National Institute of Design M.Des Review By Swati Bhadauria

NID Ahmedabad is one of the best colleges for textile designing. The course is different than others as its duration is 2 and half years. There are around 20 streams in M. Des and my field was textile design which was one of the most longed courses of the college. With changing time, it has been proved that only digital designing can survive and that is what we learned at the campus. Since its one of the oldest it has a great alumni network. The disciplines of design are plenty and you will be literally spoilt for choices. The syllabus of the course has certainly helped students to meet market requirement of today’s world. All the key software’s required for the trade are taught at the college. Most of the students come and pay these heavy fees at the institute as graduates of designing are not even paid peanuts. However, NID’s placement is a massive hit and that is the reason you will see students from all corners of India.

Syllabus was massive and rapidly kept changing as subjects can have some extra topics in the middle of the semester. Not just syllabus but teaching style of all disciplines and industry interaction to know the latest demand and trend was helpful. In textile designing we closed with some of the biggest fashion names. We worked closely with one of the largest textile companies of India Arvind Ltd. The fashion house provides internship to 100s of students of various colleges. NID makes sure that their students are industry ready before the final semester and that has helped in achieving placements of as good as engineers.

Just like the course, the faculty too were quite practical. There are some short comings in designing and everyone can’t do all the things. Team work and all is quite important and we were made aware of that aspect by our faculty. Faculty were conscious with projects and where a canny operator when it comes to assigning the same. Deadlines have to be met or else we would be denied of some major opportunities. Thus, do whatever but never mess with the faculty when it comes to submitting the projects. They take that seriously and showing up intent in that will help you in making college life better.

We were stuck with Covid just before the final exams of the final semester. That semester is the most important of all as we have rigorous training for 4 months. We were all on our training when we had to leave it mid-way but luckily the companies gave us certificate on reaching a mutual decision of working from home. Companies like Himatsingka Seide Ltd., Arvind Ltd, Nandan Denims, and Century Textiles approach NIDs and these are some of the companies where students of textile designing were placed. Just a year before students bagged packages worth almost 10 lakhs. In our batch though students had to contain with a package of 5-6 lakhs as one of the hardest struck sector in Covid-19 is the textile sector.

Unfortunately, the Paldi campus where we started didn’t have hostels for PG students. The Gandhinagar PG campus branch had girls hostel but in terms of ranking and others Ahmedabad branch is much higher. My parent disagreed but then finally gave a nod and I stayed at a PG near the campus. There are enough facilities for students coming from outside Ahmedabad. Not having hostel is a setback but the city has ample options to choose from. Ahmedabad also is not that costly and in a budget of 10k a month, one can find some of the finest facilities.

NID Ahmedabad is the oldest NIDs of the country but the campus is the newest as both Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad campuses where we switched in between had all the facilities one could ask for. It was with the effort of Gautam and Gira Sarabhai that this institute started and therefore the college has a GG square that is the happening area of the college. There’s a huge hall at GG square and students are seen working on their projects at GG square. There are 7 to 8 buildings at the campus and for textile designing we get to work in a boutique which is inbuilt at the campus. Just beside the boutique there was an open room which had tables and students can take their space and work on their assignments. The college has an open canteen with a seating capacity of 200 students. A large auditorium as each department of the college has their own fest and one combined fest USTAAD which are all celebrated at the auditorium. The campus is great and had facilities enough to make it conducive for us to study.

It was challenging because what people may not realize is that designing is one of the lengthiest courses. Graduation takes 4 years and then PG another 2 and a half. The last semester in which we were freed from books and had to concentrate only at the training was cut short due to Covid. Challenges kept coming but surviving them was the art that we learned at NID.