Learn to turn your design skills into products and career opportunities by understanding materials, customers, pricing, and business.
18 August 2026 | 3:00 PM IST
With Aniena Francis | Hybrid Designer & Entrepreneur
Your Design Degree Is Not Your Limit.
What if your design skills could take you beyond your current specialisation?
A textile designer can explore product design.
A product designer can experiment with materials.
A fashion designer can build a brand.
And any designer can learn to think about customers, pricing, and business.
In this masterclass, Aniena Francis shares her journey from working with global organisations like IKEA and Thule Group to building an independent experimental brand that combines textile heritage with resin .
More importantly, she will talk about what happens when you take your design skills beyond the predictable path.
What You Will Take Away?
Experiment Beyond Your Specialisation
Learn how combining different design disciplines and materials can open up new ways of creating.
Understand How Materials Behave
See how experimentation with materials can lead to unexpected ideas and products—not just visually attractive designs.
Think Beyond the Portfolio
Understand how to evaluate whether an idea can work outside the studio and in the real world.
Understand Customers & Pricing
Learn why a great product isn't enough—and how customers, perceived value and pricing influence whether an idea can succeed.
Build Business Thinking
Get a realistic introduction to the decisions involved in taking a creative idea towards a product, brand or independent practice.
Learn to Adapt & Pivot
Understand why your first idea may not be your final direction—and why learning from the market is part of building a creative career.
FROM DESIGNER TO CREATOR
Design doesn't have to end with a portfolio.
This session explores what happens when you start asking:
What else can I create with what I already know?
Who would actually value it?
What would they pay for it?
And where could this take my career?
WHO IS THIS MASTERCLASS FOR?
This masterclass is for students and young professionals from:
- Fashion Design
- Textile Design
- Product / Industrial Design
- Interior Design
- UI/UX Design
- Communication / Graphic Design
- Architecture
- Other creative disciplines
You don't need to be an entrepreneur to attend.
You simply need to be curious about what your design skills can do beyond your current domain.
MEET THE EXPERT
Aniena Francis
Hybrid Designer & Entrepreneur
Aniena brings together design education, global corporate experience and an ongoing entrepreneurial journey.
Her experience spans NIFT, IKEA and Thule Group , followed by the development of an independent experimental brand exploring the intersection of textile heritage, materials and resin .
Her journey offers students something beyond a success story: an honest look at experimentation, uncertainty, pricing, customer reactions, pivots and the realities of building something of your own.
WHY ATTEND?
Because the design industry is changing.
Your ability to create matters.
But so does your ability to
experiment, understand people, adapt and create value.
This masterclass will help you start thinking beyond:
“What kind of designer am I?”
and towards:
“What can I do with my design skills?”
