Wear different hats, enjoy the ride, and make mistakes while it’s just gonna cost you grades.
Hi, champ!
I am Vignesh, this is my story at IIITDM and I am writing this with a teeny tiny hope that this would inspire you to take that one step.
I joined IIITDM Kancheepuram for Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering, Design, and Manufacturing in 2016, only to get a branch transfer to Computer Engineering. Just like most of you, I was flattered by the fancy infrastructure and the fact that the campus is in my hometown, this seemed to be a perfect fit. I’ve always had a zest for coding since high-school and I’m not gonna lie, I believed it’d be cool to be a computer geek. I was constantly involved in competitive programming and had decent grades at the end of my first semester. I didn’t have an opinion about mechanical engineering because I never cared to really as I was confident of changing my branch. But (un)fortunately at the end of the first year, my grades weren’t good enough for a branch transfer and reality hit me that I’m stuck with mechanical engineering and I don’t have a choice.
Entering my first year of mechanical engineering in my 3rd semester of college, I had a WTF moment realizing that this is not something I want to keep doing for the rest of my life and honestly, mechanics and fluids and heat transfer didn’t interest me a bit and I never had the guts to drop out of the college to pursue my dreams because I never had one. It was this semester I attended Systems Thinking for Design offered by Dr. Sudhir Varadarajan. I was fascinated by how he wanted me to choose the project topic of my interest in the very first class by forming groups when all other courses were a one way street of professors trying to impart knowledge. This was the only course I attended sincerely that semester because A. it was non-mechanical B. It was very interesting. It was my first encounter with the ‘DES’ set of courses which I didn’t realize was also a part of my curriculum. In the following semester, I attended “Sociology in Design” offered by the same faculty which majorly dealt with the ‘people’ part in the design. The course was interesting and intriguing and I realized design is something that I wanted to be associated with. Although I liked the field of design very much, I was not sure what kind of design medium I wanted to be part of.
DESIGN
I wanted to be part of a club in the college to experience the culture and for the fun of it. I always had a thing for aesthetics, so I decided to join the photography club in my second year. Little did I know that being a co-ordinator in the photography club otherwise meant an apprentice photographer to cover the institute events and the fests. Interestingly, the broken club culture of the institute was the starting point of my graphic design journey. This was a few weeks before the annual cultural fest-Samgatha, with tight deadlines for promotions and the graphic design club was overloaded with requests. Again, the photography club was standing last in the pipeline. So, I embraced the wannabe newly-partially-self learned graphic designer to come up with a set of posters just to ease out the situation. I quickly came up with these concepts and shared it with the then core, who surprisingly liked my design and thus I created my first ever graphic work.
Doing this work gave a sort of kick and I liked creating something original. Out of sheer curiosity, I learned the basics of visual design, typography, and composition by making hell a lot of bad designs. The two things that helped me grow as a visual designer was
- I never felt bad about producing bad designs. I made so many mistakes during the learning curve, I started getting better at identifying them precisely which helped me get better.
- I was never embarrassed to ask for help or advice or suggestions whenever required. Also, I started following a lot of design pages, and professionals for inspiration and to be aware of the current trends.
In the course, I did quite a few intra-campus works and freelance gigs which eventually got me my first internship at MaDeIT Technology Incubator as a digital marketing intern during the summer of 2018. Being an intern in a very small organization, I had to take up multiple responsibilities. I helped them with graphic designing, content creation, digital marketing, and field-marketing. This internship period gave me the exposure to technology incubation culture and entrepreneurship in India.
FUN FACT: I stayed on campus for the 2 months of the internship and there was a period when there was single no resident for the next 5 floors of the hostel. It got really spooky one night when the security guard came knocking my door at midnight xD
Though I wasn’t fond of the core mechanical courses, I had a strong inclination towards the practice courses that introduced me to 3D modeling. Thanks to the skills gained through these courses and with sufficient design knowledge I was able to land an internship for a product designer role at a start-up based in Hong Kong, China. I worked with them remotely for 3 months rethinking the use of disposable coffee cups and coming up with an alternative. Working at this firm made me aware of the industry expectation of a designer in the real-world and provided me with valuable experience of being part of the start-up culture.
To further explore the width of the design, I chose to work on a user-experience based project as part of my Design Project in my 7th semester. I worked on the usability of touch-screen tablets particularly the posture study. I had an incredible time working on this project that I ended up spending days and nights in the lab (L009). I found joy in exploring the unstated needs and requirements as I went on to develop a product to address the issue as my graduation project.
Reflecting on the encounters that I had with ‘design’ both in academia and industry, I was convinced this is something that I wanted to keep doing for the rest of my life. I want to understand the needs of people, conceptualize a meaningful solution, and deliver a profitable outcome.
FOOTBALL
Football has always been something close to my heart ever since high-school. I’ve always liked football as a sport because I believe it encourages brotherhood and discipline. I went to this peculiar school that banned students from playing football and maybe I started to like the sport better as a show of rebel against the stupid policy. I used to play football with my school friends in the hood when the rest of the boys my age used to major in cricket. I was hoping to continue playing the sport even after joining college but I was timid as I never had any training or professional experience. It all started right from the first day of college when my friend and I gathered up the courage to approach two seniors who were booting up in the ground if we could join the practice. It is fascinating how one step had an incredible impact on everything after. The first day was very demanding as most of the people in the game were seniors, bigger and better than me in every aspect. I was thoroughly exhausted, barely breathing and all sweaty; but I was the happiest man at that moment when I told my friend “ Macha, daily aadlam da ”.
It was in that field I first felt the true spirit of the game. I was fortunate enough to get a chance to play for the institute team in my first year ( 2016 ), also the year of the first inter IIIT sports meet. The biggest achievement of that sports meet was making it happen, because of the catastrophic event of ‘Vardah’ which made things a hundred times difficult. One thing about that year’s football team was that it consisted of 7 players who were graduating that year. There was an inevitable rebuilding process meant to happen the successive year which was feared by everyone.
It is important to understand the context in which sports are being perceived by all the actors here. The institute does support sports but only to an extent. We don’t have a regular trainer/coach to build the team because sports fall under low priority when it comes to expenditure. We needed to show the institute results in the form of trophies and medals and the only tournament which we were allowed to participate in was the inter IIIT sports meet. So, getting a good result in the sports meet was so crucial as it was the only way to change dynamics and improve the sporting culture of the institute. The primary goal for the students (players) is their professional career and football is something that comes out of passion. A student on an average stays in the institute for 4 years and it is less time for someone to grow as a leader/coach, while also improving his own game as most of us are still amateurs. Therefore, re-building a team was an Himalayan task that fell in the laps of my immediate seniors.
There was one change that was brought in during the rebuilding phase, that is the team predominantly consisted of 1st and 2nd years. I have to mention the efforts of Shiv Vidyut and Neeraj Nair who through their constant efforts were able to identify, motivate and train young lads from the first year and prepare them for the coming inter IIITs. Though the next inter-IIIT sports meet at Gwalior saw a bizarre end due to organizational issues, the take away from that tournament was the game against IIIT Allahabad, who we faced in a do or die situation. Allahabad team was one of the most disciplined or as we call well drilled team that had the most beautiful game in the tournament. It was during that game when the team stood up, with amazing chemistry and great leadership. We went on to face a very good opponent with a strong mind and a plan, and execution of the plan to the detail saw us winning the game, marking the first success after rebuilding.
The team for the next sports-meet almost remained unchanged as none of the players were graduating that year. We were able to develop good team chemistry throughout and the hunger for winning the gold was immense. We won the first gold medal for football in the inter-IIIT sports meet that year in Allahabad without losing a single game in the tournament. People usually think it was that few months of preparation that led to this feat but it was the pre-meditated team building over a period of 2 years that made it happen.
This philosophy of including the first-year kids into the institute team is the most effective way for sports teams to thrive in the institute. By the time a player reaches his third year, he would have had 2 years of playing experience, making him fit to develop juniors and pass it on. I am very happy to have been a part of this amazing team over a period of 4 years and am very confident of the boys to keep it going.
I had my share of fun during college, filled with wild adventures and memorable parties. I was constantly exploring things, assuming responsibilities, and always playing football. My advice is; wear different hats, enjoy the ride, and make mistakes while it’s just gonna cost you grades.
I will be continuing my journey in the field of design by pursuing MSc. Strategic Product Design at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft, Netherlands.
VIGNESH BALAKRISHNAN
BATCH OF 2020.
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Thanks a lot for reading! You can connect with Vignesh on @vignesh…_b (Instagram) or vignesh.sep1@gmail.com (mail)
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