Rapid growth in consumer spending and marketplace competition have ensured that industrial design is taken seriously by companies chasing sales and market share.

With rising incomes and rapid lifestyle changes, fashion and design is no longer restricted to clothes, jewellery, and accessories. Today sleek new models of cars, mobile phones, music systems, laptops, and air conditioners roll off assembly lines with the objective of luring design conscious customers. Industrial design has come of age and designers are in great demand,” says Dhimant Panchal, senior professor and member of the governing council of MIT Institute of Design, Pune. In his long career in industrial design spanning 26 years, Panchal has designed air conditioners, water coolers, refrigerators, trophies, spectacle frames, hand tools, diamond polishing consoles, and blood oxygenators for the biomedical department of the Institute of Medical Sciences and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram.

Industrial designers fashion products to make them user-friendly in terms of comfort, aesthetics, efficiency, safety, reliability, and economy. They tend to focus on home appliances, automobiles, and industrial and public utility equipment. The demand for industrial designers has increased manifold after the liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy in 1991. Rapid growth in consumer spending and marketplace competition have ensured that industrial design is taken seriously by companies chasing sales and market share.

PREMIER INSTITUTES. The premier institutes of learning which offer industrial design training are the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, followed by four IITs — Mumbai, Delhi, Kanpur, and Guwahati. The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore is also a pioneer in industrial design education. Other institutions include:

• MIT Institute of Design, Pune
• D.J. Academy of Design, Coimbatore
• Raffles Design International, Mumbai
• Symbiosis Institute of Design, Pune
• NTTF School of Postgraduate Studies, Bangalore
• Srishti School of Design, Bangalore
• Department of Industrial Design, School of Planning & Architecture, New Delhi
• IILM School of Design, Gurgaon
• Raffles Design International, Mumbai
• DSK International School of Design, Pune

While NID offers both undergraduate and postgrad programmes in industrial design, among the IITs only IIT-Guwahati offers an undergrad programme. Currently IIT-Mumbai, Kanpur, and Delhi offer Masters programmes but will soon introduce undergraduate courses. The MIT Institute of Design, Pune, has a four-and-a-half year undergrad programme and a postgraduate programme of two-and-a-half years. Admission into the IITs is through Common Entrance Examination for Design (CEED) while other institutes conduct their own entrance examinations. Generally, Masters programmes are open to engineering and architecture graduates.

The qualities and aptitude required of industrial designers are creativity, imagination, curiosity, and innovation because they ought to envision not only new generations of products, but also new services and businesses from broad ecological, commercial, and cultural perspectives. They must also possess insights into consumer behaviour and preferences, and keep track of market trends and innovations.

With the Indian economy experiencing a consumer boom, professionally qualified industrial designers are in great demand. For minimally qualified designers, entry level remuneration packages range between Rs.2–8 lakh per annum with NID and IIT graduates commanding higher emoluments.

Designers could sign up with consultancy firms or start their own design units where the sky is the limit for career progression depending on hard work, capability, and creativity. IT and media companies are also hiring industrial designers and are ready to pay top-dollar for their services.

Teaching is another option though typically, institutional pay packages tend to be modest. But most institutes of design allow their faculty to do consultancy work which helps them bridge the remuneration gap between corporates and education institutes.

With design now accepted as an important product attribute, many new institutes of design are springing up across the country. Theres demand not only for product designers, but also for graphic and retail designers,” says Panchal.

Exhibiting an artistic and creative bent of mind from a young age, Panchal enrolled in NID, Ahmedabad, in 1974 after completing his Plus Two exam. He began his professional career on the NID faculty as coordinator of the institutes foundation programme in 1981.

In 1995, he signed up with Marc Walker Opticals Ltd as senior manager, product development and quality control, where he landscaped the companys factory and designed spectacle frames in nickel, inox, monel, phosphorus, bronze, and 18 carat gold. Subsequently he moved to Solsons Exim, Ahmedabad, to develop hand tools for Indian and overseas markets. In 2003, he returned to academia by joining the faculty of the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Gandhinagar.

Four years later in 2007, Panchal was invited by the Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT), which runs 32 educational institutions offering study programmes in medicine, engineering etc, to establish its institute of industrial design. The MIT Institute of Design aims to create a design community, which will not only service the needs of India Inc, but also of small-scale and rural businesses. Our charter requires us to help improve the design of rural products for the benefit of the large disadvantaged population in rural India,” says Panchal.