Designing Careers

An article by webNivaran    1 Comment

Case study House #8 was designed in the ‘40s, when we as Indians hadn’t witnessed our tryst with destiny. A glance at it and you’ll find it hard to believe it has been standing as a symbol of modern design for the past six decades. Upon a request by the Indian government, American designer couple Charles and Ray Eames presented the India Report in 1958 that resulted in the first design institute popularly known as the National Institute of Design located in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

A neglected branch till recently, design has received the much needed fillip in India with several well known brands setting up local design studios and employing design engineers and/or product designers in India. According to Pay Scale, an international employee compensation watchdog, a User Interface Designer with anywhere between one to three years of work experience draws an average annual salary of Rs. 3,50,000 compared to Rs. 2,00,000 for a software programmer with the same experience – that’s a 57 per cent hike in salary. You’d probably not get that much even after your first salary hike. We’d like to add here — there’s no limit for talented designers in this country (some designers we spoke to earn much more than these figures).

Where we stand

We spoke to academicians and administrators who shared their insight on design. Primarily, India has a long road ahead. Prof. Balaram has been among the founding faculty at NID, Ahmedabad and is currently the Dean of D J Academy of Design (DJAD), Coimbatore. With decades of experience as a designer, he feels there’s more we need to do as a nation. When asked where India stood in terms of design globally and what scope lied ahead for someone interested in pursuing a career in design, he said, “There are, not more than, 20 design institutes across India. With the number of students per class averaging to 15, the number of designers graduating each year is not more than 500. Compare this to China that has over 500 design schools, whereas Korea that produces 36,000 designers every year. So we as a nation definitely have a lot to work in terms of infrastructure.” This also means we are terribly short of skilled designers and so employment opportunities are high after completing a course in design from a design school of repute.

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