Design Colleges of the Year 2023

unique pedagogy and mentorship from the best in the design industry.

Strate`s futuristic plan is to expand its campus abroad, especially in Singapore and Bangalore, benefiting from its state recognition and professional network.

While mentioning the story of the institute, Thomas Dal says, "The decision to call ourselves 'Strate' reflects our focus on clarity, simplicity, sound impact, and an international perspective. The subtitle 'School of Design' clearly affirms our mission, that we are a school of design. The school's motto reveals our desire to 'make the world more simple, just, and beautiful' and reiterates the fundamentally humanist approach of the school."

Strate School of Design received recognition from the French th government on 7 December 2015, after closely monitoring the level of pedagogy, research, social policy, administration and management of the Strate School which was published in th BOESR on 7 December 2015.

Over the years, Strate has set new milestones. In a span of 23 years of its operation, we grew from 18 students to 600 students and introduced four design courses (Transportation Design, Communications Design, Product Design, and Interaction Design).

Strate School of Design was launched in India, Bangalore to elevate the design standards prevalent among the students of the country and provide them with international quality training, live projects, internships and placements so that they can make a mark in the design industry globally.

The institute has been doing great since it is led by Thomas Dal. After emphazising the institute's journey, let's dive into the person behind the success.

A Luminary Bigwig

Thomas graduated from ISD (Institut Superieur du Design) France in 1999, then he joined TREVES, a French automotive manufacturer as Head of Innovation and Design (Europe) for Treves . In 2008, he took the challenge to start the DSK –ISD Rubika school of design in Pune. After running this school successfully for three years, he shifted back to France to be the Head of Innovation and Design for Decathlon – Newfeel .

Along with his career in both transportation and product design, Thomas ran his own design consultancy and gained experience in space, graphics, and design through working with multi-national companies.

From the time Thomas Dal joined Strate School of Design, Bangalore, as a Dean, under his leadership, the school has seen a steady rise in acceptance of design students. Bringing more than 20 years of design experience, he ensures that students inculcate the skills and outlook he has learnt in the industry.

He has been instrumental in setting up the design labs and bringing worldclass design education standards to students. He has continuously monitored the pedagogy, growth and learnings of students. Also, their live projects along with this, he also looks after those students should receive industry exposure during their course.

According to him, a holistic approach, curiosity for technology and social fields ensure the success of solving most of the challenges of tomorrow. He also ensured that the school has everything in terms of mentorship, labs, exposure, projects, and many other learning opportunities that can help students fully realise their potential to be a top designers in the industry.

Thomas Dal always focused on the futuristic approach of the institute and worked hard to retain the institute's vision, mission, and core values.

Futuristic Vision, Mission, and Core Values

While stating about the institute's vision, mission, and core values, Thomas Dal asserts, "Strate School was built with the simple motto of making the world simple+just+beautiful by training students to employ design as a problem-solving tool for the world. Our design ends with environmentally sustainable, potable and also provide a new dimension to suffice human and societal development."

Giving a more insightful view of the futuristic vision and their beliefs, he adds, "Our views, beliefs and vision can be summed up in few words mentioned below:

Ÿ Design is the only option!

Ÿ No innovation without design!

Ÿ Design is about humanism!

Ÿ Think about the future!"

Creating New Visual Identity

Strate has set up an agency, H5, in France. It helped them to display the status of the school's project to assist it in its international outlook and create a new, unique image to identity for the institute. With H5, the institute created a bridge between its stakeholders and existing students and established a new visual grammar for design.

After knowing Strate's vision, mission, and core values, Thomas Dal highlights the performance indicator of the courses provided at the institute.

Learning Standards and its Corollary

While cascading the institute's learning standards and positive outcomes of the benchmarks, Thomas Dal mentions ,

"The objectives of all our courses is to impart the core visual, creative, technical, and analytical skills in students, along with knowledge of materials, technologies, manufacturing processes, trends, and advanced working knowledge of the future and current trends, so that students can design advanced and innovative products, concepts and designs."

Although communicating about the technology, the institute also adopted the E-learning platform during the pandemic, and since then, Strate saw positive impacts of the new learning system.

Positive Impact of E-learning

With the considerable outcomes of the institute's benchmark, Thomas Dal asserts that the institute does imply the E-learning platform, and meanwhile, he marks its positive impact on the institute and postulates, "Yes, E-learning efficient, especially during and after the pandemic, when we ensured that students don't miss any aspects of the studies by holding the continuous virtual classes, and we are shifting the design practicals to digital mode. Not only that, E-facilities greatly improved our interaction design training and workshops along with helping us rope in crème de la crème from top design firms in the world for enlightening our students on changing trends in design in the industry."

An impactful educational institute, it has various eccentric programs catering to the student's artistic skills. The details about the programs are elaborated ahead.

Lighter to Ignite the Fire

The programs are the lighter, which ignites the artistic fire in the students of the Strate School of Design. The institute provides the programs like transportation design, interaction design, communications design, and product design.

All these design programs inculcate artistic skills in the students so that they can represent, structure, draw, model, sculpt, and represent flat and 3D designs, along with visual designs through sketches and models for different products, digital objects, automobiles, and many other products.

While ushering about the unique programs of the institute, Thomas Dal asserts, "The first and second year of all the programs are strictly dedicated to developing the necessary artistic skills. We believe that if one can draw out their design, one can easily design."

With regards to the unique programs to inculcate artistic skills in students, the institute also provides some special programs which provide global platforms to the students.

Programs for Cosmic Exposures

The institute does have industry expert faculty members for the masterclasses, and Strate also organises the workshops in which they aim to help the students to stay updated with the changing trends in the design industry.

Contrary to other colleges, the school kept one year for the internship and live projects. Every year the institute provides the opportunity for students to gain industrial experience on the current design trends in the industry.

The school believes that if the students are not taught the demanded trend by the industry in current times and trained on such aspects, the design education is incomplete. Similarly, maximum industry exposure is planned with the help of 40+ industry partnerships.

All the faculties are drawn from the industry having long working experience for the sole reason that they can impart the practical application part of the design in the industry and equip students with the latest skills and knowledge.

After acknowledging all the programs which provide the global platform to the institute's students, Thomas Dal also enlightens us with the strategy through which the institute makes their pupils' future ready.

Enlightening Future of the Education

Strate ensures that the right skills, knowledge, training, industry experience and mentorship have been provided by the best people from the design industry. So that students don't just have a good future and bag excellent offers from the industry but are also potent enough to start a design revolution in whichever niche they are working.

Sliding down more details about the future education system and preparing the students for it, Thomas Dal notes, "We aim to create nothing less than legends who can deliver masterpieces and initiate design innovations in their organizations. We have kept a blend of Indian and International faculty for the same reason and organise regular masterclasses and training them by top design experts coming from firms like Rimac Buggati, Sodexo, Pininfarina and many renowned firms."

All the approaches of the institute have led it towards successive achievements. Let's know more about the massive achievements of the institute.

Tour de Force

After a long interaction with Thomas Dal about the institute, he also emphazises on the awards, accolades, and accreditation of the Strate. Having said that, he also says, "Strate received recognition from the French Government. Strate was ranked as one of the top 60 design schools in the world by Businessweek. The school was ranked among the top 50 design schools in the world by Domus Magazine."

Divulging more about the school's achievements, he enumerates further and postulates, "Owing to its quality, Strate was able to form robust industry partnerships with more than 40+ companies, notably Decathlon, Volkswagen, Carrefour, Loreal and many esteemed firms. It entered into a partnership with Jain University. We have set up a flourishing, fully equipped campus (over 3000 square metres) in 2010 for design training. Who's who of the design world imparts masterclasses and training to our students."

Although the institute shares all its accomplishments since its inception, the readers are curious to learn more about the prestigious institute's future vision to achieve success in the design education sector.

Visualising the Future Approaches

While piloting all the necessary details about the Strate School of Design, Thomas Dal also shared the futuristic educational approach saying, "We believe Strate School of Design is the most happening phenomena that it is going to transform the standard of design education in India. We believe that we would be raising the designers of India in a manner that they start creating landmark designs for cars, for different products, for multiple other structures and establish themselves as legends in the world."

Further, he notes that, "We have still not seen that level of design consciousness in India. Strate School of design is going to rapidly expand its bases globally, with success being attained in each country. Basically, we aim for a status that when students and industry think about design innovations in the world, the first name that should come to their mind should be of Strate School of Design."