The demand for designers - be it industrial products, communication or others - is huge. But hardly 500-600 designers are produced every year by the 40-odd design institutes in the country, observe industry insiders.

“Apart from scarce professionals, the institutions that groom such designers are challenged for want of experienced faculty,” said Professor Balaram, Dean, DJ Academy of Design (DJAD) and former Chairman (Professional Education Programme), National Institute of Design.

Balaram claimed that DJAD is the only design institute in south India apart from one in Bengaluru. “And our annual intake is limited to 30 candidates. The selection process is rather stringent. We receive close to 500 applications of which only 30 ultimately qualify to join the programme,” he said.

The Vice-President of DJAD CL Mohan Naarayan said, “Design today caters to everything under the sun, such as iPhone design (an industrial product design) to web, graphics and animation (under communication designing) and more recently into user interaction (as in a mobile phone), which is categorised under interaction designing.”

Stating that the demand for designers is over a lakh a year against the talent pool availability of 500-600, Balaram said that the awareness level for such professionals is also pretty low.

“The candidates who join the programme should have a flair, a passion to be creative, else they will find the going strenuous, tough,” the DJAD Dean said.

While placement has not been an issue for these candidates, Mohan says that candidates were also not too enthusiastic about registering their names in placement cell. “They prove themselves during their internship,” he added.

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