4-YEAR UG Professional Program
Information Arts and Information Design Practices
Program Overview
The Information Arts and Information Design Practices (IAIDP) undergraduate program at SMI aims to nurture aspiring design and art practitioners across all avenues of communication, from design to dissemination. The program equips students with the capabilities to identify and address challenges and problems in the multiple worlds we inhabit, through extensive primary and secondary research. Research methodology is made intensive through design and making. Students engage deeply with materials and mediums to explore, develop, and corroborate possible solutions. Research is gathered, collated, and questioned across mediums and through varied perspectives.
Faculty are well equipped to ensure the student stays grounded in research, making and material exploration practices that encourage critical thought, empathy, and responsibility.
Learners will engage with a wide variety of outcomes mediums such as illustration, information, design, publication design, curriculum design, design for screens, systems design, painting, game design, photography,film making, creative writing etc. The program combines the detail oriented world of research with the storytelling driven arena of communication.
Vision
The vision is to equip 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. In a nutshell this course is ideal for those who are left brained or right brained.
LEVEL
Undergraduate Degree
AWARD
Bachelor of Design (B.Des)
DURATION
4 Years / Full-time
Last Day to Apply
15 March 2027
For More information, please contact Prof. Murali Krishna Menon at murali.menon@manipal.edu
Course Structure
The curriculum comprises different ways of learning as follows:
- Foundation introduces students to the basic principles and tools of Art, Design, and Technology, including methods, tools, and processes.
- Disciplinary Studios are learning spaces where students develop core disciplinary capabilities, while navigating a trans-disciplinary environment
- General Studies is a common and compulsory programme of study that integrates the Humanities, Sciences, Mathematics, Business, Finance, Development and Policy Studies, as well as offers Languages (Spanish, French and German)
- Interim is an immersive introduction to practice in new and emerging areas of art, design and environmental exposure
- Electives are of three kinds – this program allows students to expand their skills, develop their interests, as well as provide opportunities for travel exchange
- Internship/Apprenticeship is compulsory work experience done over the summer break between the 6th and 7th semester
- Project-based learning involves the application and synthesis of capabilities acquired. Two projects, pre-thesis and thesis, are the culmination of the 4-year undergraduate program, which allows for the demonstration of an integration of values, positions, capabilities and practice.
- Term paper is an academic writing module in the 7th semester to develop skills in research, argumentation, referencing, and citation, preparing students to craft well-structured academic papers and articulate their ideas effectively in the pre-thesis and thesis projects.
Learning Approach
The IAIDP approach to learning involves dialogue, debates, ethical questioning, co-creation, participatory research, research by design, and material engagement and making. Hands on making alongside data analysis, visualisation, artistic enquiry, and storytelling leads the student to substantiate their findings flexibly and responsibly. Rather than solely hypothesising, a great emphasis is placed on “making” as an integral component in the students research practice.
The program produces practitioners who strategically intervene after extensive observation and research of selected contexts and communities. Empathy and ethics are emphasised, ensuring that all work is produced with a focus on integrity and inclusivity. Marginalised voices and stories are approached with a crucial sense of sensitivity and awareness. In a constantly evolving information landscape rife with misinformation and incorrectly interpreted datasets, the IAIDP student understands interconnectedness and approaches all projects with a variety of skills at their disposal.
Capabilities
Upon successful completion of this course graduates will have developed the following capabilities:
- Experiment, choose context-sensitive media and create meaningful work
- Use multiple lenses to extract, interpret and engage with information
- Engage with communities using varied art and design tools and methodologies
- Emerge self-identity through ethical dilemmas, limitations and challenges
- Strategically intervene and innovate towards change communication
- Emerge practice with reflections on interdependence and symbiosis
FAQs
The Information Arts and Information Design Practices (IAIDP) field empowers practitioners to use diverse media and data to communicate for social change while fostering leadership, context sensitivity, and self-reflexivity. This emerging field offers a unique opportunity for practitioners to grapple with complex issues and develop their skills in communication and interpretation.
The IAIDP course is ideal for individuals with a natural curiosity and willingness to engage with diverse media and communities at the forefront of contemporary approaches to art and communication. If you have the inclination to explore different ways of storytelling to create new ways to engage people, then this course is for you.
The above capability sets equip and prepare the student for a wide range of career opportunities with:
- 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 storytelling in new formats.
- Pursue your research and continue to do a PhD.
- Develop your projects and apply for grants.
- Some job 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