The demand for design is growing exponentially, says IIAD Founder

Shiksha spoke to Dr Jitin Chadha, Founder & CEO of the Indian Institute of Art & Design, on the rising demand for design professionals and which industry hires more designers, read here to know the details.

Design careers are in high demand unlike a few years back. Today, every industry needs good designers and they are ready to pay huge salaries to the design graduates. Moreover, the field is going through major changes thanks to new-age technologies such as AI, AR and VR. We spoke to Dr Jitin Chadha, Founder & CEO of the Indian Institute of Art & Design on various points related to design education and career, read here.

What are the career options available after one completes designing courses at the Indian Institute Of Art and Design (IIAD)?

They can join as graphic designers, UX and UI designers, an interior designer, fashion designer, and fashion stylist depending on the course the students have done. We have companies like IBM, Ernst & Young, Gartner, Cognizant, Scaler Academy, Mangrove Collective, and many other companies like Designit, and Lollypop Design, who hire our students.

Designers that came to us are Nandita, Shantanu and Nikhil and Tarun Tahiliani. These are the kind of companies and designers we have now. The overall trend for designing is very positive which we have seen over the last four to five years that the demand for designers is rising. 

What are your plan and vision to make the institute better in terms of education and placements?

The aim is to make the students highly employable, our approach to teaching and course design and deliveries ensures that the students are taught well, there is a lot of industry interaction. As the campus is located in Delhi we work with lots of companies and live projects and every year our students also do internship throughout the four years course journey.

After the second year, they do a two-month internship, after the third year, they do four months internship and they also have the choice to do their final semester as a major project with a design company and all these ensure that the students are highly placable because the practical aspect, the industry interface is something we have waved into the programme right from the very beginning of their four-year journey and being in New Delhi gives us access to some great design studios. So, we work with them very closely as part of our course delivery and that’s what creates a difference to make our graduates more industry ready and employable.

How pandemic affected the design industry, and what are the most notable changes?

The long-term effect of the pandemic is that it brought a lot of digitisation, companies are expecting students to be a lot more digitally skilled, and the opportunities have opened up more. For example – if you are a fashion design student or an interior design student, of course, you can make real clothes and work on houses and offices and cafes but now due to digitisation, opportunities exist beyond the physical space like in the Metaverse.

You can now make clothes for your avatars in Metaverse. So designing on the digital platform is going to be something that is going to come up more. There is a movement from physical marketing to digital marketing, social media marketing, and e-commerce. Everything is moved online, so the demand is to be able to project your product or service online and it requires much greater skills in design because how do I sell a product on a smartphone, even if the product is good, the designer should ensure that it looks great on screen. User interface and user interaction are so valuable today that there has been such an amazing demand for our graduates.

The problem today is that there are too many recruiters looking to hire design graduates, and there are not enough students. This year between January and March, our students got placed very easily and many more companies come even today to hire design graduates but we do not have them now as we have to wait for the next placement cycle that will happen in January.

So, the demand for digital design is really high and I think that is the trend which is going to continue which is a very positive thing for our students and graduates in design. They are getting better places, better kinds of roles, and a lot of IT companies and product companies are hiring. The demand for design is growing exponentially and what happens in a four-year design course where the students in their final year can get placed, the supply of students cannot increase.

As a design school our enrolments have also grown even during the pandemic, even this year has been really good for us in terms of admissions. We actually have another problem we have run out of campus capacity for the students. We are looking to create a second and larger campus to cater to the rising demand for design education and to serve industries. 

Three or four years ago we only used to have design studios coming to hire from us, today every industry come to hire design graduates which created a huge demand suddenly. 

For eg – if someone is setting baby furniture online, they try to hire interior designers because they want to give full solutions to the mother, they want to design the entire kids' room, so many interesting opportunities are emerging for design graduates.

Also, for a long period, everything was shut during Covid and no new offices and malls were built, so all of sudden there is a high demand from interior designers and architectural firms for recruitment because suddenly they have got a lot of business after two years. A lot of real estate development is happening which increasing the demand for interior designers.

Have you recently introduced any new design courses?

Yes, we have this year launched a four-year design degree in fashion communication. We noticed that when fashion brands come to hire designers, particularly during the pandemic and even after the pandemic, they are looking for people who are able to look after their Instagram accounts and social media accounts, create stories, create videos about their collections, and run their online e-commerce store.

The need is to have skills in fashion design as well as graphic design. This course is partly fashion and partly graphic design. So, they will work for fashion companies and today a lot of promotion is all visual but they also need to have a good understanding of fashion styles in trends.

Fashion communication is going to have tremendous career opportunities for students by fashion and lifestyle companies because that’s the skill set that they are looking for - the students who have an understanding of graphic design, UX design, video editing as well as fashion styling, it's an interesting combination.

Tell us something about the placements at the Indian Institute Of Art and Design and which industries hire designers more.

Fashion and lifestyle industries do hire design graduates, architects and interior firms also hire our interior and architect graduates and even wedding design companies are coming to hire interior design graduates.

We have a lot of IT companies, and design studios hiring our communication designer and graphic designer students in the area of animation, video, UXUI, graphic design, packaging design, and consultancy companies like Gartner, Accenture, and EY as now they have a lot of digital work, they have to give full solution to their customers including design.

What would you tell to an aspiring designer, what qualities the candidate must have to succeed in design-related careers?

Many students coming from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities have a lack of understanding about designing that it is more than fashion designing, many students don’t realise that there are so many courses in design and even in fashion we have courses in fashion communication and fashion management where one can work for retail, merchandising and marketing as every foreign brand has opened in malls such as ZARA, H&M, Marks and Spencer.

These brands are coming every day and they are not designed in India but India is a retail market for them, so retail, merchandising, store planning, store layout, all these demands for talented designers, and we have a degree in that - fashion management. So, my advice to aspiring students is to look at all design courses options available, one thing which is common is that you should be passionate about fashion and you have three options fashion design, fashion communication, and fashion management, or you can be passionate about graphic design, UXUI design, animation or motion graphics, all these visual communications, so what one should know is where their interests lie.

The aspirants must have a creative aptitude. People think if I can sketch and draw I am creative, if I can’t sketch and draw I am not creative, that’s not true because today sketching and drawing can be handled by software too. One should have a creative bent of mind to think creatively. Design courses are courses that one does out of passion, it's not like other courses where parents tell you to do it. Follow your passion, have a creative mindset, and have good observation skills.

How do you see the future of design, which are the major trend coming in?

The future of design is extremely bright and positive as apart from the physical world now design requirement is almost mandatory in the digital world and one of the biggest theme going forward in the future is the Metaverse, someone is going to design the space in which you operate, someone is going to design the characters and someone is going to design the cloth for that characters, shoes for those characters. So, the future of design is a lot more digital for sure and a lot more experiential. 

Read more:

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• Outreach of Design is much larger, from airplanes to tiffin boxes, phones to laptops: NIFT Delhi Director