Design is The Career of The Future

‘Design is the career of the future.’

says Professor S. Balaram in today’s article published in The Hindu’s Metroplus Chennai edition. Prof. Balaram is the one of the founding faculty and former Chairman of Education at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, and dean of the DJ Academy of Design (DJAD), Coimbatore.

In a country with a population of 1.2 billion, the number of designers produced is negligible. Balaram reels out statistics — Korea produces 36,000 designers annually. China has nearly 400 design schools. India, barely 20. There are 5,00,000 technology students graduating every year in India. A mere 600 designers trickle out in comparison. He puts this down to lack of awareness.

True! It’s sad that India hasn’t recognized the potential of design yet. Even in that 20 odd design schools that exist in India, we can count the good ones on finger tips.

Even if we consider every 100 technologists need one design brain, we need at least a cool 5,000 design graduates every year. No design graduate in India is without work. Many overseas companies are thinking of India as the design hub of the world, but we don’t have enough supply of designers.

When I wrote an article on my blog about doing design for free, one of my friends was talking about donations if we design. I don’t see the people I know respecting design. And my co-designers and classmates agree with that. It’s because everyone thinks that if we know Photoshop, we’re designers. Photoshop is just a tool that translates your ideas into reality but your ideas are what that matter most. And those are what that make you a designer but not Photoshop. It’s time that we open our eyes for Design as a career.

I read about DJAD (DJ Academy of Design) in Coimbatore for the first time. You can visit their website at http://www.djad.in/

~ by Saawan on May 21, 2008.