The extremely talented yet humble designer Rahul Mishra visited Pearl Academy, Delhi campus on 22nd June to initiate the series of talks between designers and Pearl Academy’s faculty in the Master Class. The session was attended by faculties across campuses through video conference wherein he initiated the talk by confessing that his visits to various Academic Institutes have helped him to learn and grow. He owes a lot of his learning to the conversations he had with the students, listening to their raw ideas and of course from the teachers, thus stressing on the need to grasp knowledge and continue the process of evolving the self through unceasing learning.
Rahul Mishra question the academicians if the current teaching system nurturing creativity in students and helping them build authentic thought process or is it pushing them to become mere participants in the rat race chasing the grades? Having raised the questioned, the internationally acclaimed designer opened the floor for the diverse audience to share their thoughts and drew attention to the lack of individuality in Indian designers today. While the Indian Designers are making a lot of money and winning even more laurels they ever did before, there is a lack of authentic thinking patterns. The students in India are just working in a mechanical manner with no scope of thinking outside the box.
Rahul also shared his insights gained by working in the Industry for years and asked the faculty to motivate the students by setting right examples for them, which are not limited to the field of design but could be from any discipline. Rahul used an anecdote to connect with the audience as he talked about how he drew inspiration from the “superhuman” Ernest Haeckel, who is not a designer but a biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor, and much more, and his expertise over so many subjects is what motivated Rahul to expand his horizon and see himself as a biologist, wherein he is imbibing Haeckel’s learning in his designs by trying to find order and beauty in chaotic spaces.
The session was conceived as a platform wherein the Masters in the Academy don the role of the disciple and gain from the enriching experience of the Master Designer and facilitate a dialogue. Rahul shared few exercises with the faculty that would help them in revitalising the creative juices in the students and urge them to develop their emotional faculties, as the artist needs to be in tune with his/her emotional side to grasp the sensitivity and inspiration that the environment around us has to offer.
Rahul winded up the session by stressing on the importance of design in today’s times as he calls the designers ‘magicians’, because the designer has the capability to do strangest of the things as well as change the world through design.
