Top Design Colleges: Know about designing career from experts

Design offers an exciting and promising career opportunity to the youngsters of today, technology has definitely changed the face of the industry, if you are looking to start your journey as a designer and looking for good colleges and courses, and an insight into the industry, read here to know the details.

Design is a vast field which is not limited to Fashion Designing only. One can pursue specialisations in Jewellery Design, Interior Design, Textile Design, Transportation Design and many more. 

The demand for design professionals is high and businesses constantly need trained and skilled people. Usually, youngsters with artistic skills and good technical knowledge are the ideal candidates to pursue a career in design, one also needs to pay attention to every tiny detail.

There are many good colleges in India that offers design specialisations and some of the design courses with a huge footfall for admissions are graphic design, communication design, visual design, industrial design, transport design etc. 

Top colleges of design in India

As per the Shiksha's rating on various parameters including fees and admission process, here is the list of top 10 design colleges in India - 

1. NIFT Delhi

2. NIFT Mumbai

3. NIFT Bangalore

4. NIFT Chennai

5. NIFT Patna

6. NIFT Gandhinagar

7. NIFT Hyderabad

8. NIFT Kolkata

9. Pearl Academy, Delhi, 

10. Symbiosis Institute of Design, Pune

Apart from these also, there are some really good options like WUD, IIAD, Apeejay Institute and JD institute of fashion.

Eligibility criteria for design courses

Fashion Design courses can be pursued at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The eligibility criteria differ as per the course and branch selected by the candidate. At the undergraduate level, the candidates from any stream (Science/ Commerce/ Humanities) are eligible to pursue a Design course, provided they have completed their Class 12 from a recognised institute and board. The UG course duration ranges from three to four years depending on the course. For some design courses like Robotics Design, Sound Design and Web Design, mathematics is a compulsory subject but not for all design courses. 

To pursue a design course at the PG level, aspirants should have completed their graduation with passing marks from a recognised institute in a related field. The course duration is of two years.

How promising design career after Covid-19 pandemic

While talking about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the design industry Prof (Dr.) Sanjay Gupta, Vice Chancellor of the World University of Design (WUD) said, “The fact that every college and university is opening up a design school tells you how promising is the career in design. At the moment the field is expanding and good designers are getting paid huge amounts and much better than engineers, designer's starting salary, as well as the average salary, is better than the engineer's salary. As they go further in their career, the growth depends on their merit and competency.”

“At WUD our vision is to become the institute of preference for the whole country, the first choice, taking over from any other institutions which have been by offering the most cutting-edge programmes, by being sincere educator, and by looking at things before they come, before they happen. We applied design thinking to everyday operations. For eg- when Covid happened every university shut down, we did not shut down for a day, we saw it coming, in March before the lockdown was announced, we decided that we must take action now and be ready for the lockdown. We formed the teams immediately and students and faculty teams planned everything about how we will tackle the situation, every faculty was equipped with a laptop and camera, zoom and faculties and students were trained on how to use Zoom. Whatsapp groups and Zoom groups were formed and then we sent them home before the lockdown was even announced. So, not a day was wasted at WUD during the lockdown period,” Gupta added.

The University started online classes one week before the lockdown was announced and by the time it was announced the students were continuing online classes from home. The WUD VC said: “We take design like that and that is our vision to be able to go and look into the future and prepare our students accordingly. We started AI classes three years back, nobody had even talked about it. All my students are getting trained in AI. This is how our vision is and we know that the students which are coming to us now will graduate after four years and by then, the world would have changed.” 

“We have the biggest portfolio of design from fashion design, communication, textile, gaming, industrial design, and others. So, we cut across all the industry segments. To tell you that with how many industries we are associated with is difficult for us to tell because right from consulting companies like KPMG and others to retail companies like Amazon and Flipkart, to design and design studios, everybody is connected to us and we have more companies asking for designers. Every student had a choice to choose from more than two companies and the placement, of course, had been 100 per cent,” further added VC of WUD.

Dr. Jitin Chadha Founder & CEO of the Indian Institute of Art & Design (IIAD) said, "In this post-pandemic world, the relevance of design has increased manifold. We perceive situations and problems differently now. Design helps us adapt to the digital age without letting go of essential attributes of the physical world. It is an opportunity to reinvent and reinforce brand identities in alignment with the changing trends. This has opened up avenues for skilled designers across industries. A multi-disciplinary, practical and iterative education will enable the young generation to re-invent, re-think and re-work experiences. Hence I firmly believe that design has a bright future in India and globally."

"IIAD has a dedicated placement cell composed of seasoned professionals with a strong connection in the industry and experience in counselling students to choose suitable career paths. The Careers team provides internship and placement opportunities to students during their academic tenure. They also train students for interviews and guide them to make impactful CVs. Additionally, through industry visits, seminars, workshops and interactions with industry professionals, students become market-ready. IIAD is connected with 160+ organisations across the industry for student internships, collaborative projects, and placements. Some prominent recurring recruiters at IIAD include IBM, Gartner, Cognizant, H&M, Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail, Burberry, Decathlon, Fab India, 11:11, Eka Design, Design Plus Architects, Studio Lotus, and Freecultr, among many others," added Dr. Jitin Chadha.

Read more:

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