Kunal Dutta

Background

About Kunal Dutta

Kunal graduated in Fashion Design from the country’s first generation fashion school - NIFT Gandhinagar, and holds a Masters in Fashion & Textiles from Nottingham Trent University, UK facilitated by Pearl Academy, Delhi. He is currently pursuing a second Masters in Education from IGNOU, Delhi. As an early millennial design-student, he had the opportunity to learn from and interact with masters of Art, Design, Craft, Architecture & Textiles, in the culture-rich city of Ahmedabad, Gujarat and receive training from many legendary professors of NID, CEPT University, IIM Ahmedabad, MSU Vadodara & MICA Ahmedabad. He has more than 20 years of professional experience in the diverse areas of apparel / textile design, visual merchandising & exhibition design, graphic & visual communication design and subsequently aesthetic curating & art direction for a variety of creative industries. In the last 14 years, he has dedicated his time to ‘Design Education’ & nurtured young talents in esteemed institutes like NIFT, IICD Jaipur, Pearl Academy, UID & Srishti Manipal Institute along with Domus Academy (Milan, Italy) as an exchange faculty, while simultaneously pursuing a personal practice in visual art. He has worked at various hierarchy levels, from an absolute hands-on-ground execution of design projects up-to contributing towards core strategic planning, curriculum design, industry-academia liaisons, academic leadership & holistic institution building. Within various levels of engagement with design academia, his specialised areas of teaching have been - design process & development; fashion research & decoding, design writing & analysis; craft, culture & aesthetics appreciation; drawing, illustration & digital design; identity, portfolio & fashion publication design etc. He also conducts specialised design relevant workshops/tutorials and design-thinking sprints with young design aspirants across the country, and is frequently invited to speak on different facets of design at masterclass sessions & seminars. As a scholar/researcher, his interest areas have been to explore and comment on - human-centered indigenous design narratives; influence of the digital image as reference to culture; innovation in visual arts & image-making; experiential visual exhibit systems etc. He often serves as a guest faculty/speaker, external-examiner & jury member for design schools at NIFT, Srishti Manipal Institute, Manipal University, Karnavati University, KIIT University, Amity University, Delhi Public School, IIS University, JECRC University and others.