The initiator and the founder of India’s first Master of Design Programme in Visual Communication in 1981; Kirti Trivedi (born 1948, Gwalior, India) is a former Professor from the Industrial Design Centre, IIT, Bombay. After a degree in Mechanical Engineering, he did postgraduate studies in Industrial Design from IIT, Bombay, and the Royal College of Art, London. In 1981, he worked as a UNESCO Fellow in Japan, under the guidance of Prof. Kohei Sugiura, and was introduced by him to the intellectual depth and the richness of Asian Design.

Besides teaching and design research, he is active as a design consultant in the areas of Graphic Design, Book Design, Exhibition and Museum design, Environmental Graphics, Signage, and Product Design: with numerous publications and awards both nationally and internationally. In 2011, he was invited by the School of Art, Design and Media at NTU, Singapore to help set up a Centre for Asian Design, and introduce new programmes in Asian Design, Projection Arts and Islamic Design.

He is frequently invited to speak at International conferences and seminars on design; and presentations have included those at ICOGRADA, Nice; Design for Development, Nairobi; Oullim Millennium Congress, Seoul; ISIS-Symmetry Congresses at Budapest, Hiroshima and Sydney; Vision Plus 8, Vienna; Asian Design Round Table, Japan. He was one of the six international educationists invited to help draft the Manifesto for the Future of Design Education, presented at Oullim 2000, in Seoul, South Korea. Among his recent major projects are the National Salt Satyagraha Memorial at Dandi, Gujarat; and Mahapratapi Bhoj Museum at Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. His current research is in developing appropriate interaction design solutions for Indian needs based on emerging technology possibilities. He is also engaged in developing a new model for design education, appropriate for the digital age, with the changed context of AI tools and a new student profile. Besides mentoring the B. Des. program at Centre for Design Studies, Indore; he is working with IIT Indore as a Visiting Distinguished Professor; and is the Project Head for India’s first School of Innovation, which has admitted the first batch of students to its B.Des. program from August 2025.