About Us
Design With Us
Artshala was created keeping a sole purpose in mind: To enable students and aspirants the skill set required to bridge the distance from being a design appreciator to a design creator.
Equipped with a clear, systematic and procedural method of training, you will begin to understand not only how the design world functions through various immersive workshops and assignments, but, moreover, how you as a designer and creative professional can contribute to the ever growing creative economy.
To ensure your progress on this journey, we promote intimate batch sizes, interactive studio training, Blended Learning by Leading Design Practitioners, project based activities, periodical reviews, personalised portfolio development sessions, industry visits and extra-curricular events.
​
All Our Online/Offline Sessions are recorded for Quality & Training Purposes, and serve a dual benefit to the student, by enabling them access to their own recorded lessons. Our Mentors work by your side, focusing on accentuating your existing and new skill sets, teaching new techniques, and always challenging you out of comfort zones.
In short, an exciting design world awaits you when you step inside ArtShala.
Founder's Note
Karan Awasthi
Founder
As a student, I found myself enrolled in a Business program, when my real interest always lay in designing - a field in which ever since I have found incredible creative satisfaction, and an opportunity to do work with some of the best minds in the field.
Immediately after my undergraduate education here, I enrolled in the Vancouver Film School, Canada, determined to pursue a line which would give me creative freedom, and a foundation for all I wanted to do with my life. The years following have seen me work on pre-production of ad-films, direction and visual effects for feature films and TV series (Yes, Games of Thrones was an exciting series to work on!) When I look back, I realize many of my opportunities were, in part of my own making, but truly boiled down to the education and mentors I encountered.
Armed with a wide and diverse portfolio, and so much to share and give back, I started teaching communication design. Suddenly, the wide chasm between the industry and education seriously troubled me. Good students did not know how to understand and broach design, how to own it, how to flourish in it, and how to change people lives. They seemed lost coming in from our normal education into a design culture - a space meant for them. Even more alarming was the trend of students going through design preparation institutes and still not being able to understand design, much less be the face of it.
I do not want to let that be the case anymore. In this, I am supported by a select but excellent and diverse team of design practitioners. We’ve put together an industry-ready curriculum, through project-based learning, an exciting and collaborative studio environment. It is our keen desire to focus on each of you individually. We are ready on our side, to get you ready to change the future of design! Truly, the moment is now to take up the challenge given india’s fast changing pace, and with the Indian Design Industry flourishing at an unprecedented rate.
We are not looking at blinkers-on, stay-on-one-track designers. There is a huge demand for motivated designers who can think laterally, don several caps at one-go, and work from the smallest to the largest of scales, while understanding and respecting both local and global cultures and standards, all the time, striving for change !
This is the kind of (future) designer we want to prepare, not just so that you gain admission to a design school, but admission into a larger design consortia which will positively impact our nation/ world. The only question then is: Are you ready ?
Vision
Work. Analyse. Repeat.
Be at WAR with old, dated ideas.
We don’t think of design as merely getting from one point to another. For us, design is a life-skill, getting us ready for all challenges. Through learning the core ideas and values, but simultaneously also learning to question them, we want to help you become an astute, analytic, sensitive, and innovative design thinker.
We are young ourselves, and if we don’t rise to the challenge, who will ? We think of it as part call-to-action, part promise: all opportunity.
Values
Respect. Integrity. Teamwork. Evolve : RITE.
Our success depends on our ethics. We like to call the above a RITE of passage, core values that should always accompany you as a designer, as they accompany us as designers/ design-educators.
Mission Statement
We believe design is and always must be innovative, transcultural, interdisciplinary and collaborative. We know this is a tall order. We also know what we must do.
All design is born out of the Design Studio, which is both a space and a culture that allows for all the creating not just designs, but meaning systems. You cannot take design education preparation into a rigid classroom, with its flanks of chairs. It must be spatially flexible but intellectually rigorous! We do not want you staring at a board, and taking notes. We want you to be an active agent in your own design understanding and future! Work under the close guidance of our mentors, as well as learn from your peers, to achieve success.
We Round-Table our Training, so that no matter where you are, you are always within the circle, learning through a hands-on approach! Our learning environment is designed to reflect this. Flexible seating and arrangements, a small (but growing library) for reference, internet connectivity, constant guidance, special talks and lectures, field visits, amongst a host of other facilities, is how we ensure the best for you.