NID seeks to lure grads into design academics

NID seeks to lure grads into design academics

Ahmedabad: Taking a futuristic view of the government's plans to set up various design institutes on the lines of the National Institute of Design (NID), and considering the faculty crunch in this field, NID has started sensitizing its students towards taking design education as a subject.
A programme called Design Concepts and Concerns (DCC), which is a part of the one-year foundation course for the undergraduate students, this year assigned its students projects to stimulate their vision of various design schools contextually suitable for different parts of the country.
Six different groups of students have been assigned the task ofresearching, analyzing, understanding and designing the framework of six design education institutes in the east, west, north, south, central and the north-eastern regions of the country.
The exercise aims not only to hone the students' skills about design thinking but also to teach them the importance of design education.
NID faculty MP Ranjan who is anchoring the programme, said: "The exercise will help the students take interest in becoming academicians, or foray into design education in the future, if not today." He said, "The Ulm which was an experimental design school in Germany from 1953 to 1968, still has an impact on various design schools including NID. Why can't we also come up with such a school?"
Talking about the need of design in states and design application in the country, Ranjan said: "There are 230 sectors in the country that need application of design thinking and action. NID might be roughly attending to around 30 sectors. The remaining 200 sectors including agriculture, health services, financial services, power and so on are still unattended. Design intervention could bring a turnaround in these sectors."
With a good amount of groundwork and understanding invested by the students, the documentation of the students' works could also serve as a good reference for policy makers and planners while setting up the design schools. Chief Coordinator, Foundation Programme at NID, Chakradhar Saswade said: "Though the assignments to the students are individual course attempts, it might be influential in the setting up of the designs schools in future."
The works of the students will be displayed at a presentation in NID on March 26 in an event called 'Concept Mela' which will be open to people interested in the field, from 3.30 to 6 pm.

Source Link: http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_nid-seeks-to-lure-grads-into-design-academics_1363539

NID launches comics to celebrate everyday heroes

NID launches comics to celebrate everyday heroes


Ahmedabad: The animation film design department of the National Institute of Design (NID) plans to publish a new kind of comic book series, called 'Cowmixxx' to indicate their realistic content. For now, the 'Cowmixxx' comics will not be released for general circulation; they will be distributed only among NID students and other like-minded people. To be published twice a year, the first issue of Cowmixxx is expected to be ready by June this year.
The 'Comixxx' series is the brainchild of Sekhar Mukherjee, coordinator of NID's animation film design department. "Life is not so easy," he said. "That's why we should laugh more."
The usual comic books for children present a fantasy world where superheroes perform impossible deeds. "But the 'Cowmixxx' series will lie somewhere between reality and fiction, seriousness and fun," said Mukherjee. "It will narrate real life incidents and stories, including many of my own experiences, and that of my students and other people. The project is very close to my heart."
He said he wanted to give his students an opportunity to learn from the experience of producing a comic book. "The 'Cowmixxx' series will also give the students an opportunity to document the work they have done during their course," he said. "They make many illustrations for their course work but later they tend to forget about their illustrations."
Mukherjee said he saw a lot of potential in the illustrations his students drew. "Instead of putting the illustrations together as a book or film, we felt it would be best to publish them as a comic book twice a year. Hence, CowmixxX," he said.
As for the name - Cowmixxx - Mukherjee said that while it
rhymed with comics, the 'xxx' in the spelling signified serious and
realistic content.

Source Link: http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_nid-launches-comics-to-celebrate-everyday-heroes_1364311