To the media who write about Design in India

Notes from conversations with an un-informed journalist. A few days ago I was having a twitter exchange with a journalist who had written about the need for India to have more Design schools. Actually the person is not a journalist but a doctor turned art appreciator / collector who is writing on design.

This journalist put up an article with the title that China has 400 design schools and India has only 2. The headline put me off so much that I decided to give her a lesson 101 on the state of design education in India.

You can read the article here: China has 400 design schools, India only 2.

The points that follow were a result of conversations with the ‘journalist’ , a few other designers, and myself.

It is unbelievable that a media house like the Times of India group, which runs the Economic Times (ET) business newspaper would care to publish an article which is so misinformed. ET is widely popular business newspaper and the impact of such a improperly informed research would be large.

Many people who commented on the article pointed out that India has more than just 2 design schools. Anyone interested in Design in India would tell you that there are many more. It was left to the reader to guess which are the 2 design schools. There are more than 10 design schools, in India; which I know is still low, but still the article should not be so misleading.

So me and another friend set out to find the person who had written the article. Got to know the twitter handle of the person and hence followed a twitter exchange in which we got to know the further misconceptions that people have about the Design education in India.

I mentioned . . . → Read More: Be a Design Evangelist

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Notes from the Indian Design Forum 2012

A few days ago I got back from Delhi. The design community headed to the first version of the India Design Forum, which was held at the Le Meridian hotel in New Delhi on the 9th and 10th March 2012. Amongst the attendees were a lot of people form Europe, some form the Americas and some participants from Indonesia also. With the amount of buzz that the word design, design education, design driven startups and anything related to design is creating in India, the event holds a significant position.

To the IDF

This was marketed as the first International Design conference in India, which actually its not, but lets just ignore that for the moment.

This post is not meant to be a press release of the conference and neither a summary of what other people spoke, but just a personal reflection on the event and a constructive criticism for the event .

First the positives

The organizers had done a great job in getting a very good list of people to attend as speakers. That itself must have gathered a good crowd. So full marks to the organizers to at-least reach out to the folks who otherwise would not have graced a design event in India.

I was impressed with the organization in terms of its venue selection, (you would be foolish not to like a posh 5 star hotel) , the effort put into the whole planning out and the scale. I have seen and been to bigger ones outside India, so this was good to see here as well. The halls were really big, the stage was awesome and so was the audio – visual facilities to help follow the speakers well.

The conference started with the pretext that design should come out of its elitist . . . → Read More: Notes from the Indian Design Forum 2012

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