Malvika's Ramblings

Foundation Programme at NIFT

View complete NIFT info at http://blog.malvikajain.com/nift-admission/\

 

The Foundation Programme is a course that all UG Design fachhas take together, whether they chose FD, FC, KDT, or whatever. The new horde of first year students is divided into 5 batches or so to undergo the Foundation Programme. In the second year, everyone joins their respective departments. Here are the main modules of the course-

 

Elements of Design. This is a very very important course in which you learn basic design stuff that stands by you forever. It rocks if your batch has great faculty.

 

Principles of Marketing. The name says it all.

 

Material Sciences – How to make stuff with fabric, clay, paper, metal, wood. Very useful to get sensitive to how different materials turn, tear etc. Young guys will be knitting in buses to finish their homework before they reach college. And suddenly everyone will realize it is not such a weird thing after all.

 

Portdolio development. The name says it all.

 

Geometry

You learn about all kinds of geometric solids. This course helps immensely in 3D visualization. You also do stuff like tessellation.

 

Computer Application

You lay your hands on the A,B,C,D of a designer – Adobe Photoshop and Corel.

 

VnRT: Visual and representative techniques. Long name for a simple module. Module for illustrations. Get introduced to 4B, 6B, 8B. In this course you do sheets and sheets and sheets of sketching. Later, you do some painting as well. But mostly this course gets your perspective drawing in place. You also become an expert at drawing people in various postures. Your lines improve, confidence goes up and your design feeling translates on the sheet much better. In this, students would pose in the class and the rest would draw. Or you get a labourer as a model and draw him. We drew NIFT plants in ink in charcoal, in pencil. People sleeping in the hostel. My room-mate and I spent Independence Day at Café Coffee Day, sketching the franchise manager and getting lots of free coffee to get our creative adrenalin going. Heh. Again, very important course. In third, fourth year, you may just wish for time to do nothing but sketch all day long like a true artist. Go through lots of sketches and studies by famous artists. Van Gogh simply blew me over with his stocky figures, people of the earth, hard knuckles.

 

Field Study

Ahh.. this is a solid module. You have to go and study a small business in a neighboring area (30 rupees by auto type distance) like the tea-shop guy’s or the zardozi weavers in Hauz Rani. The objective is to get a sense of business. It is at a small scale so that you can easily understand the business team, investment, profit, working hours, clients. Also teaches you to talk to people like asking the tailor how he came to Delhi. And he will say that there were riots in Bihar once, so he ran to Delhi and stayed with his Chacha and so on and so forth. This module too finishes in a team presentation. At this presentation you show your scrap book among other things, with jottings and sketches. You are not allowed to take photos. So one makes a lot lot lot of sketches, on the street itself or at the potter’s wheel. The recording of the experience starts right from the loosley hung wooden signboard outside the tailor’s shop to his tool kit. It is great to have at least one guy in the team as tailors, potters, chai-wallahs open up better to men.

 

Form Design or something like that where you take a piece of something like a wooden bark and then represent it as a stylized PU foam object to just convey it’s essence and not illustrate the whole thing. Like representing the gnarly-ness of a root, or the sensitivity of a feather, or the honest coarseness of a hammer. It is like saying what you have to, effectively in short instead of rambling on.

Jury Project or something like that. This is a module where you make an installation. You choose your material like glass, metal or whatever, or choose a combo and then make some installation art based on your theme. With this we have had mad stuff happening in college. Like a giant key with lots of keys around it depicting mystery. Many students like to just make it big. Some people play with lighting. There is loads of freedom in this module. This is the final project to be judged by the jury at the end first year. I had chosen Bob Dylan as my theme and made some preposterous plaster of paris thing to depict his rebellion and poetry. I remember mixing 3 buckets of POP, a very white Saturday and Sunday in the hostel, and at the end of it, my giant thing broke in transport. I stuck it with glue, finally tied it with a ribbon.. added the ribbon in the explanation of my 'concept' to the jury and stood beside the disaster trying to make it seem valid somehow. heh.

 

 

Word of caution: Always remember to salute a senior, bow to a super senior and do the 4-in-1 pranaam to a super-duper senior when you see them.

 

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