Thereis enormous shortage of qualified

Thereis enormous shortage of qualified

designers in India, but the market for design in the country has huge potential, a leading exponent of creative industries told the ongoing Kochi Design Week (KDW) here on Friday.

By 2020, the potential market for design in India is expected to be Rs 188.32 billion.

The number of designers required by 2020 in Indias industrial, graphic, communication, packaging and other design domains is potentially 62,000.

There are around 7,000 qualified desginers in India with perhaps 5,000 studying design, said Paula Graham Gazzard while delivering the keynote address at Bolgatty Palace here.

Speaking on 'Creative Skills for Future',she urged Indian designers to constantly invest in skill upgradation and be at the top of the game so as to keep up to the competition arising from other cost-effective parts of Asia.

 

Ideally, teaching staff in design institutions should divide their time between the industry and the academia so that the latest trends in the fast-growing design industry can be passed on to students, noted Gazzard, who is the Director of UK-based Contemporary Visual Arts Network.

Participating in a panel discussion, Venu V, Principal Secretary, Revenue, Government of Kerala, and CEO of Rebuild Kerala initiative, said thestate needs to overhaul its Building Construction Rules to achieve sustainable and eco- friendly goals in construction.

"The Rebuild Kerala initiative is a massive project being implemented by the Government of Kerala, he said at the panel session on Design as an Industry; Why Design Policy for the State Matters?, on the second day of theKDW.

"In the event of a disaster, we cant instruct people to build houses based on a particular design. We have to respect the choice of people.

The state government will be preparing a reform agenda and one of the key suggestions will be about revising the building rules.

When we talk about the Kerala after 50 years, we need to adopt changes that ensure sustainability," he said.

As part of Rebuild Kerala initiative and the reform agenda, we are going to start a forum offline and online, where people, experts and practitioners can advise us on what are the areas in which reforms are to be done and what kind of reforms have to be done, Venu said.

He also reminded architects of the need to embrace eco- friendly and human-friendly aesthetic designs for keeping the natural landscape of Kerala intact.

Noting that design is a vital factor in the startup ecosystem in Kerala,M Sivasankar, IT Secretary, Government of Kerala, said design lends immense help to hardware startups that come around 70 per cent in the ecosystem to be cost- effective.