For those who need to know about design....

Design - An Underrated future for India.

"I joined design in XYZ college"

The moment we say this to our relatives, Man! Who knew that the course could be so relatable even than the most famous MBBS and Engineering degrees that they give an immediate reply… "So you joined a tailoring course? For that, why did you have to spend so much money?" 

That very moment life seems to crash down like an unstable satellite in space. A design student like me wanted to low-key cry that very second. 

But the fault is actually not on their part, we have trained ourselves to some standards that cannot be changed, for example however hard you try to explain the specialisation you pursue in MBBS it all boils down to a general doctor. Some things never change. Just like that, A design course is not just about fashion design it's a lot more than that. We have various disciplines like industrial design, communication design, automobile design, graphic design and the list just goes on. Each course has different things to teach and it's not all about textiles. To be specific, we have actually misinterpreted that fashion design is just textiles, it's a huge world more than that.    

         

Design courses Abroad and in India can be well differentiated. It is quite a prominent course there and many students with quite a creative side prefer to take up this course for their future careers. Careers for such courses also seem to be much established in the foreign states. In India it seems to be an exact opposite scenario. We have a very meagre population intending to take such courses and at the same time very few colleges for the people who are interested. Careers for the same seem to be quite bleak here. The funny part about this is actually India is one of the few countries to have created a National Design policy of its own. That is quite a Herculean task of its own. One of the pioneers to this initiative is the National Institute Of Design in Ahmedabad.

             

                        

The few other colleges that provide a proper degree course in design are IDC or the Industrial Design Centre at IIT Bombay, IIT Guwahati, VIT Vellore, IIT Jabalpur, Srishti college of design and many more to name a few. They have been the initiators to begin a field of design in the country. 

Speaking about the course, this has been tailored to meet the requirements of the right brain dominant people, in short the people with a creative spark. The reason for such specifications is that such people tend to have a lot of intent to learn and do new stuff. This is not meant to be harsh on the other courses, but I think it's high time we need to be honest to ourselves, we have produced enough doctors and engineers for the country that most of them find it hard to get a good job. To add up the subject curriculum that they learn is something that's been reprinted for years, on the same note it is also quite restricted with boundaries but the design course is not so we need to explore a lot and do a lot of research on very minute topics that may seem not so important. The curriculum may seem quite lighter from the outside but only if you step into our shoes will you actually realise how much toilsome it turns out to be.

Our careers are no less, maybe in the initial stages we might get a meagre to no payment but as we develop and rise through the rejections and hardships, we tend to get paid quite an hefty amount. Once we start to accelerate in our career with our creative ideas and suggestions there is no looking back. Most parents who are quite doubt ful whether or not to admit their children in such courses mostly fear about their child's phase of settling down ( like buying a car, a house, job abroad and green card) but what money can actually equate to the amount of job satisfaction that he/she gets by doing something they are passionate about.

To give a more practical explanation, the new Iphone 11 series that launched this year was a huge hit, this is where a debate starts, did we buy it for the A13 bionic chip or the sleek model with dual or triple camera with wide angle lens ?

A brand new model of Tesla is launched, do you go with just the powerful mileage or the sleeky look as well?

Is it the engineer or the designer? I obviously know for the fact that it will be both 50-50, but this is just show how equal importance is given to the field of design as well as to the Engineering field. 

No job is easy, it requires enormous hardwork and dedication to reach up to higher levels. It's just not that we spend hours together sketching that we are completely free, you don't know the amount of trials and errors that we have to go through to achieve the perfect design. 

This is no C++ or PYTHON coding, that once you compile, find errors and immediately correct and submit, it will be completely fine. One slightest of error in the design like the headlamp is more oval than circular, that's it we are doomed, we literally have to the design from scratch.

(P.S. I myself am a computer student).

We literally try explaining people about all of this, and personally I even took a whole day to sit down with my relatives and gave a good three hour talk on this only to get back a reply "All that is fine, still you shouldn't have wasted so much money for a tailoring course.." . I just gave a sigh and decided to wait until they understand. Not all the things come quickly right, it does take some time, maybe this also requires some time of its own. After all it's not their fault.