
Graphic Design Landscape offers seamless opportunities to further advance the known face of 2D Graphics to 3D and beyond; as well as exciting opportunities to work at the intersections of Graphics, Technology, Social Context, Material Cultures, Systems and other areas of Design Context.
This workfolio is a collective to share my learnings and experience in teaching-learning pedagogy, academics, professional practice (both projects and skills-based volunteering to conduct and organise design workshops), design research (publications, authorship and reviewing), administrative, management tasks and responsibilities as
an educator in Visual Communication Design.
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DESIGN SPRINT-LIKE EVENTS IN CORE COURSES: Quizzing, Hackathons...more soon
QUIZZING: Supplemental Learning Activities
Quizzing is an involving activity. At NID Ahmedabad (2019 - 2020); developed
quiz for Typography courses of both B.Des and M.Des batches & also for the
course of Visual Theory as VT quiz for B.Des at NID (2020); Colour Quiz for
B.Des at Department of Design, IIT Guwahati (2015), online quiz for the course, 'Semiotics' for B.Des, II yr. students (2021) at MIT-WPU effective tool to gauge
students' applied learning; in addition to hands-on assignments assessed; but a
QUIZ is also a great community-building tool between students' and faculties.
Among students, a 'Quiz Activity' strengthens their competitive cum participatory
spirit, spirit of exchange, working together as Design Teams (see for VT Quiz 2020) and is also a promising teaching learning mode for the faculty instructor to address more curiosity, questioning, debates / discussions with student teams.
HACKATHONS: Augmented Learning Activities & Intense Innovative Retreats
Recent developments of Design-A-Hack-A-Thon approach is an attempt to give
in-class an event-based experience of a live project / a design competition, etc.
to students. The teacher becomes either the creative head or a client to design
students - who wear the cap of lead designers to design for real project briefs. In the core courses such as Typography, Graphic Design, Design elements;
keeping an avenue to augment skills, concepts and learnings from the course
in context of a live project/ competition based creative brief of a project helps
students experience their learnings for existing target audience, understand
design's value in systems and events that involves people or a contextual
scenario at large. It is also an intense retreat to test and honing skills and their marriage with technologies, trends and conceptual design for better/ effective
design solutions for real-time projects.
LEARNING BY DOING: Skill-based Rotation Blended Learning
Certain skills and techniques (design trends) orientation to students in a
blended format has been part of courses Elements of Design, Graphic Design
and Typography at IIT Guwahati and NID Ahmedabad. Learning-by-doing through
both classes in core courses and conducting design workshops for students has
been fruitful for skill developments and augmentation: learning a new technique
or tool to design, practicing the elements and principles of visual design in the
making of a certain aesthetic in the final design outcomes.
VALUE FORMATION:
Experiential Learning & Research
The Value formation assignments included the specific aims to capture
history, material culture, heritage employing a visual narrative approach
about an object, culture or a space that students' selected as part of
such courses. These value-formation assignments included in-depth
field research, ethnography and related methods to present the origin,
evolution and future of these objects/cultures/spaces. In the courses
of Environmental Graphic Design, Documentation of Visual Culture,
Introduction to Field Work, Study Tour courses at NID; the course
objectives and the teaching pedagogy was accordingly aligned to
develop Value Formation in Design. At IIT Guwahati, value formation
approach was part of design research methods in semester-driven
and annual masters degree projects in areas of way finding and
signage design, interactive storytelling through local games, design
revivals for indigenous Indic script, etc.
PERCEPTION-BASED STUDIES:
Self-guided/ Flex Learning method developments
This includes observation and cognition-based tasks based on critical design, speculative design, deconstruction. Established case studies and classic works
are observed, analysed and experienced as a discourse by students'.
Visual Journaling, 'Reading Images' sessions, Interpretive sessions on direct observations and decoding the image, Photo Essays to deconstruct the origin, existence, meaning and essence of visuals/visual forms, etc. 'No texts' principle
is the basis of formulating assignments, activities and specific perception-based
tasks for students to question, explore, learn and share. The purpose is to
develop observation eye and the required need of harnessing an interpretive
mind as a designer.
DESIGN FRAMEWORKS
Frameworks Designed & Applied for Core Courses
This includes design frameworks formulated for developing the pedagogical
aims behind assignments that students are expected to achieve. These
assignments involve a balance of both concept design and skill-practice
for students.
ENGAGING DESIGN PROJECTS [EDP] Methodology:
New Normal Design Projects of M.Des students (2020)
This includes a four-fold method development that students followed in 2020
in the wake of distance-learning through blended methods. From project
selections, proposal making till final outcomes a new framework was followed
for design projects - these projects majorly include a blend of graphic,
interaction and industrial design mediums, concepts and technologies.
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Learnings from FEEDBACKS:
Critical Design Dissections & Reflective Practice through PBL
In: Design Reviews as part of Design Projects, IITG & NID
A blended approach (verbal and written) feedbacks to students was followed
as part of semester-driven design projects of individual students. 2-3 review presentations with at least 1 display-cum-presentation based review by each
student helped in a focused attention to understand and reflect upon the
design project at IITG and NID. After review presentations at NID, per
student a written feedback as part of a collective batch feedback write-up
was mailed to students. This included more details in critiques from the
perspectives of product, process, research, presentation & communication
skills, etc.
As a design faculty, efforts were to facilitate students' during the long-form
design feedback sessions with analogies, anecdotes, resources, similar or
competitive design practice projects, knowledge of research methods and
trends that they can take inspirations/ leads from to fine-tune the process
followed by design detailing of the outcomes and the curation approaches
to select, formulate and give a tone of voice to their form and content in
project documentations.
In: Design Juries as part of Design Degree Projects, IITG & NID
This includes a four-fold method development that students followed in 2020
in the wake of distance-learning through blended methods. From project
selections, proposal making till final outcomes a new framework was followed
for design projects - these projects majorly include a blend of graphic,
interaction and industrial design mediums, concepts and technologies. A
design degree project by my student Honlung Ragui, M.Des final yr, 2016
followed a rigorous research-centric design process - that led to publication of
this project on indigenous script revival through contemporary type design
practice at HLS 22 interantional conference; organized by Dept. of Humanities
and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IITG).
NEW: MENTORSHIP TO INDUSTRY-ORIENTED TEAMS
This was a great opportunity in the May of 2020 to actively join in the Task Force, UMO.Design as a mentor to industry-oriented team from Verizon, Chennai, India
for a Social Innovation Design competition. This mentorship role focused on
mentoring my assigned team regd. UI/Ux Design & Research-based methods
to detail out their Process, proposed Product & System Design interventions till
Testing with the users directly for developing an omni channel design approach
& systemic design implementation for a proposed brand: QSmart [context: New
Normal Retail & Business Enterprise]
Final Presentation to Jury of Design X Awards 2020, UMO.Design


















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