Visual communication was the language that made business communication feel like design.

ISDI Parsons was a young institute that started alongside a sister school for management – ISME. The management noticed a stark difference in the 2 sets of students.

Management students could hold their narrative & communicate it more effectively than design students. At the time – soft skills seemed to be the one missing link between their work & how it landed.

As Professor of Communication Skills, I had the chance to tailor pedagogy for them & witness their challenges first hand.

Using Netflix series’ Narcos, photographs from Design books across visual communication, architecture, product & an interactive assignment approach – the short program covered business & relational communication.

They simply had a temperament that took them towards aesthetics & fluidity. It’s how they thought. And how they thought of themselves. They’d built a professional identity of themselves early on, of being less bureaucratic & structured.

Design students weren’t any lesser at communication, they were simply disconnected from the need for it for their identity & disengaged from the language it spoke.

INDUSTRY Education

COMPANY ISDI Parsons School of Design, Mumbai

NEEDS / TAGS Pedagogy, Soft / Human Skills, Professional Identity

EXPERIENCE Professor of Communication Skills – 1st Year Design Students

& Research Executive – DIY Lab (a platform to connect students to real world industry players & their problems)

PC: Designer’s Guide to Charts & Diagrams by Nigel Holmes