NIFT Exam Analysis 2020 for BDes Admissions

NIFT Entrance Exam for BDes admissions was held on January 19. NIFT BDes exam comprised of Creative Ability Test (CAT) and General Ability Test (GAT).

Season 2020 has been a season of changes for design entrance patterns, where UCEED introduced paper based drawing test while taking away negative marking from NAT section and NID introduced a qualifier of 65. NIFT too chose to add some spice to its pattern by re-introducing negative marking in its General Aptitude Test (GAT) at +1/ -0.25.

Besides the marking pattern, there was no change in the format of NIFT Entrance Exam though.

NIFT Entrance Exam Analysis for GAT 2020

The GAT paper for both the BDes and MDes had their respectively announced question breakup. The quantitative and the reasoning segment were approachable but the passages needed lot of attentive reading and r-ereading on the part of the students as they were tricky though not lengthy. This became a little time consuming as the students were going back to the passage with every question. The business domain segment was a good mix of static GK, current affairs along with brand and craft awareness.

Also Read: NIFT GAT 2020 Student Reaction

NIFT Entrance Exam Analysis for CAT 2020

Like the previous year, this year too NIFT CAT paper for BDes had only three questions, with choices in each, hence allowing ample time to draw with the focus on detailed rendering, proportion, human/ live figure composition and posture making, interaction of two live subjects as per a story line, sensitivity, composition ability, sense of humour, nuanced observation of daily life and being able to find humour in it and colour sensibilities. While previous year was aimed at testing students on their ability to pre-empt needs and design products, this year the thrust was on drawing and rendering skills, creative imagination and storytelling skills and colour aesthetics.

The first question had a frame with a bike drawn in the bottom right of the space. The students had to compose either two human figures or two animals or one human and an animal. They had to caption the composition created by them.

Solution: Since there was no mention, a well detailed colour rendered composition is recommended as there was ample time at hand. Here, there has to be a genre/ mood of the composition that needs to be decided upon while composing. The given bike too should be meaningfully integrated. Eg. In case of two human figures, there could be a story of a delivery boy with his consignment on his bike interacting with a client, where the caption could emphasise on the promptness of his service, or a mechanic with a broken bike and its rider, where the caption could be the luck of finding the service near the breakdown site or the trust of a service. Similarly, in composing a human with an animal, it could be on a rescue theme and suitably titled. Two animals composition could be a spin off from the race story showing the hare being left behind in the race by the bike borne tortoise where the caption could be on smart win or an advertisement for the bike itself or a safe driving campaign. There was amazing scope and opportunity in this question, to not only exhibit one’s illustration skills but also one’s thinking, imagination and ability to convey a message or tell a story.

The second question too continued with the same quest of imagination, creativity & story telling. This question asked the students to create a comic strip in four frames in black and white only and the comic strip had to be titled as well. The students had to choose ‘One’ out of the given three themes:

(a) Me as a fish

(b) My journey to mars

(c) My appointment with the dentist.

Solution: The format of a comic strip gives a lot of creative freedom and allows students to express through animation drawing technique. Speech bubbles and thought bubbles, one line narratives, action lines and sounds, all of this provides for immense scope of expression and narration. Though it could have been taken as that the genre was comic, there still was a scope to taking the genre further into rom-com, comic satire, horror comedy, emotional comedy or situation comedy etc. This question also looked at testing the students into drawing from the real life experiences in and around them and their ability to find humour in the most nuanced situations. However, a comic strip is not necessarily comedy, it is an animated story telling but the genre could have been played with, though that might be a little risk taking.

The third question was a straight one at testing colour sensitivity. Two design patterns were given and the students had to colour any one to design the fabric for any of the three given themes i.e.

(a) Festival

(b) Meditation

(c) Travel.

The students had to explain their choice of colours in a write up of 70-80 words.

Solution: Here once theme is chosen, it is advised to first expand more on the concept level so that particular colours can be zeroed in on. Eg. For festivals, one should define the festival, the reason why is it celebrated and how, this will allow for signature colours. Like the festival of lights, Diwali is on the back drop of moonless night hence a black base colour along with all the colours of lights, brown for earthen lamps, golden yellow, silver, gold, red and green for sparklers, and wealth. On the other hand, a Christmas interpretation will draw lot of red, white and green. The meditation theme can have different shades of orange, yellow that goes on to concentrate at a spot on the pattern with a single red presence as focal point and lot of white for peace.

Also Read: NIFT CAT 2020 Student Reaction

The best would now go to the second stages of Situation test for BDes course admissions. For BFTech admissions, however, GAT is the only decisive exam and their merit in the same will reveal if they get a call for admission counselling.

NIFT results are expected around March 2020, following which the stage two would be conducted between April 2020, after the grade 12 board examinations are over. The final result is expected around mid-May 2020 with the counselling scheduled for June 2020.

Wishing All the Luck once again!

About the Author:

Shipra Anand is the Founder Director of Academy for Fashion Careers in Lucknow.