Industrial Arts and Design Practices
– PGDP Bridge

What is design? What is the role of the designer in a post pandemic world?

Design has already moved beyond the styling of a product for the market, it is about creating value and positive impact, designing products that last, and include not only users, but makers, the environment and all the other stakeholders in the system.

The pandemic and other natural or manmade calamities has forced us to question the way we live and consume and this has impacted the field of design in a fundamental way. This pause has allowed us to refocus and rethink how we design products and systems. Design has become more inclusive of the non-human world, it considers climate change more seriously, and wellness & wellbeing have become more important than ever. This includes the impact that humans are having on the Earth and environment.

The 1-year Post Graduate Diploma Program (PGDP) in Industrial Arts and Design Practices is an introduction to design and explores different kinds of practices in design, building on knowledge and skills that you bring in from your undergraduate studies. It acts as a bridge to the M.Des programs at Srishti and gives you a grounding on current thinking on design which goes beyond materials and media.

This thinking is developed largely through hands-on making of different kinds. Drawing and making are explored as tools of expression, understanding, building complex connections and the imagination. Making here is seen as an engagement with the world and with oneself. It goes beyond skills to thinking and is seen as the connection between the heart, the hand and the mind. Srishti Manipal has excellent workshop facilities for textiles, wood, metal, digital fabrication, print labs, electronic labs and much more. Through the contexts in the various units, students could work with different materials learning skills independently and experimenting with new ways of making. Thus students develop autonomy in learning as they prepare to join the M.Des program.

Program learning approaches include:

· Choosing outcomes that can lead to artistic expression, consciously choosing different methods of creative thinking

· Harnessing expertise and rich making skills available profusely at all levels in the Indian context through Locative Making

· Inter-disciplinary and participatory approach through engagement with people

· Expression of acquired learning using a theoretical framework to create a discourse, which sets the platform for new avenues. Understanding and positioning oneself in the larger eco-system

· Self motivated learning and Independent study, which comprises of research and scholarship, intellectual independence, management and supervision of one’s own work and study, being responsible for strategic decision making.

· To envision – an idea, a project, a future, a system, a practice, an industry

· To be industrious – to engage and persist, to analyze and synthesize, to translate and refine, to be proficient

· To be curious – to explore and stretch, to challenge convention, to push boundaries

· To be empathic – to people, to the ecology, to practices, to material

· To be a conscious practitioner – to understand worldviews, develop alertness, to lead and manage with the ability to understand systems