Teaching

→ October 31, 2019 | Reading time: 12 minutes

Why

Teaching is like photosynthesis: making food from air and light. It tilts the prospects for life a little. For me, the best class sessions are right up there with lying in the sun, listening to bluegrass, or swimming in a mountain stream.

— Richard Powers, Bewilderment

Teaching (mostly typography) has been an unfairly rewarding experience and I look forward to more time in the studios with more students. It’s been a way of repaying years’ worth of debt owed to some fantastic teachers I’ve had the good fortune of working with.

How

Apart from detailed course-plans (Girish helped with the all the how, there) that sometimes cannot be stuck to (because of newnesses in software, hardware, etcetera), in the studios, we use making daily notes as an excuse to experiment more (in addition to the ‘work’ we do in-session) with typesetting and writing even when the course isn’t necessarily ‘expected’ to focus on writing for design. Students also use this note-making as an opportunity to re-state what we learn on each day and the de-reification process helps me course-correct if an abstract idea is misunderstood with (what I think can be) bad consequences.

Chronicle

Here are notes and course-abstracts and course-feedback (soon) from the couple of courses I teach. The feedback is anonymised and lightly edited for grammar and punctuation and for redacting personal details. I am putting together the list of books, movies and on- and off-line articles read in preparation to go full-Barthes on the bacchalog.

2023

Typography 2 at NID-MP / January 2023
Missed their Typography 1 so there was some catching up to do. The Bhopal winter was unforgiving. Amul on campus saved many a busy day. I’m going to say no to two-week courses that really want to be four week courses. I really want to mentor an editorial-only course now.

Communication Design Basics at NID-AP / February 2023
Basim and I had designed the course in 2021. I couldn’t help with the second version in 2022. This year, we had an amazing group of students who were eager to learn and made so much good work. Abstract here.

Mentoring Design Project: Identity Design at NID Kurukshetra / August–October 2023
Went with the institutions brief/abstract (though there were small parts I disagreed with, as it did not affect the goals I had set). Started online (long story) and continued offline at the Kurukshetra campus.

Typography for Digital Media at IIT Jodhpur with XR Design MDes Students / August 2023–November 2023
Two weeks of looking at the very basics (intrinsic properties) and application specific projects for XR.

2022

Graduation Project Juries at NID-H
Surprisingly questionable referencing and documentation for otherwise well-considered projects. Murthy sir (Prakash Moorthy) was in the panel so much to learn.

Typography 2 at NID-MP
Satisfactory conclusion to the Type-1 stuff. Two weeks in the middle of wheat-fields under harvest.

Symbol Design for CD Sem 5 at NID-AP
My bachchalog from Type 1 and 2 and W4D. Mellow.

Typography 2 at NID-AP / June–July 2022
I missed their Type 1 and W4D so this had a lot of catching-up. Course-abstract here: G-Doc

Typography 1 at NID-AP / November 2022
Fun course; excellent work from everyone. Not so fun dealing with infrastructure (the lack of-).

2021

Communication Graphics: Basics (for Industrial Design) with semester 6 ID Students, NID Andhra Pradesh. A seven-day primer to composition, colour, layout, typography and grids.

— Course Abstract: PDF

Design Project (Content Creation) Mentorship with semester 6 VC Students, NID Kurukshetra (10 Weeks).

Foundation Juries (Sem 2) at NID Haryana, July 2021
Intense etcetera. Wonderful panel.

Typography 02: Forms! Spaces! Time! Connections! with semester 4 Communication-Design Students, NID Andhra Pradesh (ongoing, punctuated by my testing COVID-19 positive). Four weeks.

— Course Abstract here: PDF

Writing for Design with Semester 4 Communication Design students at NID-AP. Sekhar Mukherjee (Director) and KurmaNadham (Course Coordinator) said yes to a proposal to teach this as a one-week course focusing on writing simple and direct prose supporting documentation, descriptions and proposals. In that sense, this is new.

— Course Proposal here: PDF

Design Project: Identity Design; Mentorship with Semester 5 VC Students, NID Haryana. 10 Weeks.
August–September 2021, Online

Colour (Digital) with Semester 3 Students, NID Haryana
A one-week primer to choosing, using, and managing colour across devices and for print.

— Course Abstract/Plan, here: PDF

Communication Design Programme Curriculum Review with NID Andhra Pradesh
September 2021

Typography 1: Through the Looking Glass with Semester 3 Students of Communication Design, NID Madhya Pradesh
Offline at the NIDMP campus. Two weeks.

— Course Abstract here: PDF

Semester-end Juries (Sem 7, Communication Design) at NID Haryana, December 2021

2020

Layout Design with semester 6 VC Students, Wosxen (WSA+D) Hyderabad

— Course Abstract: https://keyaar.in/files/layoutdesign/KR-20200116-WSAD-LayoutDesign-CourseAbstract.pdf
— Notes: http://txti.es/layoutdesign

Typography 02 with Semester 4 Communication Design students, NID-AP (Truncated course [COVID-19]; last three weeks finished online.)

— Notes: http://keyaar.in/exif/typographyreturns
— Blog post discussing the ‘online’ bits of the course: https://keyaar.in/exif/fullyautomatedluxuryonlinetypographytwo

Typography 01 with Semester 3 Communication Design students, NID-AP. Four weeks, online.

— Submissions: Link (Google-Drive Folder)
— Exercise briefs and (some) instruction material: Link (PDF) We had a separate Telegram channel (SanityStream) for posting briefs, files, practice sheet templates, etcetera. The PDF is a version of that.

Design Project (Brand Identity) with Semester 7 students, NID-Kurukshetra

I joined the ten-week course mid-way (after the brand strategy stage) and helped students with visual identity, tone-of-voice exercises, etcetera. Since they were final semester students, we also made this a finishing-school-type situation and discussed basics of UX, printing, layouts, Bezier-curves, file-handling, workflows, typography, etcetera.

Juries with Semester 3 students, Communication Design, NID-K. Two days over video; incredibly tiring and yet, not exhausting.

2019

Typography 01 with Semester 3 Communication Design students, NID Vijayawada / 4 Weeks

— Course-abstract here: https://keyaar.in/files/typography1/KR-20190923-Typography1-CourseAbstract.pdf
— Detailed daily notes: http://txti.es/typography/images

Typography 01 with semseter 3 VC Students, Wosxen (WSA+D) Hyderabad

— Course Abstract:https://keyaar.in/files/typography2/KR-20191105-WSAD-Typography2-CourseAbstract.pdf
— Daily notes: http://txti.es/type

2018

Typography 01 with Semester 3 Communication Design students, NID Vijayawada / 4(-ish) Weeks

— Course-abstract here: http://keyaar.in/files/KR-20180801-Typography01-Abstract.pdf
— Daily notes here: http://txti.es/typographybasics

Typography 02 with Semester 4 Communication Design students, NID Vijayawada / 4 Weeks

— Course-abstract here: http://keyaar.in/files/typography2/KR-20190214_Typography2_CourseAbstract.pdf
— Daily notes here: http://txti.es/typographyreloaded/images

Symbol Design with Semester 7 Communication Design students, NID-V / 2 Weeks

— Course-abstract here: https://keyaar.in/files/symboldesign/KR-20180910-SymbolDesign-CourseAbstract.pdf
— Daily notes: http://txti.es/symboldesign101

Emerging Media with Semester 7 Communication Design students, NID-V / 2 Weeks

— Partial daily notes: http://txti.es/emergingmedia (This course was right after the Symbol Design one and I wasn’t as well-organised as I would’ve liked; the submissions from course-1 spilled over, etc.)

Classroom Project Mentor for 8th Sem Communication Design students / 1 Month

— Utopian guide-lines for pre-diploma projects and such: http://txti.es/guide-lines (I was generally around for conversations, pointing out resources, playing devil’s advocate, helping with preparing portfolios-slash-resumes, playing volleyball, etc.)

Above: Final-year VC Classroom at NID-AP (then NID-V), 2018.