Communication Design

It provides students a pathway to confidently enter the creative, open-ended, exploratory and experimental environment of design education at IIAD. They acquire a broad spectrum of design skills and build their design vocabulary. After successfully completing the Foundation year, students seamlessly progress to BA (Hons) Communication Design course.

The first year of communication design entails a journey of ‘unpacking the self’. By digging deep into your memories and childhood, you discover the inner storyteller within you. As you learn new methods of visualization, you are also encouraged to communicate through words, visual imagery and symbols to develop a unique narrative and voice.

Through contemporary debates around gender, diversity, inclusivity, culture and environment, the communication design course lets you explore storytelling using different mediums to engage, inform, persuade, educate, and entertain a varied audience. Your chosen medium – be it newspaper, magazine, television, billboards, apps or internet – becomes the canvas to experiment and explore. Along with developing your hand skills in illustration and storyboarding, you also learn digital tools such as Adobe Creative suite for publication and animation, Invision for UI/UX, Glyphs for type-design, and SketchUp for spatial design, to help you translate your ideas into outcomes. By the end of the year, you would have developed skills to bring your ideas alive across different platforms such as print, digital, audio-visual as well as spatial.

At the end of this year, your first industry interface will be facilitated with an 8-week Learn On-site internship, which will focus on multidisciplinary learning experiences. Communication design students can opt to work in various avenues of communication design – such as print and publication, film and animation, Visual communication, UX/UI, website design, branding and advertising – to name a few.

The second year pushes the boundaries of communication design and prepares you for the challenges of constantly evolving technology. You will learn both traditional and contemporary skills, tools and techniques, and apply them across complex media applications and practices. From developing your own font to creating a publication, you explore meaningful ways in different mediums to reach out to the target audience. You also learn to use tools and methodologies such as scenario planning, user journey maps, empathy maps, system thinking tools, etc. to come up with user-centric design solutions for UX/UI. Through digital interactive platforms you will weave together images, music, narrative and voice to give modern expression to characters, situations and experiences. The project starts with a visit to an out-station location where you search for stories ranging from personal experiences to recounting of historical events or exploring life in one’s own community.

Communication design students also work on international competition briefs such as D&AD, RSA and TypoDay as studio projects. You will create engaging content based on global themes and contemporary issues to inspire change and foster innovation.

The 16-week Learn On-site internship is a long-term industry exposure envisaged as the gateway to your professional debut. You get opportunities to work in industry environments and understand the dynamics of organisational set-up. You will work in set-ups such as design studios, advertising agencies, production houses, publication houses amongst others, both within India and internationally. In the past, students have secured internships in several leading design studios including Ogilvy & Mather, JWD, Quicksand, Denstu, Studio Fry, Quicksand, Om books, Roli Books, Oyorooms, Katha publications, Double Barrel Production house and Reliance, among many others.

Starting your journey with, “unpacking” to now “repacking” the self, you come a full circle. In the final year of the communication design course you create a distinct brand identity for yourself while building your networking and entrepreneurial skills. Working on a Social Design project leads you to evolve into ethical and purposeful design professionals committed to “designing for a better future”.

With the exposure to diverse areas within this versatile discipline and on-site work experience, you now have a chance to focus on an area of interest and strengthen your design abilities within the chosen area.

The Major Design Project is an amalgamation of your chosen medium of specialization and subject-area of interest. Communication design students work on projects in sectors ranging from social to business to entertainment, aggregating a diverse portfolio for themselves. You undertake a project set in business realities, which can be self-initiated or industry-sponsored. You will take independent design decisions while being closely mentored by faculty and industry experts.

Your project will culminate in a creative outcome such as a film, animation, typographic design, social design, campaign, editorial design, interaction design, service design, user experience, spatial experience and many more, bringing a sense of accomplishment to your transformative design education.