A designer is not just someone who creates but is essentially an architect of an idea, concept or understanding. In today’s world, where every industry has been increasingly competitive, there is a need for design thinking and visualisation for success. As humans evolved and developed, after believing that we had endless resources at our disposal, and then discovering the limits of our planet, man has been brought to their senses and forced into thinking differently, of living differently, of consuming differently. We realised that if we are to achieve this goal, we must act to ensure the sustainability of services, systems and objects in our everyday surroundings and enable individuals to execute their personal plans as responsible participants of a community. This is the mission of the designer trained at Strate Design School: “to help connect the requirements of utility, ease, simplicity, pleasure, and beauty to the service of humankind.”
Strate Design School is a preferred choice for international and national students owing to its French pedagogy of learning, world-class faculty and mentorship, recognition among the 60 best design schools (Businessweek), recognition among the top 50 design schools in Europe (Domus Magazine), Immersive training, quality live projects and multiple industry interactions, state-of-the-art design labs, 100% quality internships, masterclasses from renowned industry leaders and international faculty and Partnerships with reputed brands. Strate School of Design believes that diversity of students is a must for realising the school’s potential as a top school in the design arena. According to Strate’s headmaster, Saran DIAKITE SABA, “Talents are found in so many different backgrounds, and we look forward to welcoming them”. Strate welcomes students from around the globe every year.
Diverse Faculty for diverse Learning
“Strate School’s faculty is a mix of international and Indian faculty. The faculty members are drawn from the best in the industry with long years of experience in Transportation design, Interaction design, Product Design, and brand identity and visual communication design,” shares Mr Thomas Dal, the Dean and Director of Strate School of Design, Bangalore.
Thomas Dal is not the usual Dean of a Design school as he is not coming from academics. He is a trained designer who comes with 23 years of experience in automotive, furniture, and product design. He was the design lead of Treves, working with all the design studios of the European automotive OEM for almost 10 years, then he created from scratch a well known international school of Design in Pune, and then moved back to industry to be the director of design and Innovation of Decathlon SA., the well known international sport brand. In 2017, he decided to come back to education and to India to strate the indian Branch of Strate School of Design in Bangalore bringing with him all his experience and industry network.
Edmund Spitz leads the department of transportation design. With a Masters degree in Transportation Design Management, he has a long resume of distinguished companies that he has worked with, including being an automotive designer with over a decade in global automotive OEMs and has worked on multiple autonomous vehicle programs for Mercedes-Benz, USA, Germany, and SAIC Innovation Center USA, most notably the 2015 Freightliner Inspiration Autonomous Truck. He is experienced in managing creative teams with award-winning products and established the Bharat Benz Design Studio in India in 2012, growing it to be a key creative team in the Daimler Global Design Network and creating successful products suited for the Domestic market. He brings to academics a fresh and efficient design methodology honed from his time in the corporate design world. Focusing on equipping the next generation of designers with the ever-evolving design tools and practices.
The head of Academics, Mr Mandar Kale, is another name worth mentioning. He is an electrical engineer, an industrial designer and a design education. With a keen sense for observation, he sees design as a juggling act of creation, communication and implementation, along with the emotional element of the user at the core of all activities. Before Strate, Mandar was in a leadership role at ISD – Rubika India, heading an international team of designers to conceive and build conducive and inspiring learning environments. He has been appreciated for his impact on students and his approach to inclusive learning. As a design coach and teacher for over a decade, he has taught design process, creativity, speculative design, design visualisation, and sketch thinking at the postgraduate and undergraduate levels. An alumnus of IDC School of Design (IIT BOMBAY), he has worked across various domains, including automotive, medical products, lifestyle products, retail environments, FMCG, and point of sale, creating products, services, and experiences.
The school is always looking at getting the best experts from around the world to teach and mentor as full time or visiting faculty, giving a real international exposure to the design students.
Being a Design Student at Strate
The student’s life at Strate includes various activities and facilities that students will cherish for a lifetime. The school provides a wide range of indoor games for recreation and refreshment during study breaks. The library, both physical and digital has an assortment of the best design books and manuals for study. The 2D digital lab, equipped with 30 high end stations and their 22inches display tablets provides wings to students’ imaginations, when the 3D computer lab is allowing them to get their idea even closer to reality as they are connected to semi- professional 3D printers and CNC machine and routers in the really fully equipped Workshops.
There are multiple sports, and other events held regularly at Strate to break the monotony of routine study. Masterclasses are periodically provided by international professionals from the global industry. The cafeteria is the hotspot of social exchange and student activities. It is where great ideas are discussed, friendships nurtured and brainstorming over class sessions and innovative ideas are generally done.
One of the most interesting part of Strate School of Design is the fact that the school remains open for students to work late at night, allowing them to use all facilities and workshops to work on their personal projects or finish their industry assignments.
Strate School of Design is proud to present a 100% tuition fee waiver scholarship for the bright young minds! “We firmly believe that every deserving student should have an opportunity to learn and pursue their dream career globally,” shares Mr Thomas. The school offers iLEAD 100% Tuition Fee Waiver Scholarship, Merit Scholarship, In-State Scholarships and Girl Student Scholarship.
Knowing the Who’s who in the industry
Strate School of Design has long understood that industry and academic collaborations are the most important for creating skilled design graduates. This helps students train on the practical applications of design study, and learn the best practices directly from working professionals. In turn, aids in fueling research in the school and keeping the school in sync with the recent methodologies, process, technologies and tools being applied in the design industry. Industry collaborations help in gaining quality live projects for the school and high end interaction with the industry’s leading experts. The best gain for a school with industry and academic collaborations is quality placements and internships.
With about 48+ tie-ups and partnerships, Strate School of Design opens doors for students to explore and work with professionals, helping them to ensure that students get the best of internships and placements. These collaborations include reputed brands like Loreal, Renault, Decathlon, Carrefour, TATA Motors, Renault, and other top names. For collaborations in research, design studies, and sharing of technology and knowledge assets, Strate has academic partnerships with 16+ reputed schools, including Institut Francais Du Design, Universite Laval, Institut national Du Design packaging, Agence Pour La Promotion De La Creation Industrielle, Cap Digital, Paris School of Business, Le Cube Centre Creation Numerique, Le Lieu Du Design, and Grenoble Ecole De Management to name a few. “Collaboration with these global colleges and universities has helped us know the best of their curriculum, learning methodologies, knowledge pool and technologies that are inducted into our school to make our graduates stand out in the crowd and lead the next innovation in the design sector,” Mr Thomas says.
Why Strate?
The Strate School of Design was founded in 1993 in PARIS –France, with a mission to provide a design education that reflects its focus on clarity, simplicity, sound impact, and an international perspective. Strate is recognised as a leading institute in design and decided to expand to India and Africa to achieve recognition and grow its professional network. Over the years, Strate School of Design has built strong partnerships with major French and international schools and universities. Strate, Bangalore offers a Master of Design program with specialisations in Product, Transportation, Brand Identity & Visual Communications, and Interaction. Strate, France offers programs for Designers (5-year training), Modelers (3-year training), Innovative Project Managers (1-year training), and 5 more courses in Creation and Innovation.
Turning a New Leaf
Design disciplines require cohesion of space, ideas and learning as a part of knowledge building. Digitisation of the design environment started long ago. Still, with the pandemic, international design education saw a rapid change.
As the world turned toward digital. Everything became digital and the society became receptive to this new change the was accelerated with pandemic. The Strate Design schoolof Bangalore decided to completely revise its curriculum to adapt it to the new digital needs of the society to be sure that the “Stratos”, the graduate from Strate will get a design education allowing them to deal with ease with the digital era in front of us. Meta verse, AR- VR, haptic and voice recognition, Ai based and parametric design are now included into the foundation of Strate design education which is now a very well balanced equilibrium between human centric design, sustainability, circular economy, and IT technologies making it one of the most advanced and modern syllabus around the globe.
For More Info: https://strate.in/