ethnographic studies. The primary focus has been diligently to work along the ever-updating model of adopting the global standards in fashion education.

While NID is a core Design -centric Institute focusing Art being an extension of design., IDC IIT (B) is meant to be for creative technologists which rests on the philosophy that Design is an extension of engineering. While NIFT is considered to be the best Fashion institute in India. India now has 1,900 Design colleges. , out of which 1,200 are fashion colleges . For a number of years, the National Institute of Design at Ahmedabad was the only stand-alone design education institution.Since the advent of Design Education in India 55 years ago, it has been growing at a steady rate.n. In 2004, a few institutions from the private sector entered the field of design education. Since then, there has been an exponential growth in design education in India.