4 min readOct 27, 2026 06:26 PM IST First published on: Oct 27, 2026 at 06:26 PM ISTBy Anil ZankarI heard of Professor Sudhakar Nadkarni in 2017, when he received a lifetime award from IISc. What little information came my way triggered my curiosity about him, leading me to his book The Design Journey. This professional autobiography of a designer made me marvel at his achievements, the longevity of his career and the sheer energy with which he worked. Also striking was his tendency to always acknowledge his colleagues’ contributions. Most of his endeavours were collective efforts, with credits shared fairly. Subsequently, I decided to film him and obtained some marvellous footage from his long interviews. It revealed to me the many finer and humane aspects of his work and personality.AdvertisementNadkarni breathed his last on October 20 in Mumbai at the age of 90. His seven-decade-long career began in 1958 when he joined an advertising agency in Mumbai as a commercial artist. There, a colleague, Yeshwant Chaudhury, advised him to join Ulm Design School in Germany, which was at the time reputed to be the best design school in the world. Nadkarni landed in Ulm in December 1962, dressed in summer clothes, with no knowledge of what design meant, nor of the German language.Also Read | Why good design is invisible according to design guru Don NormanThis middle-class Marathi boy’s journey would eventually develop into a glorious chapter of design practice and design education in India. In 1966, on returning to India as a well-formed designer, Nadkarni joined the small group of pioneering design teachers at NID. In 1969 at IIT Bombay, he set up the Industrial Design Centre (IDC) and raised it to global stature through a rigorous curriculum and international collaborations. He arranged for the young teachers to get global exposure. After he stepped down in 1997, he was invited by IIT Guwahati to set up a design department there. Then, in 2004, when he returned to Mumbai, Welingkar Management Institute invited him to set up a customised design department. He remained formally associated with the institute till 2020.It was Nadkarni’s belief that a designer must be informed by his own socio-cultural tradition on the one hand and emerging modernity on the other. Although trained in the best and the latest European tradition, he strongly believed in developing an Indian perspective. Nadkarni’s final-year thesis at Ulm (in 1966) was called “Design as one of the factors in developmental planning, India as an example”. His design for the final project was the iconic Aarey Milk Booth. He despised elitism in design practice.AdvertisementEver a strict disciplinarian, there was also something of the maverick about him. Students held him in awe, but they could also draw caricatures of their favourite “Nadu sir”. In June, when his book by design was released, the function was attended by a few hundred people — mostly his students and colleagues. They put up skits that presented him as the absent-minded professor; but the reverence and the warmth in which they held him was unmistakable.Besides IISc, Nadkarni has been honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the India Design Association (2015) for building institutions such as the IDC and the Department of Design at IIT Guwahati, and his contribution to the field of design in the country. The Bauhaus Manifesto defined an artist as “an exalted artisan”. Professor Nadkarni was the perfect example of this. When the Ulm school closed down, its tradition found a new life in India thanks to him.Zankar is a writer and filmmaker