Design your career

ALTERNATIVE CAREERS: An education in designing is creating a lucrative career option for many. Reliance is planning to open a mall in every city that has a 50,000-odd population. Godrej group plans to set up malls in villages. The result: more jobs for mall designers.

Of the 10 million jobs that will be created by the textile industry, faculties from design institutes estimate that around 10 per cent of the total jobs created will be in a career, related to design.

Take the case of 21-year old Sweety Soni, an alumni from Jasani Department of Jewellery Design and Manufacture, part of SNDT's Women's University.

Even while she was graduating,she landed an offer from a prestigious cruise liner with a compensation packet of $1,000 per month, apart from food, accomodation and a commission that she is entitled to earn for every piece of jewellery or watch that is sold on board.

Another student from the same university landed the job of a quality checker with Wal Mart whereby her role will be to examine the overall quality of the jewellery that is being sold by the international retail outfit. A KPMG study identifies designer wear in India as a key growth sector.

Says Darlie O Koshy, executive director, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad: "Design is the application of "creative problem solving to innovation".

Koshy states that design will be a major career opportunity in the coming years as more than 200 segments of manufacturing, retail and service will require designers in India, including "creative outsourcing" enterprises.

Premier design schools are gearing big time to capture the emerging opportunities. In the last five years alone, NID has commenced 15 new post-graduate (PG) programmes in uncharted areas like toy design, new media, transportation and automobile design, software and user interface design, information and digital design among others.

Then there is this whole avenue of industrial design where premier institutes like IITs are chipping in with their educational might.

Says Ravi Poovaiah, professor, interaction design, environment design and communication design at IIT Bombay's Industrial Design Centre: "In the arriving year the institute will commence a course on transportation design."

The institute also plans to set up a centre of excellence for transportation design, and this will become a nodal centre for corporates to explore newer concepts in design.

There are also other industry-institute collaborations that are in action at IIT-Bombay. Volkswagen, which is planning to set up an R&D centre in India, has sought students from IIT-Bombay's industrial design for a project that looks at sensibilities of designing cars for the Indian roads.

There are also a host of other institutes which are upgrading their courses in design. And the competition to secure admissions in many of these institutes is also hotting up by the year.

Says Radha Sinha, Principal, SNDT Women's University, "For 40 seats, there are 600 applications for design. Similarly for jewellery design, there are 200 applications for 30 seats and another 30 seats see competition from 400 applications."

Those like Sasmira offer courses in fabric print and garment designing. Total intake for textiles is around 30 students for full time and 60 part time students. This was from around 20 students that the institute had when it started off almost three years ago.

(With inputs from Kalpana Pathak)