2-YEAR PG Professional Program
Information Arts and Information Design Practices
Course Overview
Information shapes how we live, connect, and make decisions. From social media to artificial intelligence, from ecological challenges to cultural change, our personal and collective lives are increasingly mediated by complex information systems. The two-year Postgraduate Program in Information Arts and Information Design Practices (IAIDP) at Srishti Manipal Institute equips you with core principles of information architecture and design to navigate emerging personal, societal, cultural, political, and technological perspectives. On one hand, with information arts, you will explore the role of art in the current information-driven age by breaking down disciplinary boundaries and initiating conversations on artistic practices. On the other hand, with information design, you will engage in the practice of presenting information effectively and meaningfully by combining principles of design and communication. As you train in the research-driven IAIDP course, you will acquire skills in storytelling, illustration, board games, systems design and data visualisation. You will be prepared for careers and leadership across diverse cultural spaces, communities, environmental organisations, and industries. These include, but are not restricted to, design and media technology, the gaming industry, the advertising sector, publishing, education, and advanced research organisations.
Vision
The course equips artists and designers to live, think critically, and create in this age of information. Bridging art, sciences, technology, and design, the course trains reflective practitioners who not only navigate information but also interpret, question, and reshape it through storytelling.
IAIDP is “media agnostic” (i.e. independent of any specific medium), which integrates social design, ecology, design research and data science to equip students with the ability to transform raw data into meaningful, accessible, and visually rich narratives. Training spans diverse media—drawing, painting, photography, film, creative writing, graphic design, multimodal design, interaction design, computer graphics, and more—while also emphasising practice-based and practice-led research along with ethical ways of working closely with communities.
IAIDP is a space for students to master storytelling, visual aesthetics, and explore cognition, emotion, and experience through art and design. They create interactive, data-driven outputs that enable insight, support decision-making, and create new ways of understanding and engaging with our rapidly changing, information-driven world
LEVEL
Postgraduate Degree
AWARD
Masters of Design (M.Des)
DURATION
2 Years / Full-time
Round 1: Last Day to Apply
March 14, 2026
Course Structure
The curriculum comprises different modes of learning as follows:
- Disciplinary and Integrated Studios introduce students to core design principles and professional practices through immersive studio experiences rooted in the dynamic intersection of community, culture, and environment. These learning environments enable students to develop and refine disciplinary capabilities while navigating interdisciplinary design contexts.
- Seminars provide focused research engagements that encourage students to critically examine theoretical frameworks, emerging discourses, and contemporary practices across art, design, and innovation.
- Transdisciplinary and Interdisciplinary Research (TDR/IDR) offers opportunities to engage with diverse research centres and labs such as the Centre for Reimagining Transitions (CRT), LILA (Artist Research Studio), and Socio-Ecological and Technical Transformation (SETT) Lab. These engagements foster collaborative inquiry and applied research that bridge design, technology, and society.
- Interlude offers a space for cross-disciplinary exploration through short-term projects undertaken between semesters. This component enables students to collaborate across disciplines and gain exposure to new approaches to making, thinking, and contextual practice.
- Capstone Project represents the culmination of the M.Des programme. Through a semester-long, self-directed inquiry, students synthesise and demonstrate their learning, values, and capabilities in a public-facing format such as the Grad show exhibition, showcasing their integrated design practice to the wider community.
- Additional Learning Opportunities complement the core curriculum through holistic education credits, MOOC courses, and independent studies with faculty. These avenues encourage students to shape their own trajectories of professional and personal growth.
Capabilities
This course will enable students in their capability:
- to inform and communicate through narrative
- to interact and work with communities, contexts and limitations and sensitively negotiate boundaries
- to transact meaning with audiences and build context-sensitive practices
- to perceive gestalts, navigate complexity and negotiate intelligences through transdisciplinary engagement.
- for leadership as action in art, design and/or technology praxis
- for responsible creativity that emerges from social, ecological, ethical and learning design
- to emerge transdisciplinary practice with reflections on interdependence and co-existence
- to strategically work with emergent systems and chaos
For More information, please contact Keya Chakraborty (Associate Professor) at keya.chakraborty@manipal.edu
Opportunities
The above mentioned capability sets could lead to opportunities such as:
- Employment in Design Studios, Advertising Agencies and the Publishing Industry
- Employment in the New Media and Software industry
- Employment in Media and Television Industry
- Employment in startups, small and medium enterprises, NGOs, and social and educational enterprises.
- You can become a contemporary art practitioner, entrepreneur, or design consultant.
- You can actively engage in emerging domains such as digital arts and new technology and storytelling in new formats.
- Pursue your research and continue to do a PhD.
- Develop your own projects and apply for grants.
- Some jobs profiles could be
Design Strategist, Project Manager – Community Programme Services, Entrepreneur- Visual Designer. Artist. Arts Manager, Design consultant, Educator, Social justice Coordinator, Multicultural program coordinator, Cultural Design Practitioner, Creative Director, Program Manager, Creative and Cultural Researcher, Storyteller, Systems designer/ Consultant, Design Consultant, Educational designer, Eco-artist/ Eco –Designer