I enjoy teaching, and it comes as a by-product of steep interest in learning and knowledge-sharing.

About

The learning that happened during my time at design school wasn't just from the work that I did myself. It was from the time spent being discussing and studying the ongoing projects of fellow students, and eventually as a mentor to new students. Starting in 2018, I began to dedicate some time to formally teaching at design schools. These are generally conducted as a 2-4 week long modules, with each working day in a module being an intensive 6-8 hour long session.

Personally, I believe that these periods of time spent alongside aspiring students of design do bring a lot of perspective, clarity and freshness to my own professional practice. I currently seem to make myself available for one module every six months.

Approach

A majority of the sessions I conduct deal with design or narrative fundamentals. In my experience, the time shared with the students in class seems to bring more value retention in them if they arrive at a conclusion or certain perspective themselves. Hence most of my sessions are generally divided into periods of hands-on exercises and periods of open conversation and dialogue. This is to get students to connect to their own work help them understand how to get better at it. The assignments are based on a lesson plan that best satisfies the expectations of the institution, and the resulting discussions are broadly structured to lead towards a specific takeaway. There is also an emphasis on peer-learning and engagement, where students are insisted on participating and building communal banks of constructive opinions on every piece of work presented before them.

Design is a profession that benefits from having practitioners that are able to dabble with the unconventional and bring their own unique way of approaching and solving problems. Thus there is a conscious attempt to avoid influencing or limiting a student's way of thinking during discussing work. Instead, there is an attempt to lead them to gateways where they can dive deeper into the subject matter if they develop further interest. I generally focus on critique that addresses the execution of an idea rather than the idea itself, so as to preserve the integrity of their originality.

In many ways, design education is about experienced people sharing a structured way of doing, thinking or making things (by innovating, observing, analysing, improving, being efficient) with the less-experienced. And humankind has been practicing design long before design existed as a discernible practice. Thus there is freedom for the discussions in my classroom to constantly switch between the micro-level concerns that are very specific to that module, and more macro-level concerns like awareness, curiosity, open-mindedness, critical-thinking, articulation, discipline, empathy and consequence: all of which contribute to the becoming a holistic design professional.

Modules Conducted

Space Form
& Structure

A comprehensive introduction to visual perception, observation, awareness and their role in the field of design. Other topics include the study and intentional application of design fundamentals, introduction to form, identity as a concept, the power of emphasis, deconstruction, the role of context, transformation, attention to detail, and the study of visual narrative.

Design Fundamentals: Colour

Aimed at post-graduate program film students. Introduction to colour as a vital fundamental in design, the module addresses theory, construction, relationships, sensitivity, and interaction. It further expands into classwork that discusses the perceptual, emotional and psychological qualitites of colour, and the differences in the usage and manipulation of colour between physical and digital mediums.

Visual Design

Aimed at graduate program film students. The module aims to be a runthrough across a variety of topics about that an aspiring filmmaker might need to be aware of, including the constituents of a visual, and multiple approaches to deconstructing and constructing them. Design fundamentals are revisited with a focus on moving image and cinema, and concepts more integral to graphic design like visual heirarchy, layout and type design are introduced.

Anatomy Of A Game

A module about introductory concepts for young game design students that covers the absolute basics about thinking as a game designer including unlearning, identification, lexicon, observation and analysis. Students eventually move on to use structural models to break down the logic and workings of a game, both digital and analog. Other topics of discussion include mechanics, flow, balance, narratives, difficulty, ethics and the approach of games as experiences.