Kunal Dutta studied Fashion Design from the first generation fashion school in the country – National Institute of Fashion Technology, Gandhinagar, and holds a Masters in Fashion & Textiles from Nottingham Trent University, UK. Currently, he is pursuing a second Masters in Education from IGNOU, Delhi. As an early millennial design-student, he had the opportunity to learn from and interact with masters of Art, Design, Craft, Architecture & Textiles, and many legendary professors of NID, CEPT University, IIM Ahmedabad, MSU Vadodara & MICA Ahmedabad. He has more than 20 years of professional experience in the diverse areas of apparel / textile design, visual merchandising & exhibition design, graphic & visual communication design and subsequently aesthetic curating & art direction for a variety of creative industries. In the last 14 years, he has dedicated his time to ‘Design Education’ & nurtured young talents in esteemed institutes like NIFT, IICD Jaipur, Pearl Academy, UID & Srishti Manipal Institute along with Domus Academy (Milan, Italy) as an exchange faculty, while simultaneously pursuing a personal research-based practice in visual art. He has worked at various hierarchy levels, from an absolute hands-on-ground execution of design projects up-to contributing towards core strategic planning, curriculum design, industry-academia liaisons, academic leadership & holistic institution building. Within various levels of engagement with design academia, his specialised areas of teaching have been – design process & development; fashion research & decoding, design writing & analysis; craft, culture & aesthetics appreciation; drawing, illustration & digital design; identity, portfolio & fashion publication design etc. He also conducts specialised design relevant workshops/tutorials and design-thinking sprints with young design aspirants across the country, and is frequently invited to speak on different facets of design at masterclass sessions & seminars. He often serves as a guest faculty/speaker, external-examiner & jury member for design schools at NIFT, Srishti Manipal Institute, Manipal University, Karnavati University, KIIT University, Amity University, Delhi Public School, IIS University, JECRC University and others.

Design is but a common human consciousness which empowers us make our lives better or convenient.

• Research Summary
• The diversity in my professional engagement tends to widen my subject choice variables. The following are few areas of interest that I would like to delve into and create possibilities of further research
• Human-centered narratives, emotional relationships and diverse ecological journeys of a mass-produced industrial artefact in India (e.g. an item of clothing, a plastic moulded chair, a rubber sandal etc.)
• Human-skill factors, indigenous community, practices and cultural chronology in India engaging in family-made products (e.g. craft-based products engaging a complete family)
• Influence & impact of the skill set of photography and the photographic image reference in creating a foreign or external evidence of learning and understanding ‘design’ & ‘design process’ at Indian design schools
• Alternate photograph printmaking methods (e.g. cyanotype) and their role in expanding an innovative visual language as well as image-making methodology
• Experimental & experiential exhibition (analogue / digital / hyperreal) methods creating new archival systems and benefitting public showcase of impactful visual narratives
• Research Interests
• As a scholar/researcher, his interest areas have been to explore and observe on
• human-centered indigenous design narratives
• the digital image as reference to culture
• innovation in visual arts & image-making
• experiential visual exhibit systems etc.

• 2022 - Photography showcase – My Kolkata in Kolkata 3.0

• Kolkata Centre for Creativity 2017

• Showcase of textile sculpture project

• Amazon India Fashion Week, FDCI 2014

• Award for Best Performance – Design Faculty

• Pearl Academy, Delhi 2010-13

• Excellence Award – Design Mentoring

• ARCH College of Design & Business, Jaipur