CEED (Common Entrance Examination for Design) is an all-India examination conducted by IIT Bombay, on behalf of the ministry of human resources development, department of education, Government of India.

The CEED/GATE qualification in itself does not guarantee admission to the above mentioned programmes. You also have to fulfil other requirements such as tests and interviews of the respective institutions for admission.

The courses offered under the CEED are MDes in industrial design at IDC, IIT Bombay and IDDC, IIT Delhi; MDes in product design and engineering at IISc Bangalore; MDes in visual communication at IDC, IIT Bombay; MDes at design programme, IIT Kanpur

Application forms will be issued only by the GATE Office, IIT Bombay, on payment of Rs 990 (Rs 495 for SC/ST candidates) by crossed demand draft in favour of IIT Bombay and payable at Mumbai. Forms can be collected personally at the GATE Office counter or by sending a request letter along with the DD, by post. Two address slips should be enclosed along with the request for sending the application-cum-brochure by post. The last date for request for application-cum-brochure by post is in the third week of October. For more information, you can write to the GATE office, Indian Institute of Technology, Powai, Mumbai 400076, or visit www.iitb.ac.in/gate.

Eligibility: You must either have completed or be expecting to complete any of the following undergraduate studies: a) Bachelors degree in engineering or equivalent in any branch b) Bachelors degree in architecture or equivalent c) Bachelors degree in design d) Interior Design Professional Diploma of CEPT (5-year programme) e) BFA (professional course in applied art/ fine art) f) GD Art (five-year professional programme) g) Professional diploma from NID. There is no age limit and you can take CEED any number of times.

A fixed number of assistantships, based on merit, are available to pursue the programmes. Other candidates, if granted admission, will have to organise for finance/ sponsorships on their own.

Entrance exam

The entrance exam is held in January, from 9.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. CEED is conducted at Mumbai, New Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Chennai, and Bangalore.

Pattern of exam

The examination tests the candidates for visual perception ability, drawing skills, design aptitude and communication skills. The exam consists of two parts.

The first part tests your drawing skills, aesthetic sensibility, creativity, problem identification and your approach to visual and mechanical design. The second part is mainly objective-type and tests your skills on visualisation, creativity, design, general awareness and comprehension.

How to prepare

No textbook or guidebook preparations are necessary to appear in CEED. You can, however, polish your drawing and rendering skills. Typical examples of questions assess your ability to visualise objects, buildings and landscape scenery. Therefore, observe such images in magazines like Inside Outside or on construction sites to be able to reproduce the drawing on paper accurately. You need to sharpen your power of observation and practise sketching and shading.

Visual literacy is also an important aspect wherein you have to describe a situation depicted in a sketch, for example, the conversation between two women. The character sketch should be competently handled.

sample test paper

Creativity

• Show in various creative ways the alphabet “a” changing into an apple.
(There is square which has 5 rows and 5 columns. The 1st column has the alphabet "a", 2nd, 3rd and 4th column is blank, the 5th column has an apple.)

Design

• Design a poster announcing the CEED 2020 examination.
• Design a A comic strip keeping the water kingdom details in mind.

Sketch and write

• Do a picture sketch, writing a conversation between two elderly women (character sketch is important). 150 words

Imagination

• Think of yourself as a blind man and design a thought process in his mind, while he would cross the road from point x to the other end. (There is busy street with a bus stop and shops on the other side)