Design for India

Design for Good Governance: A Call for Change

2011-08-11T21:54:00.005+05:30

The result of many national plans since Independence is the grave political and social unrest that is facing us in the form of a very angry citizen near the bottom of the pyramid who for the first time can see the lives of the other affluent sections and the growing middle class played out in full colour in daily broadcasts of the television channels and the open access through the internet in an age of heightened communication. Access to communication brings transparency and raises aspirations for dramatic change.

Charles & Ray Eames had warned us about this impending impact of such disruptive change through extended communication, a change in kind and not in degree they said, in their 1958 India Report based on which the National Institute of Design was set up in 1961. We have not paid heed to this sanguine advice it seems. They had called for the use of design to address the needs and aspirations of a people in the throes of such change but we have perhaps let slip an advantage by not channeling adequate investments to address their dreams and aspirations in close partnership with the people directly. The communication boom and an era of transparency have ensured that the Indian consumers are no longer willing to accept the mediocre which was often provided locally by the makeshift offerings popularly called “Jugaad”, when better value is now available. For example, in many parts of India the poor have shunned incompetent public education systems to place their child in more expensive private schools and in going the extra mile to avail quality where it is on offer, a new phenomenon for both urban and rural India that is communication enabled.

No international design solutions are available that are ready and off the shelf to address the pressing problems of the Indian people such as affordable healthcare, rural and urban sanitation, dispersed quality education at the primary and secondary levels, agricultural and rural tools, rural housing and mobility and a host of other design opportunities across 230 sectors of our economy that are in crying need of design attention. These will have to be addressed locally and innovation and design will be the way forward but the infrastructure for action is not in place since the existing institutes are barking up the wrong tree it seems.

There is a new form of design action that is being innovated ad applied which is not to be confused with the form giving activity of traditional industrial design and usability exercises, although it would include elements from the old form of design thought and action. Here we are proposing that the design action take into account the structure of society along with their macro aspirations, their histories and cultural preferences as a starting point and from here build imaginative approaches for products, services and systems that would include the meta-system, the infrastructure, the hardware, the software and the processware to ensure a perfect fit to the circumstances and requirements of the particular situation. This kind of offering is complex and would need a multitude of knowledge and skill sets to be brought to bear with sensitive social and cultural orientation and with a fine tuned economic and technical feasibility. Design for inclusive development is therefore a multi-disciplinary activity that needs to draw a variety of knowledge and skills in an innovative and future oriented setting that is well informed about the legal and the ethical parameters.

In this form it becomes a powerful political activity since it is propositional in the manner in which it visualizes and presents several realizable alternatives for the stakeholders from which the process of selection and decision can begin in a climate of optimism and participation. It is a democratic activity at the very heart and gives power to the people who are at the location and to those who would be most impacted by its implementation. This shift in design thinking can be better understood through the model that I have proposed that explains the Three Orders of Design – Form, Structure and System – material & functional, aesthetic & socio-economic, environmental and political – all of which need to be addressed in all cases if we are to be assured of its sustainability and relevance to the local context.

The opportunities that are available in our society today can keep all of us busy and productive for many years to come. Addressing these can be a challenge for both technology as well as art education and create business opportunities for a host of new services and products that are unique to our situation which I will attempt to illustrate with some case examples and metaphors. Further, I also find the peer review system of the research publications as not so perfect for the dissemination of design insights although it does work wonders for science analysis and knowledge creation but it may be extremely defective for design demonstration since the idea of “design opportunity”, a very specific term – a combination of perception and imagination – excludes the viewer or reader from "seeing" the imagination part of the designers statement and therefore it compels the designer to take the idea far down the visualisation and realization path before it can even dawn on others that the idea is truly credible. This means that we may need to create a platform or even a multitude of platforms for design incubation and development that can be accessible to many across numerous areas of application and these kinds of platforms just do not exist in India today,

How do we create effective autonomous and decentralized action strategies and how do we roll this out across our country? This will be one of the central questions that can change the current impasse in development approaches dealing with poverty and development in many parts of India. The current conviction that we hold is the use of a macro-micro design strategy which has been developed after years of application. Use of design thinking will be at the heart of our strategy to try and achieve these innovative offerings. One particular form of thinking which is abductive thinking which is used by all those who eventually achieve new and path breaking approaches. This involves looking to the future with a search for potential possibilities and alternatives rather than analyzing past approaches to find mistakes to correct. In my view this kind of thinking (abductive) when combined with the action of visualization and building models that externalize the thought into tangible forms are at the base of the building of conviction and motivation that may be needed by communities of decision makers.

The lecture will explore models for design thinking and share some useful metaphors to help grasp the complex ideas. This kind of thought is not the sole purview of the designer but the combination of this kind abductive thought with the action of visualization is the root of most break through innovations and inventions. The big question for me is how can we place this in the hands of many disciplines across the university and not let it remain in the realms of art and design centres and a few management institutes. Such action is also political in nature since the future focused act of building possibilities challenges current positions and comfort zones.

Perhaps the myth of design thinking needs to be propagated so that all disciplines try their hands at this adrenalin creating kind of thinking with action and make it a part of their own method, a sort of sprinkling of the design salts into their own sets of tools.

Download the visual presentation and abstract of my keynote lecture at the Jaype Institute of Information Technology, Noida delivered last week as a pdf file from this link here.
Design for Good Governance pdf file 5.0 mb

Inclusive Design: Invitation to Davos

2011-01-21T14:40:00.007+05:30

Inclusive Design for Development in India

Prof M P Ranjan
Design Thinker & Independent Academic, Ahmedabad

I have been invited to speak at Davos on the 28th January 2011 as part of the India - Future of Change initiative's event on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum. The event is a panel discussion moderated by Tim Brown and the focus is on Design, Innovation and Entrepreneurship for development in India. The India - Future of Change has a huge task ahead of them and the various events planned by the team is covered at their website here. I have prepared a background note that explores the contours of the Inclusive Design agenda and makes a call for drastic change in the design establishment in India so that these changes can start playing a constructive role here in India and some of these could be influenced by the happenings at Davos next week. The full text of my submission is quoted below and it is also carried at the India - Future of Change website as well.

Image: Thumbnail images of bamboo plantations, product development workshops as well as crafts entrepreneur and farmer cooperations, all part of the macro-micro design strategy that we had called the "Seedlings of Wealth" – has now seeded a new era of development in Katlamara, Tripura using inclusive design as a way forward. (Download pdf 47 mb) Such prototypes and business models are at the heart of inclusive design agenda for India and we need to adopt it and apply it across the length and breadth of India today.

Quote:
"If we do not work on more prototypes which mainfest in action all our collective understanding regarding our relation to living, work and celebration, then design will indeed not do its bit for India. We talk too much, and do less. Or do in areas or in ways that only talk the same language of legacy thinking. No other nation in the world has the opportunity as we do, since our diversity is the trait which helps us survive, and yet design is working to strip that down to a singular or mono-cultures."
Poonam Bir Kasturi, Bangalore
UnQuote

In 2009 the design community from India was represented by proxy at Davos since the NID team was involved in the design of five posters on sustainability that were used as a backdrop by a high power committee of CEO's from the consumer products industries. I had reported about these posters in previous blog posts here on Design for India blog. However this year the India Future of Change team has decided to distribute these posters as a booklet at their events in Davos and the work done in 2009 will now be available widely at the mainstreet in Davos. I hope that the policy makes will take heed.

Another initiative that we did at NID was the mapping and articulation of the diverse and ubiquitous hand crafts skills all across India which we believe to be the foundation for inclusive action and the seeding of the creative economy of the future for India. The outcome of this research effort was the book titled Handmade in India that maps the existing skills and resources of the crafts sector all located in the vibrant meta-clusters across all regions of India as a living resource that is available for creative reinterpretation using design strategy and action in an inclusive and non-exploitative mode. I have written about the underlying intentions and strategies at previous posts on this blog here below. This can be realized if we are able to make the investments needed in innovation and design that can use this resource to seed the changes on the ground in an inclusive manner. Digital version of the book Handmade in India can be downloaded from this link here as a pdf file 337 mb size.

Design for Inclusive Development

Prof M P Ranjan
Design Thinker & Independent Academic
Ahmedabad

Our economists and planners have got used to the idea of measuring progress by the growth and their metrics include industrial production, agricultural production and the growth of money itself in the system along with the notional value of a host of financial instruments and derivatives that reside in the digital space. Politicians have not been told that there could be other ways to measure progress and if they have the theory of economics is very sparse in this area. Design education and innovation in India too has languished in the shade of scientific and technological investments (S&T). The deep-seated belief in the Planning Commission and the Political establishment, both in Government and in the Opposition, is that huge investments in science and technology combined with private entrepreneurship and the profit motive will somehow solve the problems of inclusive growth that is beleaguering the Indian economy. This is a consensus that has played itself out in the IT & software revolution in the Silicon Valley and more money is placed in the S&T kitty but the problems seem to grow, nevertheless. The huge gap between the haves and the have-nots grow by the day and the promises that are held out by the advocates of innovation investments in S&T behold a hot social and political time bomb waiting to explode in all our faces. The other approach is more direct, that of providing direct subsidies through political appeasement that is resorted to by Central and State Governments using pre-poll promises and politically mediated grants and aid that are dished out to the poverty ridden folks through direct action primarily to nurture a vote bank. Unfortunately, here too the delivery system is so porous and corruption so rampant through our society that it permeates the system all the way through the supply chain, leaving a very unsatisfied public that is simmering at the fringes, both urban and rural, all over the country. Our corporate bodies too are no better at addressing these needs with all the disclosures that are coming out in the media on a daily basis these days.

The result of all these plans and actions is the grave political and social unrest that is facing us in the form of a very angry citizen near the bottom of the pyramid who can for the first time see the lives of the other affluent sections and the growing middle class played out in full colour in daily broadcasts of the television channels and the open access through the internet in an age of heightened communication. Charles & Ray Eames had warned us about this impending impact of such disruptive change through extended communication, a change in kind and not in degree they said, in their 1958 India Report and we have not paid heed to this sanguine advice. He had called for the use of design to address the needs and aspirations of a people in the throes of such change but we have perhaps let slip an advantage by not channeling adequate investments to address their dreams and aspirations in close partnership with the people directly. Innovation at the grassroots has become a buzzword in management circles and here the case studies that are celebrated fall into the category of Jugaad (creative make-shift) and not of Design (intentional and sensitive configurations) as we would argue that it should be. Jugaad stands for the creative interpretation of severe limitations and shortages to produce a workable contraption or scheme held together by available opportunity, hope and hard work, always at a fraction of the cost that would otherwise have been available, with most of the action lying in the unregulated space of zero taxation and technical specifications, in many cases illegal. So the celebration is in the extreme cost cutting that has been achieved by the poverty ridden creator and service provider and the rest of us stand in mute respect for the heroic achievement, the response of the poor or a clever service provider to an impossible situation, a sheer act of survival. Unfortunately, Jugaad also fosters a Chalta-hai (make-do) attitude that permeates all our offerings from Government services to low cost infrastructure, products and service solutions that are not sustainable for inclusive development, all lacking in refinement and costly in the long run, creating the platform for a low quality sub-culture far from the rich tapestry of traditional wisdom that are at the very foundation of the Indian society that has somehow survived till date. However is this the only way? Is there another way?

The communication boom and an era of transparency have ensured that the Indian consumers are no longer willing to accept the mediocre when better value is available. For example, in many parts of India the poor have shunned incompetent public education systems to place their child in expensive private schools and in going the extra mile to avail quality where it is on offer, a new phenomenon for both urban and rural India that is communication enabled. However, the design establishment in the country has languished in the face of great apathy from both Government and industry during an extended period of a highly regulated and centrally managed economy and the absence of any real competition. Design schools like the National Institute of Design have suffered from an absence of both funding and vision in recent years and the National Design Policy of 2007 too has a very limited mandate which does not include the huge opportunities that exist for local investments in innovation and design for inclusive development. It stops short of harping on slogans and on the export and luxury product industries as their area of focus. Further, on the education front while several new NID’s are proposed to be funded by Government there is an absence of any new vision statement as to their focus and purpose as if the model exemplified by NID Ahmedabad could be used as a clone for the creation of these new centres in four geographical regions of India, a missed opportunity to address the change that is taking place in our country. The India Design Council, another outcome of the National Design Policy is harping on “Good Design” as a quality benchmark which is product of Western Industry and their consumer marketing focus that is least suited to evaluate design solutions for inclusive development that is now needed in India.

No international design solutions are available that are ready and off the shelf to address the pressing problems of the Indian people such as affordable healthcare, rural and urban sanitation, dispersed quality education at the primary and secondary levels, agricultural and rural tools, rural housing and mobility and a host of other design opportunities across 230 sectors of our economy that are in crying need of design attention. These will have to be addressed locally and innovation and design will be the way forward but the infrastructure for action is not in place since the existing institutes are barking up the wrong tree it seems. The Eames Report and the National Institute of Design in the early years innovated an unique education programme in design that was addressing these very issues but over the last ten years these advances in design education and research were systematically demolished by literally throwing the baby out with the bathwater in their misguided effort to get university status and in the search for qualification rather than content and relevance. The DIPP, the department in Government that handles the NID budgets and the National Design Policy has proved to be patently incompetent to support the design movement in the country and to move it in directions that it needs to be taken if it to be relevant to the creation of a platform for inclusive development. Perhaps their limited mandate to address the needs of Indian industry has made them myopic to the larger roles that design has to play if it to be relevant to our national agenda. Design is not a mere hand-maiden for industrial development but a much broader strategy that can help transform society and feed into the culture forming processes of a country and a region. The evidence of this incompetence is visible in the poor quality of vision and funding that is provided to the NID when compared to the IITs and IIMs, both of which were set up around the same time in the early 60’s. The National Institutes of Fashion Technology (NIFT) was set up in the late 80’s through the Textile Ministry and they used a special export cess that was accumulated with Government to rapidly fund the establishment and growth of a huge national infrastructure that is now recognised as a university of national importance. Further, NID’s faculty are a poorly remunerated lot when compared to their counterparts in any comparable institute or university in India and this I am sure will ensure that the best will veer away from committing themselves to pressing design education roles that are facing the nation today. Perhaps the correct way out of this messy situation is to move the NID’s to a new ministry that is capable of addressing the multi-facetted roles of design action that are needed in India across all verticals and all ministries. My students once proposed a structure and they called for the creation of the Ministry of Design, perhaps as part of the Prime Ministers Office till it can move to the area of Culture where it could find a niche that is appropriate to address the emerging challenges of quality and relevance to society

When I reflect on the various projects done at the NID in the early years from the Electronic Voting Machine to the Jawaja project, through the Chennapatna toy project to numerous textile design projects such as the Dhamadka Block Print project a number of design strategies come to mind. We need to ponder deeply on many of these real world design experiences to cull out lessons that can take us forward to a socially and culturally appropriate application of design action that could bring great value to our population. More recently, our initiatives in Tripura State through the “Katlamara Chalo” project integrates bamboo cultivation with product manufacturing as a means to alleviate rural poverty using local skills, resources and local enthusiasm as the primary resource. We were able to discuss design and develop strategies for the bottom of the pyramid with colleagues at the Indian Institute of Crafts and Design, Jaipur, an initiative of the Government of Rajasthan that is now being managed under a public-private partnership and here we built a more generalized sketch model called “Raindrops and Footprints” that explained the process leading to the selection of the village through local intensive research and the building of an understanding of the local context from which a number of design opportunities are identified and modeled before they are taken through a participatory development process which used the local strengths and resources in a sustainable manner. Here design is not just looking at “Good Form” but at the strategies and approaches along the entire supply chain and at each stage value is unfolded. The attempt was to find local solutions suitable for local application using our macro-micro strategy for design action that are informed by serious research and sustained contact with the beneficiaries through hand-holding and educational contact in the field. This integrated strategy has paid off but the investment of time and effort is considerable to prototype and test such a strategy to be rolled out to various locations using available local resources as the platform for sustainable change. For the first time in India we have a rural community using farm based bamboo to drive a local industry towards self reliance and managed growth. Starting with bamboo products and furniture we see the sustained action providing an uninterrupted supply of raw materials and skill sets that can foster the growth of a decentralized, local and self governed economy that could survive and thrive in the emerging era that I call the “Post industrial and Post-mining era”.

This is a new form of design action not to be confused with the form giving activity of traditional industrial design, although it would include elements from the old form of design thought and action. Here we are proposing that the design action take into account the structure of society along with their macro aspirations, their histories and cultural preferences as a starting point and from here build imaginative approaches for products, services and systems that would include the meta-system, the infrastructure, the hardware, the software and the processware to ensure a perfect fit to the circumstances and requirements of the particular situation. This kind of offering is complex and would need a multitude of knowledge and skill sets to be brought to bear with sensitive social and cultural orientation and with a fine tuned economic and technical feasibility. Design for inclusive development is therefore a multi-disciplinary activity that needs to draw a variety of knowledge and skills in an innovative and future oriented setting that is well informed about the legal and the ethical parameters. In this form it becomes a powerful political activity since it is propositional in the manner in which it visualizes and realizable alternatives for the stakeholders from which the process of selection and decision can begin. It is a democratic activity at the very heart and gives power to the people who are at the location and to those who would be most impacted by its implementation. This shift in design thinking can be better understood through the model that I have proposed that explains the three orders of design – Form, Structure and System – material & functional, aesthetic & socio-economic, environmental and political – all of which need to be addressed in all cases if we are to be assured of its sustainability and relevance to the local context. Under these terms of reference industry and business must take responsibility for end to end offer of service and not just for the delivery of brands and boxes that contain a “Good Design” product but ensure that they serve the purpose that was promised in the first place.

I do believe that design can help here and we may need to make some fundamental changes in our design education approaches and widen the base for action, a shift from a focus on business and industry to the design for public good that is operational at the local community level. These should include the grassroots workers in the design education loop and the content of such education needs to be informed by design insights that are local and rooted in the local reality for which our current crop of textbooks would be found wanting. This will need fresh approaches and enlightened support from the political establishment if these changes are to be forged. I do feel that we need to raise this debate and explore the various roles of design and its potential application that is today ignored by design education and practice alike, including my own school if I may admit here, so that a new sense of commitment is brought into the use of design in areas far outside industry and business. This is one of my mission objectives for setting up the 'Design for India" blog to help create a platform from which I can share my thoughts on the possibilities that I see in my minds eye. I also find the peer review system of the research publications as not so perfect for the dissemination of design insights although it does work wonders for science analysis and knowledge creation but it may be extremely defective for design demonstration since the idea of “design opportunity”, a very specific term – a combination of perception and imagination – excludes the viewer or reader from "seeing" the imagination part of the designers statement and therefore it compels the designer to take the idea far down the visualisation and realization path before it can even dawn on others that the idea is truly credible. This means that we may need to create a platform or even a multitude of platforms for design incubation and development that can be accessible to many across numerous areas of application and these kinds of platforms just do not exist in India today, or if it does, it is dominated by centralized administrative controls that stifle innovation and exploration which is critically needed to make the demonstration. Our policies for faculty research and action need to be liberal and this needs substantial change and autonomy for the ‘Maverick innovator” with good intentions and value systems in place to do their innovative work. Some of us have had to battle hard to achieve even a small degree of autonomy of action and this is not a good climate for addressing these complex problems which surround us here in India in an effective manner. We need new institutions and whole new mind set to address these complex issues at hand.

How do we create such autonomous and decentralized action strategies and how do we roll this out across our Universities and Institutes of design action? This will be one of the central questions that can change the current impasse in development approaches dealing with poverty in many parts of India. There are no simple answers but we will need to look deeply at our experiences in the field and build new institutes and strategies that can use the promise of design to find approaches to address these complex needs. The current conviction that we hold is the use of a macro-micro design strategy which has been developed after years of application and we need to do more before we can spread this deep conviction that we hold to others who hold the purse string in our countries where real action is needed today.

Prof M P Ranjan
Design Thinker & Independent Academic, Ahmedabad

Film making at NID: A design form or is it art?

2010-12-31T16:52:00.019+05:30

Alpavirama 2011: NID film festival and conference

Prof M P Ranjan
Alpavirama 2011 is an event that includes a short film competition, a retrospective of select NID films and a seminar on film making and the design space, all conducted under the banner of NID in its 50th year of existence. Prof Arun Gupta a film maker and teacher at NID who coordinates the cinema short film conference and festival at NID asked me to comment on the forthcoming event on my blog so I raise the question – is film making Art or Design? To answer that question you may need to attend the conference and see the offerings from students and professionals who have managed to get their short films included in this forthcoming event at NID, Ahmedabad.

Image: Stills from “Chaattalmazha” by Ahsam K R, one of the short films that has been shortlisted for screening at Alpavirama 2011 festival and seminar.

I have however retired from NID services at the end of last month and will move on to a new role of active engagement with design that matters in India and elsewhere. I have been contemplating a change in my blog posts that can be unfettered by official institutional strictures or censorship and over the past few months I have been travelling from country to country and in these journeys I was fortunate to meet some remarkable design thinkers and activists who could be the subject of some future posts in the new year ahead, a renewed Design for India platform that has now seen over 1,00,000 visitors clocking over 2,50,000 page views from 8000+ cities in its first avatar that started in June 2007. I have been invited to speak at a number of international events in Davos, Milan, Shanghai and Atlanta in the coming year and at events in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad, all exciting and I do look forward to being "retired by NID and from NID" as a Design Thinker and an Independent Academic at large living and working out of Ahmedabad. I had a wonderful farewell party at NID last month and a huge flow of messages on Facebook wishing me well in my retired life, thank you all. Wish you all a very happy and eventful new year ahead.

Image: Stills from the farewell event at NID and the retirement poster from former and current students at NID.

Prof Arun Gupta has sent me a detailed mail outlining the festival at NID and the related events that form part of Alpapavirama 2011 from 18 to 20 February 2011. More information will be available at these links below:
Alpavirama 2011 - South Asian Short & Documantary Film Festival
Alpavirama on Facebook
A little bird tells me that some of our well established graduates from the film, TV and advertising industry such as Sonal Dabral, Anirudh Sen and Shetal Sudhir will be sharing their work in person besides many luminaries from Asia and the world.

Prof. Arun Gupta's mail with the details are quoted below:

I Quote:

Introduction
In celebrations of cinema short films are generally overlooked, compared to the conventional full length feature films. There is something intrinsically special about short films. Short films are like life itself, with myriad colours and nuances, each transient yet for ever. There are many quirky, intimate, unfinished aspects of human existence which can best be conveyed only in a short film format. Further, since this kind of filmmaking faces less commercial pressures (cheaper to produce, hence financial gain not the only consideration), it is more likely to explore cinematic form and frontlines, allowing marginal and non-mainstream stories to be told.

People involved in making short films mostly just stop there; and lot of films thus never reach the audience, their authors neither having the will nor the wherewithal to proceed further. The available exhibition avenues haven’t also caught up with the noticeable increase in the number of short films being made. Further, most such spaces are dominated by older established filmmakers, leaving no platform for the large number of under-30 talents. There is need for a venue and an occasion where these young, enthusiastic and often innovative filmmakers are recognized and celebrated.

At the Film & Video Communication department in the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad we have been promoting short filmmaking for over two decades now. Through these years our students and faculty have created numerous short fiction and documentary films, and the artistic quality and social relevance of these films have been recognized the world over. Our alumni occupy important creative positions in the moving image industry, in India and abroad. Thus its time (in the Golden Jubilee year of NID) the Film & Video Communication department of the National Institute of Design plays a more active role in establishing a credible exhibition platform for short films – especially those given life by the under-30.

The 21st century is commonly believed to belong to Asia. Within Asia, South Asia plays a very important role. It is at once a point of arrival and departure, a seamless link between the so-called orient and the occident. But the subcontinent’s enormous (and increasingly demonstrated) potential has been needlessly inhibited by fratricidal dissension & strife. South Asian short films are alive to these dilemmas, the filmmakers subtly foregrounding the frustrations, pain and promise of south asian life, in their cine tales, underscoring the basic desire of all human beings for peace and harmony.

COMPETITION -
For the Alpavirama 2011 competition section short fiction and documentary films, not-less-than 3 minutes and not-more-than 30 minutes long, will be eligible to participate. The film(s) should have been produced after 1st January, 2009 and should have been directed by a young person (under 30 years, as on 1st January, 2011), who is a citizen of and ordinarily resident in any of the SAARC countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka). The subject matter of the film should also broadly deal with South Asia, its people and their lives.

Each film selected for the competition will be screened at least once during the festival. The competition Jury would comprise of eminent individuals selected from the fields of cinema, arts, culture and academics, from India/South Asia.

Awards (Golden Commas) will carry a cash component as well as a trophy. All films selected for competition will get a Certificate of Participation.

RETROSPECTIVE -
For over twenty years, the students of the department of Film & Video Communication at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad have been making short fiction and documentary films, as part of their regular course structure. Many of these films won national and international recognition in the years they were made, but have subsequently not been seen or heard about. Hence a representative retrospective package of NID Film & Video student films, produced in the last two decades, will be curated and presented in the festival. Alumni whose works feature in the retrospective will be encouraged to be present during the festival, to lead the pre and post-screening dialogue.

SPECIAL PACKAGE -
The fast pace of China’s growth in recent years have left several old international hegemonies panting behind. Hong Kong, as China’s emblematic entranceway, is a city undergoing intricate and provocative change, with its medley of communism and capitalism, vertical and horizontal, expatriate and local, Cantonese and Mandarin. It would thus be very interesting to find out how the young Hong Kong filmmakers, living amidst these complex shifts, record & interpret life around them.

At Alpavirama 2011 there will be a Special Package of selected contemporary documentary and short fiction films from Hong Kong. Efforts would be made to invite some of the young filmmakers from Hong Kong, whose works feature in the package.

SEMINAR (Creative Seconds? - Ads, Promos and PSAs)
Many established filmmakers started their careers making under-a-minute films. This is where they polished their craft and learnt the ropes of the business. Some moved on, to longer duration formats. Some occasionally returned, for quick money or to revisit the aesthetic and communication challenges of the very short film.

NID Film & Video alumni have consistently made a name for themselves in the world of advertising films and television channel promotionals. It’s natural therefore for Alpavirama 2011 to ask the question – are these under-a-minute ads, promos and psa’s as imaginative an activity as a longer duration film – and what are the specific features which make these seconds so special ?

Alpavirama 2011 will have a half-day seminar on this topic, with experts presenting their views and subsequently taking part in a group interface with the audience.

Selected Films for Alpavirama 2011 COMPETITION
(1) Avargalluka / Dir: Alfred Prakash (Tamil-LV Prasad Chennai-India)
(2) Bedtime Story / Dir: Sandhya Daisy Sundaram (English-FTII Pune-India)
(3) Chal Meri Luna / Dir: Hardik Mehta (Hindi-Gujarat-India) (http://vimeo.com/11262381)
(4) Dhuruva Natchathiram / Dir: Alfred Prakash (Tamil-LV Prasad Chennai-India)
(5) Eidiyaan / Dir: Aman Kaleem & Mohd Irfan Dar (Kashmiri-Jamia Delhi-India)
(6) Innocence, Medium: Water Colour / Dir: Al-Haseeb Nomanee (English-Dhaka-Bangladesh) (http://vimeo.com/11313427)
(7) Jhat Pat Ghich Pich / Dir: Varun Halder (Hindi-Children's Filmmaking Workshop Delhi-India) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL8vnHAAtHA)
(8) Kal / Dir: S Manjunathan (Tamil-LV Prasad Chennai-India)
(9) Kalu / Dir: Naveed Anjum (Punjabi-NCA Lahore-Pakistan)
(10) Khel Khel Mein / Dir: Radha Kain (Hindi-Children's Filmmaking Workshop Delhi-India)
(11) Kusum / Dir: Shumona Banerjee (Bengali,English-SRFTI Kolkata-India) (http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/3899/Kusum---The-Flower-Bud)
(12) Mera Ghar / Dir: Abhay Kumar (XIC Mumbai-India)
(13) Not Born Heroes / Dir: Vishesh Mankal (Hindi-Marwah Studio Delhi-India)
(14) Paci / Dir: J D Imaya Varman (Tamil-Vadalur Tamilnadu-India) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_hwyTXaCGQ)
(15) Poka / Dir: Ishanee Sarkar (Bengali-NID Ahmedabad-India)
(16) Pushpendra Pandey, Extra / Dir: Ankit Mehrotra (Hindi-TV Direction FTII Pune-India) (http://vimeo.com/10058792)
(17) Shyam Raat Seher / Dir: Arunima Sharma (Hindi,English-FTII Pune-India)
(18) Sound of Time / Dir: Pema Tshering (Thimphu-Bhutan)
(19) Samudra Ke Bare Mein / Dir: Malhar Salil (Hindi-NID Ahmedabad-India)
(20) Idhuvam Love Story Dhanga / Dir: G Bharani (Tamil-LV Prasad Chennai-India)
(21) Titli Udi / Dir: Payal Kapadia (Hindi-Sophia Polytechnic Mumbai-India) (http://vimeo.com/9151026)
(22) Trapped / Dir: Swapnil Ashok Kumawat & Prasad Bhardwaja (Hindi-Pune-India)

Documentary
(23) The Boxing Ladies / Dir: Anusha Nandakumar (Hindi-SRFTI Kolkata-India)
(24) Burning Paradise / Dir: Nisar Ahmed (Urdu,Pashto-NCA Lahore-Pakistan)
(25) Cinema Making Peace? / Dir: Nisar Ahmed (Urdu-NCA Lahore-Pakistan)
(26) I Woke Up One Morning And Found Myself Famous / Dir: Sumit Purohit (Hindi,English-BFA Baroda-India) (http://vimeo.com/11762097)
(27) In Search Of My Home / Dir: Sushmit Ghosh & Rintu Thomas (Hindi,Burmese,English-Jamia Delhi-India) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEQCm-MexAA)
(28) Missing Vultures / Dir: Muhammad Ali Ijaz (Urdu,Punjabi-NCA Lahore-Pakistan)
(29) My Armenian Neighbourhood / Dir: Samimitra Das (English-SRFTI Kolkata-India)
(30) The End Of Flight / Dir: Tariq Thekaekara (English-Srishti Bangalore-India) (http://vimeo.com/16215242)
(31) Sawaal / Dir: Dawood Tareen (Urdu,English-NCA Lahore-Pakistan) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO7exvXDreU)

Selected Films for Alpavirama 2011 RETROSPECTIVE
01) TOTANAMA (1991 / Fiction / Workshop with students conducted/directed by Chandita Mukherjee)
02) RAILWAY CLERK (1993 / Fiction / Student Director: Sherna Dastur / Faculty Guide: Binita Desai)
03) I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC (1997 / Documentary / Student Director: Shalini Ghosh / Faculty Guide: Akhil Succena)
04) LISTENING TO SHADOWS (1998 / Documentary / Student Director: Kaushik Sarkar / Faculty Guide: Arun Gupta)
05) STARRING ANJU SRIVASTAVA (2003 / Fiction / Workshop with students conducted/directed by Aniruddha Sen)
06) SAWAN KI GHATA (2005 / Fiction / Student Director: Pryas Gupta / Faculty Guide: SB Saksena) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trvt5HlgbZ8)
07) BANNUBHAI SEHNAIWALA (2005 / Documentary / Student Director: Adityan M / Faculty Guide: SB Saksena)
08) ONE SHOW LESS (2005 / Documentary / Student Director: Nayantara Kotiyan / Faculty Guide: Milindo Taid) (http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/3702/One-Show-Less)
09) IS MODH PAR KUCH NAHI HOTA (2005 / Fiction / Student Director: Hitesh Kewalya / Faculty Guide:Arun Gupta)
10) WORDS IN STONE (2005 / Documentary / Student Director: Akhila Krishnan / Faculty Guide: Vinayan Kodoth)
11) PRAKASH TRAVELLING CINEMA (2006 / Documentary / Student Director: Megha Lakhani / Faculty Guide: Arun Gupta) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN5oMpfvT34)
12) SARAAI (2008 / Documentary / Student Director: Prachi Mokashi / Faculty Guide: Arun Gupta) (http://vimeo.com/2376992)
13) TRAN EKA TRAN (2008 / Documentary / Student Director: Aastha Gohil / Faculty Guide: Arun Gupta) (http://vimeo.com/11516664)
14) PURNA VIRAMA (2008 / Documentary / Student Director: Ujjwal Utkarsh / Faculty Guide: Arun Gupta) (http://vimeo.com/5505853)
15) THE FURNISHED ROOM (2008 / Fiction / Student Director: Priyanka Chabra / Faculty Guide: Amit Dutta) (http://vimeo.com/8570638)
16) CHAATTALMAZHA (2009 / Fiction / Student Director: Ahsam KR / Faculty Guide: Arun Gupta )(http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/2007/Chaattalmazha)

Alpavirama 2011 SPECIAL PACKAGE from Hong Kong
From: Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts
(1) Merry X'mas (Dir: Au Man Kit)
(2) The Story of Ah Poon (Dir: Tsim Ho Tat)
(3) A Day in a Life (Dir: Kwok Zune)
(4) The Monk (Dir: Chan Siu Hei)
(5) Homecoming (Dir: Kwok Zune)
(6) A Ferry Tale (Dir: Kwan Man Hin)
(7) Genesis (Dir: Cheung Timothy)

From: City University of Hong Kong
(8) This Pair (Dir: Wong Yee Mei)
(9) X’Mas Tree (Dir: Sin Tsz Man, Jun)

From: Hong Kong Baptist University
(10) Sophia’s Promise (Dir: Zhang Duanyang)

Arun Gupta
Senior Faculty, Film & Video
Festival Director, Alpavirama 2011
National Institute of Design
Paldi, Ahmedabad - 380007, India

email: guptarun(at)nid.edu
Ph: +91-79-26623692
Fax: +91-79-26621167
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

UnQuote

Yes, some forms of film making are indeed art, expressive in intent and form, exploring life and nature as only an artist can do with the artistic licence provided by society. However, the other forms are at the very heart of design and design thinking and in this form it is perhaps the most potent form of design action since it can be driven by intentions and act on society in ways that bring sweeping change through behavior change and support social action that is impossible with the mere design of material artefacts. The medium is the purveyor of the message and much more if it is wielded by a trained and sensitive design thinker and a political activist. Today in the age of transparency of Wiki-leaks and the RTI act in India along with easy access to MP3 recorders and MP4 and HDTV cameras in all digital devices and in mobile phones it is an invitation to the citizens at large to join the communication design action to foster change for the good and in the process shake up the establishments that are proving to be corrupt in many ways. Come and see for yourself.

Prof M P Ranjan

HfG Ulm and Basic Design: Conference at Kolkata: 28 September 2010

2010-08-17T21:52:00.013+05:30

LOOK Back – LOOK Forward: HfG Ulm and Basic Design for India

Prof. M P Ranjan
New: Revised Poster and Registration Form
Download Conference Poster
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Image: Revised Logo for HfG Ulm Conference on Basic Design at Kolkata
Conference Title:

LOOK Back – LOOK Forward: HfG Ulm and Basic Design for India

Last date for registration: September 20, 2010 (Participation limited to 100 participants only - please register early) Conference on 28 September 2010 at Kolkata
Download Conference Information and Registration form
Download Conference Programme and Detailed Schedule: 1.1 mb pdf file
Download Conference Registration Form; 157 kb pdf file
Download Conference Poster, Programme and Speaker profile A3 size 265 kb two page pdf file

Venue & Schedule:

Rabindranath Tagore Centre, Kolkata (ICCR)
9A, Ho Chi Minh Sarani, Kolkata - 700 071
behind Tata Centre , Chowringhee Road

28 September, 2010 : Full-day Conference-cum-Workshop on Basic Design Education: 9.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.

Organisers:

National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad – in collaboration with
Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata
HfG-Archive Ulm & IfA (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Germany) Stuttgart
Rabindranath Tagore Centre, Kolkata (ICCR)

Background:

After the successful one day event at Bengaluru in March 2010, this is the second in the series of conferences based on the spirit of the HfG Ulm pedagogy for design education and its impact on India. The HfG Ulm, which started as a continuation of the Bauhaus experiments in design education under one of its former students – Max Bill, soon veered from a foundation in art to a science and society focus under the leadership of Tomas Maldonado. The HfG Ulm faculty, all eminent teachers and thought leaders in their field, experimented with design education like never before and documented the results of teaching in a series of 21 journals published between 1958 and 1968. These ten years of intense research and theory building and sharing has had a lasting impact on the world of design education and the availability of these journals being one of the major factors for this durable influence. Selected papers from these volumes located in the NID Library were reproduced for a conference on design education in 1989 by Prof Kirti Trivedi at Industrial Design Centre, IIT, Powai and these have been a further source of inspiration for Indian design teachers over the years. These journals are now available as part of the conference kit in a DVD compilation that can inform and inspire design teachers interested in the subject.

The HfG Ulm impacted the world of design through its direct professional action with industry, memorably with Braun and its successful range of products that hit the market in 1955 and continued with other product successes that can be called the Ulm style of meticulous detailing and clean functional form. Hans Gugelot was among the lead drivers along this track. Other teachers such as Otl Aicher influenced major corporations such as Herman Miller and Lufthansa with significant contributions in graphic design. The closing down of the HfG Ulm in 1968 saw the scattering of its faculty and students across the world, each steeped in the Ulm ideology of public good with design theory and action, resulting in significant action on the ground in the form of new design education in Latin America by Gui Bonsiepe, in India by Sudhakar Nadkarni and H Kumar Vyas and in Japan by Kohei Suguira and Sutaro Mukai, besides the numerous other influences in Europe and the USA that continue to this day.

The Ulmer Museum/HfG-Archiv has brought together the various threads of the Ulm school in a unique exhibition called ulm: method and design / ulm: school of design 1953-1968 with archival objects, classroom assignments and multimedia exhibits never before seen in India. The exhibition is presented in India by the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, in collaboration with IfA (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Germany) Stuttgart and offers us the opportunity to both “LOOK Back - LOOK Forward: HfG Ulm and Basic Design Education for India”, a title that aptly sums up the objective behind the intensive one-day conference/workshop on September 28, 2010 at Rabindranath Tagore Centre, Kolkata (ICCR), as well as to draw inspiration from the path-breaking work at Ulm and reflect on the path forward here in India. An impressive catalogue published by Hatje Cantz (ISBN 3-7757-9142-6) provides rich background research content on the school and the exhibition. Basic Design is the term used by HfG Ulm to describe the preparatory courses and abstract assignments developed to foster core capabilities in design action and design thinking while nurturing the sensibilities and abilities of a designer.

Participants:

Design teachers and teachers from other institutes interested in design pedagogy, including design research, design management and technology & design professionals interested in design education.

Registration Fee:

Individual designers and faculty : Rs. 2000/= each
Team of 5 faculty per school from India : Rs 5000/= per team

Exhibition Venue: Rabindranath Tagore Centre, Kolkata (ICCR)- opens September 25, 2010

Conference Venue: Rabindranath Tagore Centre, Kolkata (ICCR)– September 28, 2010
Abanindranath Tagore Gallery and Conference rooms, 9A, Ho Chi Minh Sarani, Kolkata - 700 071, West Bengal, India.

Organising Institutions

National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad – Prof. Pradyumna Vyas, Director
Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, Kolkata – Dr. Reimar Volker, Director
HfG-Archive Ulm & IfA (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Germany) Stuttgart
Rabindranath Tagore Centre, Kolkata (ICCR)

Keynote Speakers:

Daniela Baumann, Research scholar, HfG-Archive Ulm, Germany
Prof. Kirti Trivedi, Industrial Design Centre, IIT Powai

Prof Sudhakar Nadkarni, Dean, Business Design, Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research, Mumbai

Conference Chair:

Prof M P Ranjan, NID, Ahmedabad

Co-Chair:

Prof Suchitra Sheth, CEPT University, Ahmedabad

Registration:

Registration fees are payable by Demand Draft drawn in favour of “National Institute of Design” payable at Ahmedabad.
Registration Form duly filled with Demand Draft attached shall be delivered to National Institute of Design, Paldi, Ahmedabad 380 007

Last date for registration: September 20, 2010
(Participation limited to 100 participants only - please register early)

Address for communication and registration

1st contact: National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad
Avinash Bhandari
Conference Coordinator
Outreach Programmes
National Institute of Design,
Paldi, Ahmedabad 380007
Tel: (off) 91 79 26623692
Fax: 91 79 26621167 / 26605240
conference email: outreach@nid.edu
www.nid.edu

2nd contact: Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, Kolkata
Sharmistha Sarker
Programme Officer
033 2486 6398
Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan
8, Ballygunge Circular Road
(Pramathesh Barua Sarani)
Kolkata - 700 019 India
Tel: +91-33-2486 6398
Fax: +91-33-2486 5188
email: sarker@kolkata.goethe.org

Detailed Programme:

The one-day conference at Kolkata follows the opening of the touring exhibition ulm: method and design/ulm: school of design 1953-1968 September 28, 2010. Participants at the conference are encouraged to visit to exhibition before the event which is adjacent to the venue.

September 25, 2010 onwards (Exhibition venue: Rabindranath Tagore Centre, Kolkata (ICCR), Kolkata)

Exhibition: (optional for participants) Inauguration of the exhibition at the Rabindranath Tagore Centre, Kolkata (ICCR), Kolkata organised by the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata.

September 28, 2010 (Conference venue: Rabindranath Tagore Centre, Kolkata (ICCR), Kolkata)

LOOK Back & LOOK Forward: HfG Ulm and Basic Design Education for India

9.30 am to 10.00 am Registration and informal get together. Seating for the Plenary Sessions in Abanindranath Tagore Gallery and the Reflection Session in conference rooms. Seating plan to be mixed across design schools with seats and Break-Away groups assigned at the registration. This will facilitate the workshop sessions and encourage participation by all members.

Conference Session One: LOOK Back: Hfg Ulm and Basic Design for India

10.00 am to 10.30 am : Opening remarks by organizers – Introduction to Purpose and mission of the conference.

10.30 am to 11.00 am Keynote 1: Daniela Baumann, Research scholar, HfG-Archiv Ulm, Germany – Focus on the pedagogy of HfG Ulm and its spread of key messages to other centres over the past 50 years.

11.00 am to 11.30 am Keynote 2: Prof. Kirti Trivedi, Industrial Design Centre, IIT , Powai – The Pedagogy of Basic Design at HfG Ulm– its growth and development in Asia after Ulm.

11.30 am to 12.30 noon Panel Discussion 1: Moderated by Prof Suchitra Sheth, CEPT University: Multi Institutional experience of Basic Design and pedagogy propositions from experiences in design education. panel discussions by five invited speakers from Indian design schools to reflect on various threads of influences across design subjects. Session will map the contours of Basic Design and Foundation programmes at leading schools in India today.

12.30 pm to 1.30 pm Lunch Break (lunch served at venue)

Conference Session Two: LOOK Forward: Future of Basic Design Education

1.30 pm to 3.30 pm: Break Away Sessions – World Café Format
Group 1: Senses: Sensitising Perception
Group 2: Knowledge: Broad World View
Group 3: Ethics: Attitudes and Values
Group 4: Culture: Understanding Context and Field Contact
Group 5: Skills: Actions and Abilities – Competency and Confidence

Conference Session Three: LOOK Forward: Reflections on Design Education

3.40 pm to 5.30 pm Presentations by Break Away Groups. The lessons from the debates and the key take-aways are summarised from all groups by one representative from each group.
(10 minutes including discussions from the floor)

5.00 to 5.30 pm Reflective Keynote Panel, commentaries by eminent design teachers moderated by Prof M P Ranjan, NID with Prof Sudhakar Nadkarni and keynote speakers. Building a checklist of action points and sharing these with the forum. Towards a policy for action by Indian design education.

6.00 pm to 8.00 pm Guided tour of the HfG Ulm Exhibition (optional for participants)
~

Unsung Heros of NID: An interview with a carpenter

2010-06-30T21:05:00.009+05:30

NID History from the grassroots: Nathalal Vavadia speaks about his journey at NID

Prof M P Ranjan

NID is approaching its 50th year since its inception in 1961 and there are many official events and activities that are being planned to celebrate the arrival of the landmark year. Here on this blog we have started an unofficial but sustained effort to try and look at all kinds of people who had contributed to the making of this great institute at Ahmedabad and from these glimpses we hope to shape a more complete view of the making of NID. Nathalal Vavadia who retired today speaks about his experiences and we will try and bring many more such interviews in the days ahead.

Image01: Nathalal Vavadia in various moods during a brief interview today, the 30th June 2010, the day he retires from NID after serving as a carpenter in the wood workshop for 40 years.

Nathalal Vavadia: Carpenter at NID remembers the good times from Ranjan MP on Vimeo.

Image02: Video interview with Nathalal Vavadia. Duration 12 minutes.

Nathalal Vavadia joined NID in 1970 as a carpenter in the wood workshop. He contributed to the NID building work as well as in producing the furniture designed by George Nakashima which was produced in batches at NID through the 70's to the 90's.

He remembers the people at the workshop and the intense work culture at NID during his tenure at NID. He retires from service today, 30 June 2010 and in an interview here he shares some of his experiences and insights on the history of NID as a centre of excellence. The interview is in Hindi but it provides a glimpse of what NID was in the 70's and 80's and provides some insights into the work culture of the institute in those days.

Prof M P Ranjan

Activity Theory: Keynote at a conference at the Aalto University

2010-05-24T01:49:00.017+05:30

Keynote Presentation at FISCAR 2010 at Aalto University, Helsinki

Prof M P Ranjan

Raindrops & Footprints: Reflections on Design enabled development models for India.
Prof M P Ranjan
National Institute of Design
Ahmedabad, India

Image 01: Screen shots of the visual presentation used to support the keynote lecture at the FISCAR 2010 conference in Helsinki.

Abstract of paper prepared for a keynote presentation at the Nordic Conference on Activity Theory and the Fourth Finnish Conference on Cultural and Activity Research “Perspectives on social creativity, designing and activity” to be held at Helsinki from 23 to 25 May 2010

The author has been a design teacher at the National Institute of Design from the early 1970’s and has been involved in the teaching of design theory as well as conducting design research in the areas of industrial design for development with numerous experiences in the small scale and craft based production situations in India. Much of his professional and educational initiatives are focused on using traditional craft skills that are an abundant ability in India as a development resource that could address severe problems of poverty and unemployment in vast areas of rural India. Each design project experience conducted over the years offered new insights into the complex problems that were being faced by professionals trying to intervene in the sectors of need in India and these insights were translated into visual models that were used to inform students as well as future initiatives in these sectors.

The subject of this conference gives us the opportunity to reflect on these series of insights and to map out the contours of the theory of design based crafts interventions that emerged from the National Institute of Design over the past 50 years of exploration and design action in the field. The author’s personal background of having been born into a family of a craftsman carpenter who later built his business enterprise in the manufacture of wooden toys and furniture for children provides an extended backdrop for this investigation and reflection into the models for development that emerged and were tested through repeated interventions in the field. These refined and partly validated models are offered here with historical and personal references to the numerous projects that helped shape the insights and the specific models of development that have gone to create the “Macro – Micro Strategy for Development” that has been used to build a sustainable village based enterprise that is currently in progress as a test case in the bamboo based enterprises in the State of Tripura in Northeastern India. Each project experience brought in specific insights that are expanded and detailed to give a framework for the theory that has informed our actions over the years.

Learning from the field has been a much repeated mantra at the NID and its education slogan has always been “learning by doing” which in turn meant that those of us who lived and worked at the Institute were privy to hundreds, if not thousands of individual projects, all of which brought back fresh insights that we hope these reflections will reveal at least in part. There is an underlying theory that emerged and it will the attempt of this paper to try and articulate some of the contours of this theory by using the models that have emerged over the years and those that were used in the classes through which generations of NID students have been trained.

The paper will be supported by specific case studies to summarise the progressive findings from the field based experiences and the intermediate and cumulative strategies that were adopted for the numerous field based interventions carried out by the author and his colleagues at NID in the area of design for development. The paper will be accompanied by a visual presentation that would provide visual evidence of the context as well as the design offerings and alongside this will be the theory and the models and strategy diagrams that emerged as an outcome of these investigations, specifically those that were used to advocate future action in the field.

Download Full Text of presentation here as a pdf file 248 kb size

Download Visual presentation as a pdf file 8.3 mb size

Download Voice file of the keynote lecture as an mp3 file 45 MB size

Prof M P Ranjan

Look Back Look Forward: The Bengaluru event

2010-04-14T17:03:00.012+05:30

Look Back Look Forward: HfG Ulm and design education in India, a brief report on the one day event at the Taj West End in Bengaluru on 6th March 2010.

Prof M P Ranjan
The one day conference at Bengaluru will be remembered for a long time by the participants, all teachers and design professionals interested in design education coming from several leading design schools in India. So much passion was released in the 24 round table discussions, only a small fraction of which can be captured here in the links and resources that we have been able to collect and create. Two workshop sessions, each of two hours duration across the twelve round tables each with eight participants and some observers kept all of us deeply involved on the subject of design education for India. This meeting will have an impact on the shape of design education in India since tere is the promise of a follow up meeting later in the year and with the sharing of the Ulm Journal as a digital resource as part of the conference kit the schools in India have for the first time access to the rich reflections that the Ulm masters had assembled in the 21 issues that were published between 1955 and 1968 when the HfG Ulm was finally closed down.

Image01: Thumbnail images of the HfG Ulm Exhibit at Chitra Kala Parishath and the registration session at Taj West End on the next day.

Image02: Thumbnail images of the conference participants during breaks as well as at the round tables during the keynote sessions.

We now invite all the participants to join us in our analysis of the event and the proceedings for which we shall make available and share below the links to all the lectures and presentations made during the day as well as a host of other resources that can aid the proposed analysis of the discussions and events of the day. The first set of links are for the eight voice files arranged in the order in which the events happened at the conference. The opening session had Dr Evelyn Hust of the Goethe Institute, Bengaluru make her opening remarks with Prof M P Ranjan making remarks on behalf of Director NID who could not attend and then on to introduce the format of the conference, keynotes and workshop sessions, as planned. The morning session that followed had three events – the first keynote lecture by Marcela Quijano, Curator, HfG Ulm Archive, and the second keynote by Prof Sudha Nadkarni, Dean, Welingkar Institute of Management where he shared his experience as a full time student at HfG Ulm in the early 60’s. (for voice recordings see the links below). Marcela Quijano gave us an overview of the pedagogy of the Ulm masters and the historical setting in which the design education experiments were conducted at the HfG Ulm.

Image 03: Thumbnails of the Table Cards, each with one HfG Ulm Master as listed: 01: Max Bill, 02: Otl Aicher, 03: Inge Aicher-Scholl, 04: Tomas Maldonado, 05: Hans Gugelot, 06: Walter Zeischegg, 07: Herbert Ohl, 08: Gui Bonsiepe, 09: Herbert Lindinger, 10: Horst Rittel, 11: William S. Huff, 12: Konrad Wachsmann.

These two keynote presentations of the morning set the tone for Looking Back at the legacy of Ulmer Model in terms of their design pedagogy and this was followed by the first Workshop session – Look Back – that lasted two hours, at the end of which each of the twelve tables made brief presentations on their findings about the salient aspects of HfG Ulm pedagogy. Each table was named after one of twelve selected Ulm teachers in the order listed below:

Table 10 : Horst Rittel
Table 09 : Herbert Lindinger
Table 04 : Tomas Maldonado
Table 03 : Inge Aicher-Scholl
Table 02 : Otl Aicher
Table 05 : Hans Gugelot
Table 08 : Gui Bonsiepe
Table 11 : William S. Huff
Table 12 : Konrad Wachsmann
Table 07 : Herbert Ohl
Table 06 : Walter Zeischegg
Table 01 : Max Bill

Each table had a set of provocation cards that carried quotes from the Ulm masters while these cards were also shown on the large projection screen as an automated slide show. Each quotation raised one issue that would be critical for the Ulm pedagogy and these provided the point of departure for the table discussions that were carried on in real earnest by all the participants. Each table also had table think sheets on which the participants were asked to make their doodles and notes as the discussions and devbates progressed at each table. These “Table Think Sheets” were collected at the end of the session and these too are made available here at the link below.

List of 8 voice files and resources for download
01_Opening Session_MPR Hust.mov – 12 mb
02_Keynote_Marcelo Quijano.mov – 27 mb
03_Keynote_Sudha Nadkarni.mov – 35 mb
04_Intro to_Look Back WS.mov – 9 mb
05_Round Table_Look Back.mov – 47 mb
06_Keynote_Kumar Vyas.mov – 54 mb
07_Keynote_Wolfang Jonas.mov – 61 mb
08_Round Table_Look Fward.mov – 49 mb

Image 04: Navigation screens from the Look Back Look Forward conference resource interactive DVD. These nine screens are from the root level pdf file and each item or image on the pages takes one to the respective file or page. The Index page is level zero, while the other pages are numbered from 1 to 8.

The conference resource DVD is packed with design education resources from HfG Ulm as well as from NID, Ahmedabad. Page two provides links to the numbered Journals from the HfG Ulm from 1 to 21 issue of the Journal, all scanned and made available as digital pdf files thanks to the kind permission from Prof Gui Bonsiepe who edited these volumes at Ulm. These Journals were published from 1955 till the last issue in 1968 when the school closed down under dramatic circumstances. These were available in India only in the NID library and for the first time these are made available to Indian design educators and researchers to understand the Ulm school’s unique pedagogy since these hold a rich resource of reflections from the Ulm teachers. Volume 3 was missing from the set all these years and we now have a copy thanks to the Ulm Archive Curator, Marcela Qujano, who gave us a copy for the Library which is now made available here as a digital pdf file at the link below, and this completes the set.

Download the “Look Back Look Forward” conference resource interactive DVD here:
Look Back_Look Forward_DVD.zip – 968 mb
Ulm 3.pdf – 3.2 mb (This issue was not included in the DVD since it did not exist in the NID Library and a copy was given to us by Marcelq Quijano when she arrived in Bengaluru for the conferfence.)

Page zero, or the opening page, is the Index with hyper-links to the other eight pages. Page two contains links to selected documents from the NID history and includes the Eames India Report of 1958, The MOMA catalogue of 1957 of classic design from USA and Europe whose prototypes are in the NID archives, NID Documentation 1964-69, The Ahmedabad Declaration of 1979, Design & Environment (1982), select faculty papers (1991) and the Proceedings of the DETM Conference (2005) and so on. Page four contains 16 papers and presentation files that record the progress of the Design Concepts and Concerns Course at NID where design thinking and design theory have been introduced to NID students from 1988 till date, evolving over the years to give NID education its distinctive identity. Page three has reports prepared by NID for the setting up of three sector specific institutes for design education in India. Other pages contain all the artworks for the conference graphics and table resources as well as the photographs from the Ulm Archive exhibit when it opened at the NID Gallery.

The visual slide shows or text resources for the keynote presentation are available for download here below and these can be viewed along with the voice files of the proceedings located above.
Keynote 01: India_Look back_Marcela Quijano.pdf – 5 mb
Keynote 02: NID Banglore Keynote at Ulm conference_Nadkarni.pdf – 36 mb

Keynote 03: Learning at NID- Then and Now, H Kumar Vyas (final).pdf – 1 mb
Keynote 04: Wolfgang Jonas_Ulm Conference_Keynote.pdf – 14 mb

Pictures of Bangalore event – Folders in .zip format each containing many selected pictiures in jpg format are available here for download (see list below)
Picture sets of Bangalore event in jpeg format
01_Ulm_Blore_PreConference.zip – 98 mb
02_Ulm_Blore_LookBack.zip – 79 mb
03_Ulm_LookForward01.zip – 75 mb
04_Ulm_Look Forward02 2.zip – 74 mb
05_Ulm_PostConference.zip – 11 mb

Picture albums of the sets in pdf format can be downloaded from these links here:
01_Ulm_Blore_PreConference.pdf – 9 mb
02_Ulm_Blore_LookBack_h3.pdf – 6 mb
03_Ulm_LookForward01_h3.pdf – 6 mb
04_Ulm_Look Forward02_h3.pdf – 7 mb
05_Ulm_PostConference_h3.pdf – 2 mb
Chakradar mid Blore Pics_h2.pdf – 6 mb

Conference kit resources in pdf format.
While the conference resource DVD that was distributed to all the participants contains the digital art works version of the table materials we provide separate links here for some of these resources so that they may be used directly if needed.

01_Conference Table_Ulm Masters.pdf : 58.9 mb
02a_look back cards_prn.pdf : 3.2 mb
02b_look forward cards_prn.pdf : 2.4 mb
02c_Model card Front_oranisation vs. free + political structure.pdf_4.pdf : 5 mb
05_Ulm Biography Bookmarks.pdf : 1.9 mb
06_keynote speaker bio+Workshops_s.pdf : 20.5 mb

Other HfG Ulm Conference Resources
Conference Participant List_xx.pdf – 3 mb
Table_Think Sheets_175page.pdf – 11 mb

Participants will now have access to all the resources that they may use to make their own analysis of the one day event at Bengaluru and from these we do hope that Indian design teachers will take back a lesson from the Ulm masters, that of documentation of their teaching resources and of their class outcomes in a contemporaneous manner in the days ahead. This alone will ensure that Indian design education retains a quality benchmark that can be shared and discussed as we refine our teaching methods and find value that is unique to our context, environment and culture. If teachers from our Indian design schools start publishing their work and through this an active dialogue is set in place we would have succeeded in our mission of sensitizing our teachers to the need for such documentation in managing and manintaining a high quality of education in our schools across India. I hope that we did succeed and that the future will show us the positive results of these tall intentions.

Prof M P Ranjan

LOOK Back – LOOK Forward: HfG Ulm and Design Education in India

2010-02-06T11:06:00.007+05:30

Prof M P Ranjan

Image01: Conference Logo using a basic design assignment as an image for the conference - Design: Rupesh Vyas

Conference Title:

LOOK Back – LOOK Forward: HfG Ulm and Design Education in India

Venue & Schedule:
Hotel Taj West End, Race Cource Road, Bangalore 560 001, India
March 6, 2010 : Full-day Conference-cum-Workshop on Design Education: 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m.

Last date for registration: February 26, 2010

Organisers:
National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad and Bangalore
in collaboration with
Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan (GI/MMB) Bangalore,
HfG-Archive Ulm & IfA (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Germany) Stuttgart

Background:
The HfG Ulm, which started as a continuation of the Bauhaus experiments in design education under one of its former students – Max Bill, soon veered from a foundation in art to a science and society focus under the leadership of Tomas Maldonado. The HfG Ulm faculty, all eminent teachers and thought leaders in their field, experimented with design education like never before and documented the results of teaching in a series of 21 journals published between 1958 and 1968. These ten years of intense research and theory building and sharing has had a lasting impact on the world of design education and the availability of these journals being one of the major factors for this durable influence. Selected papers from these volumes located in the NID Library were reproduced for a conference on design education in 1989 by Prof Kirti Trivedi at Industrial Design Centre, IIT, Powai and these have been a further source of inspiration for Indian design teachers over the years.

The school impacted the world of design through its direct professional action with industry, memorably with Braun and its successful range of products that hit the market in 1955 and continued with other product successes that can be called the Ulm style of meticulous detailing and clean functional form. Hans Gugelot was among the lead drivers along this track. Other teachers such as Otl Aicher influenced major corporations such as Herman Miller and Lufthansa with significant contributions in graphic design.

The closing down of the HfG Ulm in 1968 saw the scattering of its faculty and students across the world, each steeped in the Ulm ideology of public good with design theory and action, resulting in significant action on the ground in the form of new design education in Latin America by Gui Bonsiepe, in India by Sudhakar Nadkarni and H Kumar Vyas and in Japan by Kohei Suguira, besides the numerous other influences in Europe and the USA that continue to this day.

The Ulmer Museum/HfG-Archiv has brought together the various threads of the Ulm school in a unique exhibition called ulm: method and design/ulm: school of design 1953-1968 with archival objects, classroom assignments and multimedia exhibits never before seen in India. The exhibition is presented in India by the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, in collaboration with IfA (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Germany) Stuttgart and offers the opportunity to both “LOOK Back - LOOK Forward: HfG Ulm and Design Education in India”, a title that aptly sums up the objective behind the intensive one-day conference/workshop on March 6, 2010 at Hotel Taj West End in Bangalore, India, as well as to draw inspiration from the path-breaking work at Ulm and reflect on the path forward here in India. An impressive catalogue published by Hatje Cantz (ISBN 3-7757-9142-6) provides rich background research content on the school and the exhibition.

Participants:
Design teachers and teachers from other institutes interested in design pedagogy, including design research, design management and technology & design professionals interested in design education. Limited places available for design student observers sponsored by each participating school.

Registration Fee:
Individual designers and faculty : Rs. 2000/=
Team of 5 faculty per school from India : Rs 5000/=
Design student observer : Rs. 500/= (limited seats)
International Participant : USD 100 or Rs. 5000/=

Exhibition Venue: Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore - opens March 5, 2010
Conference Venue: Hotel Taj West End, Bangalore – March 6, 2010

Organising Institutions
Goethe-Institut/ Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore
Dr. Evelin Hust, Director
National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad & Bangalore
Prof. Pradyumna Vyas, Director

Keynote Speakers:
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Jonas, Professor for "system design" at the School of Art and Design, University of Kassel, Germany
Ms. Marcela Quijano, Curator, HfG-Archiv Ulm, Germany
Prof Sudhakar Nadkarni, Dean, Business Design, Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research, Mumbai
Prof H Kumar Vyas, Distinguished Professor, CEPT University, Ahmedabad

Conference Chair:
Prof M P Ranjan, NID, Ahmedabad
Co-Chair:
Prof Suchitra Sheth, CEPT University, Ahmedabad

Registration:
Registration fees are payable by Cash or Demand Draft drawn in favour of “National Institute of Design” payable at Bangalore.
Payment with Registration Form duly filled to be delivered to NID R & D Campus, Bangalore or at the Goethe- Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore.

Last date for registration without late fees: February 26, 2010
Late fee payable after closing date: additional 50 % of registration fees above.
(Limited participation so please register early)

Address for communication and registration:

1st contact: National Institute of Design, Bangalore

Shashikala Satyamoorthy,
Conference Coordinator
National Institute of Design, R & D Campus,
#12 HMT Link Road, Off Tumkur Road
Bangalore 560 022
Tel: +91-080-23478939 (D) / 23373006
Fax: +91 80 23373086
conference email: hfgulm2010@nid.edu
www.nid.edu

2nd contact: Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore

Maureen Gonsalves
Programme Coordinator
Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan
716 CMH Road, Indiranagar 1st Stage
Bangalore 560 038
Ph: +91 80 2520 5305/06/07/08-203
Fax: +91 80 2520 5309
arts@bangalore.goethe.org
www.goethe.de/bangalore

see detailed programme and download Registration Form from this link here below:
Download Detailed Conference Programme and Registration Form in pdf 400kb

Prof M P Ranjan

New Design School at Kerala: State level action in India

2009-12-22T22:36:00.010+05:30

KSID Conference Proceedings: A ringside view
9 & 10 November 2009: Kovalam, Kerala

Prof M P Ranjan

Brief summary of the proceedings of the Kerala State Institute of Design (KSID) Vision meeting at Kovalam on 9th and 10th November 2009. Followed by recommendations and action points.

Image01: Day Zero: Sun, Sand and Beach at Kovalam

The conference that was held at the Kristu Jayanti Jubilee Memorial Animation Centre at Kovalam and the conference were set in motion by the Executive Director of KSID, Shri P T Girish who welcomed the delegates and experts to the Vision of KSID conference and invited Prof. Prabhat Patnaik, Vice Chairman, Kerala State Planning Board to deliver the presidential Address and Shri P K Gurudasan, Hon’ble Minister for Labour and Excise, State Government of Kerala to Inaugurate the event. Shri P T Girish made a presentation on the KSID and Shri Jogi Panghal was requested to deliver the Vote of Thanks.

The two day programme on 9th and 10th November 2009 was set in motion (programme schedule Appendix 1) Over 50 participants and experts attended the meet over two days (List of participants Appendix 2)

Day 1:
Inaugural Session: 10.00 to 11.00 am
Prof Prabhat Patnaik in his Presidential Address called for an action programme to bring innovation to Kerala and India. He commented that innovation was conspicuous by its absence and this needed to change fast. However he recalled that traditional crafts have demonstrated this capability over centuries but feudal and patriarchal attitudes run deep in Kerala and there was scope for a Central University to bring change. Here KSID is a powerful and ambitious idea that would need to bring design expertise and invoke creative change in the society at large in Kerala.

Image02: Day one: Opening Session

Shri P K Gurudasan, Hon’ble Minister for Labour and Excise, State Government of Kerala inaugurated the conference by lighting a lamp and invited the delegates and participants to join him to light the lamp.

Shri P K Gurudasan called for a focus on the crafts of Kerala as a point of departure. The need to address matters of quality raw material and products alike and to address the impact of globalization and competition with strategies for marketing and articulation of modern trends were items at the top of the agenda. He stated that the role of KSID would be to coordinate design action in many sectors and to provide supports through new design initiatives as well as promotion and publications. New initiatives to train and educate the crafts sector functionaries asa starting point. He recalled his visit to NID and his meeting there with NID Director Shri Pradyumna Vyas as well as NID Faculty members form a number of disciplines including Prof M P Ranjan and Prof Aditi Ranjan and stated that this visit had helped change the concept of KSID and which brings our focuss to the concept of the Vision conference that is being held here in Kovalam. He mentioned that the Director of KSID was a product of NID and this would help in shaping the Institute as we go forward. He stressed on the need for building an appropriate institutional infrastructure quickly so that the next level of funding could be mobilized in the near future. He welcomed and thanked all the experts and participants for giving their time for attending the Vision conference at Kovalam.

Shri Jogi Panghal delivered the Vote of tthanks.

Inaugural Session: 11.30 to 12.00
Shri P T Girish delivered the Directors address (Directors presentation Appendix 3) and outlined the concept of the KSID and listed the action taken so far towards setting up the institute in Kerala. He shared a picture of the renovated building that was being used to house the institute and outlined the events such as registration of the society under the Travancore and Cochin Literary Scientific Societies Act of 1955, followed by the setting up of the Governing Body, Expert Committees and Academic Committee that could develop the action plans for the institute and steer it in the right direction. Shri P T Girish informed the meeting that 4 acres of land had been acquired for the institute and a call for architects had been launched formally. He called on the meeting to articulate a clear brief for the architects for the design of the building and mentioned that four architect s had sent in their expression of interest to take up the task. He reported that there were efforts to make the institute live and active through the conduct of training programmes for artisans and through new product development and that two students from the IICD Jaipur were already on the list of sponsored candidates involved on project based activities of the institute. He mentioned that KISD facilities and infrastructure still needed to be developed but in the meantime a number of activities will be rolled out..

Image03: Day one: Session one

The following Sessions were structured as a series of panel presentations and each speaker had a prepared submission to make (attached Appendix 4 – papers by experts)

Session 1: Vision: Design Education & Action for Kerala
Moderator: Prof Ajaykumar, Principal Fine Arts College, Trivandrum
Rapporteur: Shri Jogi Panghal

Panelists:
Shri Ashoke Chatterjee, Former Director, NID, Ahmedabad
Prof. S Balaram, Dean, DJ Academy of Design, Coimbatore
Dr. Deepak John Matthew, NID, Ahmedabad
Prof. Yunus Khimani, Dean, UG Programmes, IICD, Jaipur
Ms. Sumita Ghose, Managing Director, Rangsutra, (Fab-India – SRC)

Shri Ashoke Chatterjee kicked of the session by recalling the talk with other experts the night before the conference which had established that the KSID would be a work in progress for quite some time ahead. A clear structure and mission would have to wait till Kerala’s real needs are assessed and articulated by the activities of the Institute. He asked for clarity about the role of KSID and expressed the ned for a discussion as to whether the KSID would be an institute for the crafts development or an institute for design education and action. He suggested that Keralas needs may extend to include the travel and hospitality sectors which has been a major user of design services for over 40 years now in India as well as in Kerala. He recalled his visit to Kerala 40 years ago to help set up the first beach resort at Kovalam. He cautioned about the need for deep deliberations to get the objectives right and in particular about the need for a good brief for the architect of the new campus and its facilities.

In the discussions that followed Shri Jogi Panghal agreed that a good brief was a critical need but he also said that we would need to be sensitive to the needs and aspirations of the community in Kerala and what they would want from a new institution. He proposed that the instutute should adopt policies that are open, inclusive and transparent for all its activities and programmes. Prof M P Ranjan stressed that the architect must be told that the building must have a great degree of flexibility and like the NID building it too should be open to change as and when required.

Prof. S Balaram, who spoke next called for design education that could foster thinking that was different. Freedom and autonomy with a physical space that is conducive for design work are a critical resource that should be created. He stressed that heart of design lay in innovation and called for a balance between skill instruction and thinking, both lateral and analytical thinking would need to be used. The ambit of design could extend from procduct, messages, spaces and services all the way to experiences as well. He quoted the example of Vishala in Ahmedabad that focused on the experience of a meal in a rural setting and stated that Kerala too may find applications for such a kind of thinking in the travel and hospitality sector that is a major business in the State. He spelt out threee priority areas for KSID in the days ahead.
1. Survey and documentation of the resources of Kerala to build a strengths map thaty could indicate the areas of priority for the KSID.
2. Focus on getting the right kind of students at the KSID since many of Kerala’s students tend to go outside the State for their education needs today. Awareness building would need to be done since local awareness of design wsa still very low in Kerala.
3. Getting good teachers is always a great challenge. This needs to be addressed both with policy as well as with some strategies that are practical.

Prof M P Ranjan asked for clarity on how he proposed to address the third issue. Prof Balaram replied that the awareness building would need to address both parents as well as the students directly. In the search for good design teaching talent the KSID may start by having a larger proportion of their teachers as visiting faculty with a long term commitment. While this is difficult it is practical and can be sustained and the other schools are all experimenting with this format quite successfully. Prof Sangita Shroff warned that the KSID must look for a complement of full time faculty as well to handle the variety of tasks that a growing institute would need to handle in order to build a good work culture and a healthy academic and administrative balance. Full time faculty are needed to maintain a level of intellectual and emotional balance on the campus with multi-level activities of education, administration and development projects. Prof Balaram agreed with a need for a balance. Shri Jogi Pangaal stressed that good design teachers were hard to get if not impossible for a new institute. He therefore stressed that the policy of using visiting faculty on liberal terms may need to be adopted. He proposed a new kind of architecture for the involvement of visiting faculty as a continuing contact person for the students with an implied use of web as a channel for maintaining this contact.

Dr Deepak John Matthew used a case study of a photography activity and expanded on the type of planning and development that would be needed to make the KSID work and deliver the tasks and objectives that are being set out today. He expanded on the NID model and listed all the stages of planning and curriculum development that would be needed as well as the range of equipment and the activities and projects that may be needed to build a department with excellence. He stressed on the need for photography both as a tool for documentation as well as a service department for the rest of the institute and that this would need to be set up at an early date and be maintained at a high level of quality. He suggested that the curriculum could include theory, skill and project based courses. He proposed the need for interdisciplinary classes as well as a Foundation programme for new entrants. He suggested faculty exchange programmes as a way for maintaining faculty quality and contact with new ideas and developments. For students he proposed that by waiving fees or offering stipends that KSID would attract students who would otherwise not be able to afford a good education in spite of having great talent.

Shri Vinod Krishnan asked if Deepak was asking for a clone of NID to be set up in Kerala or would the emphasis be on design for the tourism sector. Prof Ajay Kumar stated that creating capacity in the State for photography could be one of the objectives of KSID.

Prof Yunus Khimani, recalled the history of the IICD that was set up in Jaipur by the Government of Rajasthan with the assistance of NID. The mission of the IICD was to create design techno managers who could create a bridge between designers and markets as well as focus on design, market development and technology development for the crafts sector as a whole. He spoke about the structure of IICD and the processes that it had adopted to improve and develop its education programmes in UG and PG levels with the setting up of an expert Academic Council and a local Board of Studies that could work in cooperation with the faculty of the school. The hallmark of the school was hands on training and the making of prototypes for all new design projects which provides the students with a good feel of the material, technique as well as market possibilities through field contact for gathering insights that inform the design work. Field exposure is particularly stressed and in 3 years of education the student is expected to spend almost one year in the field at a number of occasions. Drawing is another ability that is stressed in the education process at the IICD.

Ms Sumita Ghose who spoke next commented that the KSID had an advantage of being in the Labour Ministry and therefore had the possibility of looking at the task ahead in a bottom up manner rather than a top down manner of policy to the field. She recalled her experience of setting up an NGO for the development of people in Rajasthan and how they came to crafts as a means for generating livlihood with the introcduction of embroidery and other textile crafts that the people already had a capacity for in their present setting. As a trained economist she realized the need for good organization in the crafts sector and in managing the lives and needs of rural people. She stressed that good organization was needed in the crafts sector and the need to shift the policy initiatives form charity orientation to empowerment approaches which could be the focus of the KSID. Design development work alone was not enough since this tended to end up in a number of prototypes but this needs to be translated into a business flow for the benefits to reach the people for whom it is intended. She explained that Rangsutra had started with a call for design and marketing with good organization in a cooperative format. This gave the base for a producer company with a Head+ Heart for survival of the craftspeople. KSID too may need to look at producer groups and stalkeholders with a balanced social and economic agenda. Perhaps the research could look at organization design for empowered craftspersons in the days ahead.

Prof Ajay Kumar summarized the morning session and a good deal of discussion followed. He said that there was no traditional craft left in Kerala due to costs and market pressures. People have moved on to more lucrative occupations. Kerala is fast changing from traditions and many NGO organizations were active in the field but we may need to research as to how well these NGO’s have changed the condition of the craftsmen. He stressed that the KSID should be a design school and not just be focused on crafts alone. This is truly what Kerala needs today. Shri K B Jinan intervened and stressed that Kerala artisans too had their needs.

Prof Sangita Shroff opined that the KSID should first undertake the task of understanding Kerala today. She stressed that the use of image in the task of developing a shared understanding of Kerala was important. Getting images from the field and placing these in contextual structures can reveal many latent needs and design opportunities that could be addressed by the KSID in the days ahead. She called for a documentation of Kerala with a “soul”, a process that could tell us a lot about the condition of the State and its needs and aspirations. This could be done with film makers and photographers being coordinated to build a map of Kerala resources and needs, a “Map with Pictures”. This could be linked with Social Enterprises and groups of professionals who could think strategy and seed entrepreneurship in the State. Shri Jogi Panghal suggested that KSID could interact with artisans in new ways and bring Kerala into its domain. Prof. Sudhakar Reddy suggested that the emphasis could also be on the making of new craftsmen entrepreneurs if traditional ones do not exist. Prakash Murthy felt that the need was to instill pride in the craftsmen for their skills and traditions through some appropriate strategies. Prof Ajay Kumar recalled that in our national history the Schools of Art abandoned crafts to upgrade their own fields of study. Ms Sumita Ghose reminded that in India as in Kerala the areas of agriculture and crafts are the two biggest providers of employment in the country. Shri Ashoke Chatterjee opined that there was a lot of confusion in the development sectors and in some Government policy statements the crafts sector was being described as the sunset sectors!! He ebven suggesxted that some economists suggest that 80 % of India is moving to urban centres but this would be a real disaster. Shri Jogi Panghal suggested that we must take a fresh look at crafts in Kerala and at the new wage levels as a challenge and an opportunity for imaginative design action. The daily wah=ge in Bastar is Rs 45/= per day while a Kerala craftsman would expect upwards of Rs 300 to Rs 500 per day for a similar level of work. Development has wiped out crafts in some areas while it has retained them in places due to poverty levels and a desperate need to work.

Image04: Day one: Session two

Session 2: Vision: Design Education & Action for Kerala
Moderator: Prof Ajaykumar, Principal Fine Arts College, Trivandrum
Rapporteur: Shri Jogi Panghal

Panelists:
Prof M P Ranjan, NID, Ahmedabad
Prof Sudhakar Reddy, AU, Visakapatnam
Shri Jogi Panghal. Designer
Prof. Sangita Shroff, Director, IICD, Jaipur
Shri. K B Jinan, Designer

Prof M P Ranjan made a visual presentation to support his arguments that were stated in his written paper (paper and visual presentation Appendix 5). He used models to explain some salient aspects of design and design thinking. He explained why the true value of design was difficult to perceive and appreciate since much of the offering was invisible or intangible.. He proposed that value perceptions and the appreciation of intangible design offerings was not possible to appreciate unless these are explained in detail or are articulated by the design team as part of their presentation and claim. He used twenty case studies to show how design can be used at many levels of action all the way from material and form, through structure and performance and upto meaning and culture. These stages he characterized as the First, Second and Third Orders of Design that have been elaborated in earlier papers and presentations. He called for the use of design in Kerala as a vehicle for development and strategy across many sectors of the economy and the role of KSID would be to make the process of bringing design into everyday use effective and wide spread particularly in areas of public good. He showed models developed by his students with the use of images and metaphors in his class called Design Concepts and Concerns where they had developed a variety of institutes that could meet the needs of India’s varied geographic regions through the use of design and design thinking. He suggested that KSID too should adopt these methods and develop shared perspectives with stakeholders and then go about implementing these in the institutional frameworks that would be both effective as well as relevant. He proposed that KSID start by building an inventory of design needs of Kerala and set about addressing these through education, awareness building and extension activities. KSID could help by bringing books on design to Kerala through translating some selected ones into Malayalam so that the ideas could b made available at the grassroots level in the State.

Prof. Sudhakar Reddy spoke philosophically about the role of crafts in the evolution of the human race. He spoke of traditional knowledge being a base for peace and harmony and that the act of making with our hands is a fundamental human need that would include the handicrafts as well as the fine arts, both which are rooted in our senses as well as in a whole range of attributes determined by function, aesthetics, surface explorations, utility and sensitivity to our surroundings etc. Making, is a basic instinct and it is this making that also makes us human. Thus articles are intended for humanizing society by making these accessible to all those who may need it for a variety of purposes. Traditional articles have a deep structure and meaning, just as colour is used with a specific purpose so is form and other attributes. Gandhiji used non-violence as a method. The control of natural resources was undertaken as a search for power. Peace can be seen as an economic and stable condition but it can also be seen as attitudes of individuals in search of meaning. Peace could be a goal and the making of paper can be a fine activity that could be recommended as well. With roots in traditions we could see it as an activity that is modern and being carried out in the pursuit of sustainable action in the face of present day global challenges. We can bring about an awareness of value transmission through the use of design. This would require high motivation. However, he expressed doubt if this could indeed be achieved and he ended with a wonderful quote about water.

Shri Jogi Panghal, spoke about his long experience in three broad streams that would be of relevance to the topic at hand. Firstly he spoke about his experience in the Practice of Design with a special focus on the tribal areas of India. Secondly he spoke about his experience in Design Education across a number of schools in India and overseas and lastly he spoke about his body of work in Design Research which was unique and through which he was able to trace the evolution of design thought for producing value through the creation of form, function and utility. He spoke of the need for collaborative work through the encouragement of team work. He spoke of the development of Green Strategies and the exploration of life cycle studies for sustainability and to loo at applications of fair trade in our dealings with crafts community. He proposed the need for ethnographic studies to be taken up by KSID and called for the expansion of its reach to areas such as experience design vs object design, He spoke of the approach of co-creation as opposed to the designer labels and championed the idea of services as a means of dematerializing design action. In his visual presentation he spelt out a check list of actionable items for KSID and established another checklist of points that showed the context in which the KSID would need to operate ( visual presentation Appendix 6). His agenda for KSID included the following points:
1. identify – research and document Kerala resources and sensibilities
2. design practice – create new knowledge through positive action on design opportunities
3. education – integrated study of design, management and entrepreneurship
4. outreach and training - possibilities to be explored
5. network - with other schools and universities and collaborate to create value
6. produce - much new knowledge, publish and share freely

KSID vision could focus on research, education, collaboration, practice and advocacy.

Prof Sangita Shroff, spoke briefly about the areas of focus that KSID could look at in the initial years of its establishment. She commented on the opening remarks by Prof Prabhat Pathak and stated that the KSID should move from the rooted feudal structures towards a secular school for design and action on Kerala. She listed the various statistics about Kerala and drew the attention to the special qualities that needed to be kept in focus. It was a small state with high level of educational achievement and a stable population. The wellness industry, the entertainment industry and the sports achievements all suggest that Kerala could build products to enhance the achievements that it already has in these sectors. She also proposed that students could be offered an earn while you learn scheme to encourage entry from the disadvantaged sections of the society. However the whole premise would be based on the first task of mapping Kerala and its resources in a visual format that can be shared to build the action programmes that would follow.

Shri K B Jinnan, decried the sterile form of education that was being offered by main stream design schools that was based on the Bauhaus model of design foundation. He claimed that this affected the natural aesthetic sensibilities of the regional student and gave them homogenized aesthetic that was neither suitable nor appropriate for local action and local cultural development. He proposed that the KSID should be primarily be seen as a crafts development school and not as a generic design school for Kerala.

Shri Jayagopal, showed his architecture projects to the conference at the invitation of the Director, KSID. He has carried out a number of works in the tradition of the great architect and his guru, the late Shri Laurie Baker. He showed examples of many projects done using crafts and local traditional building systems and he presentation was followed by a brief discussion.

Image05: Day two: Session three

Day 2
Session 3: Vision: Kerala Aspirations
Moderator: Shri Ashoke Chatterjee
Rapporteur: Shri Jogi panghal

Panelists
Shri Prakash Murthy
Dr Sunny George
Prof. Vinod Krishnan

Shri Prakash Murthy offered a checklist of actions that the KSID could take forward on an urgent basis. He stressed that the pride of the craftsmen was an issue that had to be addressed since many development initiatives have eroded that pride and it needs to be re-instilled in the social fabric of Kerala so that the youth would take up fresh initiatives in the crafts sector with design as a driver.

Prof. Vinod Krishnan raised the issue once again as to whether the KSID should focus on Crafts or on Design as its primary activity. He suggested that the Kerala Planning Board may need to take a call on this matter and issue a clarification so that the further planning could move forward in a determined manner. He proposed that the KSID could be partnered with a leading institute of repute that could help incubate its activities in the early stages of development. He stressed that there is a need for need assessment in Kerala and he endorsed the views expressed earlier for a need survey in Kerala today. He reiterated that KSID could start with a mapping of the various design opportunities that exist and based on this concretize a plan for a design school in Kerala.

Shri Ashoke Chatterjee commented from the Chair that that design could be carried out with crafts in focus and that incubation was a good idea. He called for a vision with an action plan and he called attention to the break between the building and architecture trade and the crafts and called for a renewal of these links through a planned programme of action by the KSID.

Shri T M Cyriac made a visual presentation of the hotel buildings that he had designed for a local developer. He said that the hospitality industry needed good quality furniture and services that were not currently available in Kerala or for that matter in India today. He showed the work that he had outsourced from producers in Bali, Indonesia and these covered stone, glass, wood and metal components and systems that had been executed to specifications produced in his office as well as based on drawings by local artists and master craftsmen. He explained that Bali had perfected the art of giving design and production services at a reasonable cost and at good quality using a very reliable supply etnic that made his work easy. He said that Bail offered a number of ready solutions that could be customized for local appiications with ease. He specifically commented that it was easy to get a new design prototyped and fabricated through the Bali producers. This is the impact of globalization.

In the discussions that followed many issues of globalization and cultural expression were discussed. Shri Jogi Panghal mentioned that Shri Singhal in Jaipur offered similar services to international architects using the Rajasthan crafts skills and contacts. Shri Ashoke Chatterjee added that he had seen a traditional expression done in the Carribean that was sourced from Bali. The discussion touched upon globalization, business excellence, competition and the role of crafts in the future and how KSID could take a cue for all that was happening around us today. Prof Sangita Shroff mentioned that crafts sensibilities need to be introduced from the school level itself and offered the example of the Krishmnamurthy Foundation schools that took this training and exposure very seriously for their students. Those who get such and exposure go on in life to many different occupations but they are all sensitive to art and culture and this majkes a huge difference to their professional lives and brings quality to all their activities. Shri Ashoke Chatterjee suggested that the infrastructure of the ITI’s could be a source for new opportunities for such high quality business training of artisans. He proposed the use of tools to reduce drudgery and offered a few examples of their successful use in some major projects involving stone, stained glass and other materials. Prof Sudhakar Reddy suggested that functional and utility crafts could be an area of focus. Shri Ashoke Chatterjee warned that excessive dependence on exports may harm the crafts due to rapid change in their demand structure and suggested that local markets as an alternative that could be developed.

Image06: Day two: Session four

Prof Vinod Krishnan came forward and gave a summary of the proceedings in Malayalam for the benefit of the participants from the local NGO sector.

Shri Ashoke Chatterjee summarized the comments and proposals from the preceding three sessions in a list of 32 specific suggestions and comments and he called for these points to be taken forward in the group workshop sessions that would follow after the groups reassembled. The groups were divided into two teams, one to look at the Administrative and Infrastructure issues that had to be addressed and the other group would look at Programmes and Activities that the KSID could take up with the immediate funds available with it and at its disposal. He listed a number of action points that had come up in all the discussions that had taken place so far.

1. KSID needs a full time Registrar to assist the Director.
2. KSID needs full time Programme officers to manage and handle startup projects as well as field work type projects.
3. KSID Director needs a full time Office assistant.
4. KSID needs a full time Librarian to be able to start the acquisition of book resources in a sustained manner.
5. A one page brief to be developed by the working group to be given to the KSID architects and a procedure that could be implemented urgently.
6. Location of the budgets needed and the development of suitable heads and subheads that could be assigned to specific tasks on a priority basis.
7. Delegation of powers for the use of these budgets by the Director and by other functionaries based on and approved action plan.
8. Documentation of all programmes carried out by the KSID so far needs to be done and these should be packaged so that they can have an impact with users and the State Government and other stakeholders who need to know.
9.Need for marketing expertise at KSID was felt and the Entrepreneurship Development Institute could help in this matter.
10. Mapping Kerala with the use of rich visual mapping techniques is an urgent need.
11. Photography skills could be rapidly developed and shared through the medium of short courses and workshops that are aimed at specific groups.
12. New opportunities could be explored with obvious partners such as the ITI’s, the Weavers Service Centres and look at the needs of sunrise sectors such as the Wellness Industry and the Hospitality sector, Health sector and Sports sector with a focus on National thrust areas.
13. A detailed Action Plan for the immediate period and an extended plan for the first two years.
14. Vision and Mission explained: Vision is a picture of tomorrow : Mission is the roadmap of how to reach that goal.
15. KSID has not shown any real progress since May 2009 meeting and that is not acceptable. State Government need to do more.
16. Commenting on Prof Prabhat Patnaik’s opening address he suggested that KSID should discuss the empowerment of people and the feudal make up of the Kerala. From this base develop a clear brief for the programmes and activities of the KSID.
17. Crafts could be a starting point for KSID activities.
18. Called for a clear articulation of “what does Kerala want?” and “What does Kerala need?’ based on the call made by Prof M P Ranjan in his approach paper.
19. Recalled that Shri Jogi Pangal had raised the same questions and had suggested field surveys as a way to answer some of these.
20. Asks for recommendations for the specific crafts that could be taken forward by KSID.
21. Asks for an active contribution from the KSID Board for directions forward from this event.
22. Stressed to get activities started even if the building and campus may take some more time.
23. Need top explore the suggestions of having an MOU with NID and IICD at an early stage.
24. Explore the relationship between designers and craftspersons and build strong linkages in the discussions ahead.
25. Need to develop mutual respect between designers and craftsmen.
26. Quality – What is it? The need for clear benchmarks for KSID to follow.
27. Bibliographies of all crafts documentations done by NID, IICD and NIFT could be collected by the KSID as a starting point for their own research initiatives.
28. List of key books for KSID own resource centre may be developed and the suggested ones immediately were tha Handmade in India, Bamboo & Cane Crafts, Stone Crafts of India etc.
29. Invite KSID and Crafts Council of India to conduct an economic survey of the Kerala crafts sector.
30. Recalled suggestion by Shri Jogi Panghal that vision and mission of KSID must be value based and called for the development of a list of values that could guide the further proceedings.
31. The question of wheteher KSID will be a Design School may be deferred for the future discussion while direct action plans are drawn up today.
32. Sugggested the formation of two breakout groups that could discuss these issues in depth and prepare recommendations for the KSID management to take up later.

In the discussions that followed Shri Jogi Panghal stressed that the visual mapping project may be taken up as a priority area. Prof M P Ranjan called for a multi disciplinary approach and said that besides designers the use of anthropologists and ethnographers may also be considered but work must be in a design mode of finding new opportunities rather than just collecting facts.

Prof M P Ranjan stressed the need for spreading design knowledge specifically in Kerala by the use of the local language in both schools as well as at the college levels as an activity for the KSID to take up that would bring it visibility for its intellectual contributions and a better understanding of the complex subject that is much needed in India today. Kerala and KSID could take leadership by producing some popular design books that explain the subject in the local language as a co-branded product or an KSID imprint in cooperation with the publishers as well ast the authors of the selected works. He specifically recommended two books listed below for consideration.
1. Design and Environment by Prof Kumar Vyas, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad 2009
2. Design: A very Short Introduction, by Prof John Heskett, Oxford University Press – India Edition, New Delhi, 2007

Image07: Day two: Session five

Working Groups Formed
1. Administrative and Infrastructure needs of KSID
2. Programmes and Activities for KSID

Working groups assembled in two parts of the conference room and over two sessions worked our=t a checklist of recommendations that were captured on chart paper diagrams and these were presented to the plenary session in the presence of Prof Prabhat Patnaik. Base on these discussions the following recommendations emerged.

1. Administrative and Infrastructure needs of KSID
– to be detailed out and listed here by Shri P T Girish based on the notes from Prof T Y Vinod Krishnan (pictures of chart paper attached)

2. Programmes and Activities for KSID
– to be detailed out and listed here by Shri P T Girish based on presentation by Prof M P Ranjan and Shri Jogi Panghal (Pictures of chart paper used in presentation attached)

Concluding Session
Prof Pratap Patnaik summed up the conference presentations and complimented the delegates for the huge effort that had been put in over the two days at Kovalam. He agreed that the Infrastructure plans and activity plans for the KSID would need to be informed by flexibility in thinking and both the space and faculty planning had scope for innovation. He agreed that flexibility was important for a design institute and that all design institutes must be open to new ideas. He agreed that the KSID had started out as an Institute for design and the crafts sector could well be one of its major areas of focus in the early years. The intentions of the KSID have been articulated in the MOA based on which it was registered but the Government of Kerala had an open mind and the experts could shape the institute as we moved forward. However he suggested that we should not loose sight of design as a driver for the activities at the KSID.

He opined that KSID may face many hurdles and being in the Government sector may bring in its own constraints but this he felt should not burden the KSID and sometimes the struggle is within ourselves in articulating clearly where we would like to go from here. Frozen structures can only damage the long term viability of any entity and many great institutes tend to loose their vitality after sometime. He urged that the KSID would work in ways to keep this vitality alive for a long time to come and this needs vision and a clarity of mission. He recalled that in the West there are many institutes of excellence that have kept amazing us repeatedly over long periods of time, some over 100 or more years. History of its establishment may have set up some constraints for the KSID but while finance may take some time to respond he did not feel that there were any major constraints that would impede the development of an institute such as the KSID. He felt that there was a need to continue the dialogue with experts as had been done over the past two days and while the Geography in Kerala may be a bit of a constraint with limits set by the hills and the seas the mind need not be limited by these geographic limitations. He suggested that both the Governing Body and an Executive Body or Council could be considered if found necessary for operational reasons and thanked the members for their contributions at the conference and workshop sessions at Kovalam over the past two days.

The above post was drafted based on my notes at the two day conference at Kovalam on 9th and 10th November 2009.

Prof M P Ranjan

Design Thinking: The Flavor of the Month

2009-11-18T17:55:00.009+05:30

Design Thinking and Action in India and elsewhere.

Prof. M P Ranjan

The month of November 2009 seems to be the Design Thinking month with so many events and discussions taking place on the subject all around the world. It surely is the flavor of the month as far as I am concerned since I have been named amongst the top twenty design thinkers of the world by a very generous blogger in Columbus, Ohio State, USA. The list is located on the Design Thinking Exchange site that is managed by Nicolae Halmaghi through his own research initiatives and the list is his personal view but he supports it with the research that he has carried out over the past few years. This has raised many voices in India and elsewhere and my mail box is full of congratulatory messages that I cannot reply individually so I have decided to make this post and explain what seems to be happening in the design thinking space.

Image01: An early representation of design thinking as a model that was used to teach NID students in the Design Concepts & Concerns class as prepared in 1990. This was retrieved from Nagraj Seshadri's class notes which were submitted to the NID Library as part of the course documentation that was done over the years.

I write to Nicolae Halmaghi to explain why he had included me on his list of top twenty design thinkers in the world especially since I am yet to publish a major book on the subject although I do have many published and unpublished teaching notes and papers that were prepared over the years on the subjects of design, design education, design methods, design concepts & concerns course and on design thinking as well. I quote from my mail to Nicolae:

Quote
I was quite surprised to see my name on the top twenty list particularly since I have not yet published a comprehensive book on the subject of design or design thinking although I have many papers on my website and my blogs dating back to my early teaching notes and published papers. My three books to date are on bamboo and design and on the Handcrafts of India called "Handmade in India".

I am curious to know the extent of your research and if you are aware of the work done at the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad over the past 50 years since it was set up in the early 60's based on the seminal report by Charles and Ray Eames called the India Report. You have not included NID in your list of Design schools either on your site. In particular which is the paper or papers you have referred to in making your assessment for the list. You mention a 1989 paper, I am curious as to which one this is. I have many papers from the 80's and several 'unpublished' ones but most of these were distributed as xerox copies to my class in design methods along with models that I used to explain the concepts“.
UnQuote

Image02: A chart showing the development of the Design Methods course at NID from its origins on the 60’s to the forms that it took till the time the chart was created in 1995. The course was then called Design Concepts and Concerns as it now stand today. The course has evolved further in its content and teaching method which has been explained in my paper for the EAD06 Conference in 2005.

Nicolae graciously wrote back and I quote the part of the message below and he has also made an additional post on his blog after some critical comments from Bruce Nussbaum.
Quote
“I must admit I have stumbled over your papers accidentally, about a year ago. I was very unhappy with the “muddying” of an emerging discipline and I felt very alone. Everybody seamed to be happy with the progress, except me. At that point, I was working on finding unifying principles that allow seamless communication across different systems (financial, economical etc) across both brain hemispheres.

I am not quite sure what I was searching for, but all of a sudden, I realized that I was staring at a paper whose content was plagiarized for years by an entire industry. Most of the architecture, structure and process of what we now call Design Thinking was there. All of the current buzz terms associated with design thinking were eloquently presented in this paper. Even the term “Design Thinking” was there, except it was used very inauspiciously without great fanfare.
The paper that I am talking about is “Design Visualization”, published in1997 (I think I said 1998. will correct immediately)
Unquote

The paper that Nicolae referes to can be downloaded from this link here. Download paper as a pdf file here

Image03: Profile of the Emerging Designer model as it is used today was also modified a number of times and now it has a central core that is Values which inform all other actions and thoughts of as part of the design process.

I did some background research from my own archives as well as from the NID Library where we had placed student notes from the courses that had been conducted in Design Process way back in 1982 onwards. This I did to check the provenance of my ideas on design thinking. I found an early diagram that I had used to explain design thinking in Nagraj Seshadri’s class notes from the 1991 Foundation class at NID when he was a student in my DCC class. Nagraj went on to graduate from the product design programme at NID and then did his Masters Degree from the RCA, London also in Product Design. In 1999 he won the first ever award offered by Core77.com for his classroom project carried out at the RCA, an intuitive electronic music device for children. When I browsed through his Foundation document of 1991 I saw that he was involved in a group assignment that dealt with the key words “Toy – Physics – Child” and the group explored the concept and built an interaction matrix that captured numerous attributes through the analysis of all the traditional folk toys that were in Sudarshan Khanna’s book, Folk Toys of India. This for me demonstrates the reflexive nature of design activity and of design thinking itself. George Soros explains his concept of reflexivity in his book Open Society and also in his recent online lectures available from the Financial Times website here. This shows that one engagement with design thinking on a particular subject could be a life long engagement since the act does something to you while you try to do something to the world.
Core77 Competitions list
Digital Sound Factory for Kids by Nagraj Seshadri

So I wrote back to Nicolae and told him about my findings.
Quote
Thank you for the clarification. However, it is very daunting to be placed in the rarified space of the worlds top twenty, which is always a very difficult task since there are so many perspectives from which all of us work and look at ourselves and our peers. Your blog post has stirred up much interest here in India and I hope that it will bring a better appreciation of the role of design itself.

I must give you a background for the 1997 paper on Design Visualisation. I started teaching a number of courses at NID dealing with materials and geometry in the early 70's and was part of the group that worked closely with the development of the Foundation Programmes at the Institute, particularly for the Undergraduate programme in Design. I started teaching Design Methods as a course in the early 80's and in these courses used the work of Prof Bruce Archer and the works of John Chris Jones and Christopher Alexander as the platform for building a teaching module for NID's Foundation programme in design. In 1988 Prof Bruce Archer visited NID and I had the opportunity to act as guide and local host and traveled with him to Bombay IIT for a short exposure at IDC. During this early period I had prepared many slides with models that could be projected on an over head projector and these were used in the class as well as distributed as teaching notes along with a course abstract paper. The course evolved each year due to interactions with students as well as critiques from faculty colleagues in a very lively environment that was the NID of the 80's and 90's. Much of this work is undocumented although occasional internal papers may have been distributed since all the texts were made on ordinary typewriters and never published.

The Design Visualisation paper too was never formally published but earlier versions of this pdf file were shared with students and faculty at NID as xerox copies of typed paper. This particular version was made after our Apple Mac lab got established in 1988 when I started converting the OHP slides into computer illustrations and this too went into many versions in those days. While these models have been with my students all along I was able to share these with a wider audience only after I set up my website in 2004. All along I have been collecting a substantial list of books as well as using ones that are in our Institute library. Of these I would list the HfG Ulm and Bauhaus papers as major sources of design exploration and pedagogy. In early September 2003 I made my first post on the PhD-Design List <003565>and from then onwards I have made perhaps 150 posts in response to the very stimulating exchanges that have been taking place on that list about the nature of design and all aspects of the subjects. This paper was first posted on the PhD-Design list as a text contribution on 20th September 2003 during a discussion on Creativity and Visualisation <003681>

There are many serious design thinkers populating the PhD-Design list who have been making significant contribution to our understanding of design and design thinking. I wonder if you have studied this list. I am hugely impressed by the thoughts and writings of Klaus Krippendorff, Jerrome Diethelm, Charles Brunette, and many others on that list, to name only a few. Next month I will be traveling to Melbourne at the invitation of Ken Friedman, Dean, Swinburne University Department of Design to attend a conference on Design Thinking on the 21st and 22nd November. We will expect to meet many of the leaders of design thinking at that conference and I look forward to it. I have also been invited to speak to business leaders by the Design Victoria at a breakfast meet on 24th November at Geelong.
UnQuote

Notwithstanding the Design Thinking Exchange posts and the top twenty list we do see signs that things are stirring up and Design Thinking is becoming the flavor of the month. Last week Bruce Nussbaum sat down with Tim Brown and with Roger Martin, authors of two new books on design thinking for business applications and these talks were much publicized. Tim Brown’s TED Talk is doing its rounds and Roger Martin too appears in the New School interview. Both the books landed on my desk thanks to my advance orders at Amazon. I will get down to reading them when I get back from my own do at Melbourne. Another significant event is the ICSID conference in Singapore from 23 to 25 November and the theme is …. Design Thinking!! NID Director, Prof Pradyumna Vyas and two faculty colleagues Prof Vinai Kumar, Acting Dean Gandhinagar and Prof Shashank Mehta, Chairman Faculty Development Centre will be traveling to Singapore as well. Prof Proadyumna Vyas will be standing for election to the ICSID Board in the long tradition of the NID Directors since Prof Kumar Vyas, Mr Vinay Jha, and Darlie O Koshy and I would urge all ICSID members to cast their vote in his favor.

So Design Thinking is indeed the flavor of the month and is here to stay and I hope India will take it a bit more seriously than it has been over the past 50 years since design was established as a discipline here in India.

Prof. M P Ranjan

Animation at NID: A brief History

2009-11-02T17:36:00.011+05:30

Chitrakatha 2009 and the memories from NID's animation journeys

Prof. M P Ranjan

With the CNBC TV18 bestowing a singular honor by recognizing Sekhar Mukherjee as India’s animation teacher of excellence through their Golden Cursor Excellence in Animation Awards conferred on him 8 May 2009 at a glittering function in Mumbai we get an opportunity to look back at the stirrings of animation in India and how it set roots at NID.

Image01: The CNBC TV 18 award to Sekhar Mukherjee has finally brought some recognition to NID teachers in Animation Design discipline. We can review this in the backdrop of the Chitrakatha 2009 events at NID over the past three days.

This is a brief but incomplete history of the valiant efforts made at NID over the years to establish an animation based profession in India, the first institute to take up this challenge. Jayanthi Sen in her article in Animation World Network ion 19 October 1999 maps the origins of animation in India with the arrival of the Cartoon Film Unit at the Films Division set up buy the Government of India. In the mid 50’s they brought Disney Studio maestro, Claire Weeks to train the first batch of trained animators for the Indian scene. The story of NID’s contribution to Indian animation has not been written and I do hope that some serious research scholar will take up this challenge and articulate the epic journey from its origins in 1963 when the Oxbury camera came to NID to the Chitrakatha 2009 and beyond.

Image02: Animation heros seen at the Chitrakatha 2009 event on the NID campus at Paldi. Each of them a leader in the field and with many successful films to their credit.

However in 1961 NID was set up at Ahmedabad and very early in its development the Visual Communication programmes were established with the offering of the first Post Graduate Programme that started in 1963. Amongst the first batch was Ishu Patel who having joined the programme to study Graphic Design gravitated to learning animation after a foundation in Graphics from the master Armin Hoffman. While he was a student at NID two animators came to NID and made a great little film in the mid 60’s called Swimmy. Leo Leonni and Gulio Gianini were assisted by Ishu Patel, Mahendra C Patel, Vikas Satwalekar and I S Mathur, all first generation students at NID in the Visual Communication programme.

Image03: Chitrakatha 2007 showcased NID animation and set the stage for a broader recognition of NID’s contributions to the field of animation film making in India over the years.

Ishu Patel studied Graphics at Basel under Armin Hoffman and in 1970 was deputed to the National Film Board of Canada to study animation. This started a life long passion for animation and a long string of great experimental films made both at NID as well as at the NFBC which he joined full time in 1972. He returned to India each year to share his work at the Institute and many NFBC films came into the NID archives most notable of which are the fine collection from Norman McLaren and later from Ishu Patel himself. Saul Bass and Charles and Ray Eames too were highly influential in the early years in shaping the directions of animation at NID through screenings of their work on a regular basis in the NID auditorium.

Ishu Patel on Wikipedia
Leo Leoni on Wikipedia
Gulio Gianini on Wikipedia
Charles and Ray Eames on Wikipedia
Saul Bass on Wikipedia
National Film Board of Canada on Wikipedia

Image04: Scenes from Chitrakatha 2009 at NID campus between 29th and 31st October 2009.

The next generation of NID students included R L Mistry and Narayanbhai Patel who took to animation and illustration through their long career as student and later teachers NID. Narayanbhai experimented with paper sculpture based animations while R L Mistry explored many styles of illusrtration and developed his art to a very high level of perfection and achieved the distinction of getting the National Award for his film the national Highway from the President of India. After Ishu Patel left NID in 1972 it was R L Mistry who took up the major responsibility of teaching animation to students at NID and there were a steady stream of interested candidates who loved the medium and wished to explore but the funding was limited and hard to find and the Oxbury camera was available only in limited periods due to cost of operation. NID’s exhibition design projects brought in many opportunities for the animation activity and the education programme too legitimized the periodic use of the medium for basic exercises that were many.

R L Mistry on NID website : A book by Prakash Moorthy

Image05: Additional scenes from Chitrakatha 2009 at NID campus between 29th and 31st October 2009.

The next batch of NID animators included Nina Sabnani, Binita Desai and Chitra Sarathy who joined NID as informal learners in short term programmes offered by the department and International consultants were present to conduct some of the programmes for these students at NID. The trio spent a period of experimental work in Calcutta with the Graphic Designer Raghunath Goswami who experimented with the medium for social communication tasks as part of his studio in the Eastern India. NID produced a intermediate technology animation stand for use with a stop frame movie camera and this stand was shifted to Calcutta for use by the NID animators in Goswami’s office. Late 70’s and the early 80’s found Ashoke Chatterjee at the helm of NID as its Director and he insisted on the use of animation for developmental comminication of a variety of types. He managed to get the Ministry of Health to invest in NID animation abilities and Nina Sabnani produced a series of films on the subject of maturation of the girl child and child birth and the associated health issues. In the 80’s and 90’s animation was used extensively for making many short instructional films for screening at the NID designed theme exhibitions such as the Energy pavilion in 1983 that was headed by Vikas Satwalekar. However in spite of these successful demonstrations funding from Government sources was hard to come by and it was back to education assignments to keep the Oxbury camera busy through the year.

Binita Desai made a presentation about 20 years of NID animation at Chitrakatha 2007 and the link here shows her talk in summary on the blog All About Animation:

The UNDP programme of support for the Institute in late 80’s saw the arrival of some support for the animation programme at NID by way of international consultants and travel and study opportunities for NID faculty. Nina and Binny having joined the faculty were deputed to the UK to study animation under Roger Noake while their initial training was provided by Claire Weeks at NID. After their return Nina and Binny got involved in animation education and in making occasional demonstration films and work on a variety of projects that included animation skills such as the animated symbols for the Doordarshan TV channels. The next generation of students included both those in the Post Graduate programme as well as students for the Under Graduate programme at NID. With the arrival of digital technology in the 90’s the field of animation received a great deal of interest in India and the spread of Television across India also brought in new opportunities for the NID animation students. The music channels provided internship opportunities and soon a flood of employment opportunities came their way and Bombay studios gave many of our students professional placement. The other major employer was the IT interactive media industry that took students for gaming and new media product applications and numerous diploma projects were sponsored by industry and these gave a new edge to the animation activity at the institute. I hope that some of these stories will be documented and shared in the days ahead and I am happy that the two Chitrakatha episodes of 2007 and 2009 have given our alumni a platform to share their journeys.

Image06: Stills from the trailer of “Arjun” an animated feature film being directed and produced in Mumbai by Arnab Choudhury and Pavan Buragohain for the UTV Productions due for release early in 2010.

The NID animation department has produced many champions of Indian animation and their story too needs to be told at some length, hopefully after a good deal of research since there is much to be said here. However I am aware of some of these cases since these students have been in touch with me over the years and I have been watching their progress as young professionals and now as accomplished animators that India has to offer to the world. This group includes many individuals and here I can only mention a few that I am aware of in some detail. They include Prakash Moorthy, Umesh Shukla, Dhimant Vyas, Vaibhav Kumaresh, E Suresh, Arnab Choudhury and Pavan Buragohain. I do hope that the others will share what they are up to these days and tell us about the exciting projects that they have on hand, a bit of which we were able to glimpse during the Chitrakatha 2009 that just concluded at NID between 29th to 31st October 2009. Besides the international presenters from Mexico and China we had some from experts from industry and education from Kolkatta, Mumbai and Ahmedabad. However bulk of the presentations were from the NID graduates who are making waves in India across a number of media sectors from advertising, TV entertainment, game design, childrens animation, edutainment, and most exciting of all mainstream feature length animation due to hit the stands shortly. Student animators too showcased their work across many sectors and entries were screened from many nations during the three days as part of the student competition entries that were judged by a panel of jurors and awarded at the end of the event. Others who came to NID for the event include Sheetal Sudhir and Manish Sehrawat of Channel V and Sanjay Jangir, a recent NID graduate showed his Diploma film that was feated at film festivals in Canada, Switzerland and Japan recently.

Pavan Buragohin on the web link:

A note about the making of “Arjun” screening at NID during the Chitrakatha 2009 that appeared in the Ahmedabad Mirror.

Sanjay Jangir web link for Raah:

Image07: An exhibition about Comic Books on the sidelines of the Chitrakatha 2009 at the NID Gallery and other related events exploring the role of Comics in national education of the future.

While the most exciting presentation for me personally was the screening of the making of “Arjun” which promises to be the first ever full length feature animation film to be produced by a group of NID animators and that too as a fully indigenous production effort. This was particularly interesting since Arnab Choudhury shared the design process and the stages through which the film had to be visualized with the use of live action to discover both characters as well as postures and action sequences, dramatization of the theme and scenes, and the followup articulation with sketches and diagrams of key figures, characters and scenes so that these could be passed on to the production stage in a coherent manner involving a vast group of service providers without compromising the quality and intention of the designers involved. This process promises to create a solid foundation for a vibrant animation industry in India that delivers compelling products instead of just BPO type finishing touches to international producers. Further the quality and impact of the presentation was such that many of us left the auditorium feeling that the team had a Oscar quality film in the making, we wish the team all the very best in the days ahead. NID animation has finally arrived at the national stage and that too with a big bang!! Other young designers are in the ranks and they will be able to dream big and have the conviction to take on the Bollywood producers and money bags who have been sitting on the sidelines so far in the days ahead I am sure. Government of India could do well to find and channel venture funding for the young creative animation producers and this will speed up the process of seeding a fantastic industry based on design talent in India of the future.

I was invited by Sekhar Mukherjee to sit in on a panel discussion on the topic of the role Comic Books in Education in India. The discussions were quite stimuilating and there is indeed a role that Comics will and can play in the days ahead. I mentioned the book by Scott McCloud called “Understanding Comics” which I have been reading with great interest for the theory that it provides us and also about TED talks where Scott McCloud gives us an insight into the world of Comics that is both informative as well as entertaining.

Prof. M P Ranjan

Ethics in Design: Istanbul conference and after

2009-10-25T18:52:00.021+05:30

Images and Comments: Istanbul conference and after

Prof. M P Ranjan

On the 8th of October 2009 Prof M P Ranjan delivered the keynote address at the 4th National Design Conference at Istanbul Turkey and spent the next day listening to the numerous sessions at the conference on various issues dealing with design that the Turkish scholars found interesting and relevant, all in Turkish, with two student guides whispering the English translation into his ears. The conference was stimulating and the event was conducted in a historic setting of the Istanbul Technical University at Taskisla in Taksim in the heart of Istanbul. The conference was organized by Prof Alpay Er, Head of Department, Industrial Product Design at ITU and the participants came from many of the 24 schools of industrial design in Turkey and included teachers, students and professional designers. The keynote paper and visual presentation titled “Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design” can be downloaded from here from this blog.
Download full paper titled "Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design" here -PDF file 360kb Full Text
Download visual presentationas a pdf file here - PDF file 4.8 mb visual presentation screen resolution

Image1: Prof M P Ranjan delivers keynote lecture titled “Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design” at the ITU Auditorium in Istanbul on 8th October 2009. The theme of the conference is “Design or Crisis”.

Image2: The historic building of the Istanbul Technical University has a mural painted by Abdurrahman Öztoprak from 1950’s while the building itself dates back to the 1850’s.

Cigcem Kaya, one of the researchers at ITU wrote to me that this fresco on one of the walls of Istanbul Techical University, School of Architecture, is one of the major works of Abdurrahman Öztoprak from 1950s. Trained in Academy of Fine Arts (Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University) by Nurullah Berk, Öztoprak is one of the first and most reputable social realist painters of the country with some embodiment cubism as well. Although housed in an architecture school not many people know about the legacy of this fresco. It lies silent behind gatherings and conferences: untitled. Further enquiries with Fatma Merve, one of my student guides revealed that, "Abdurrahman Öztoprak (*1927 Istanbul, lives in Akyaka) is one of Turkey’s leading contemporary artist of international stature. His works are represented in the permanent collections of major museums and private collections in Turkey. He draws his inspirations for his abstract compositions primarily from Classical European Music. He created a unique body of abstract works during a fifty year period. On July 1st 2007 Abdurrahman Öztoprak has been eighty years old. Öztoprak was educated at the Art Academies in Istanbul and Rome and worked in Germany between 1960 and 1975. Öztoprak’s abstract paintings are a true archive artistic dialogue between East and West cultures and testimony to the way in which different traditions express their feelings. Their messages are continually universal. The geometrical abstract works of artist demonstrates a unique imaginative form vocabulary. Öztoprak’s paintings have recorded interesting dialogue between Oriental and Occidental Art; through them we witness a fertile symbiosis of Turkish and European Culture."

Image3: The beautiful courtyard at the Istanbul Technical University springs to life in the coffee and cocktail breaks and students stream out to sit in the sun and socialize between classes. Pelin Kazak who picked me up from the airport won the best prize for the student exhibit.

Image4: Experiencing street food views in Istanbul with student volunteers on the day before the ITU conference.

Image5: Entrance to the ITU building with the conference poster and views from the conference venue during the keynote lecture.

Image6: On the sidelines of the conference XXI Design Magazine conducted an interview with Prof M P Ranjan

Image7: On the day after the conference Merve and Saniye, student volunteers showed me the scenes of the Bosphorus, crossed over to the other side of Golden Horn and looked at the covered market and took the ferry ride to end the day.

Image8: Sunday it was street life in Istanbul on both sides of the Bosphorus, teeming with people, dressed in their best and nowhere to go in particular and nothing to do in particular, an interesting day of ambling about on the town.

Image9: Return journey through Doha Airport in Qatar is one big shopping mall and a number of halls full of Eames Tandem Sling Seating just like the original prototype that we have in the NID Prototype Collection back home at Paldi campus.

Prized takeaway from Turkey: A small book, "On Methods of Research by Bruce Archer, published locally by METU Faculty of Architecture Press, Ankara, 1999" was presented to me by Prof. Dr Fatma Korkut and Prof. Dr Gulay Hasdogan, both faculty at the Department of Industrial Design at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara in Turkey. This book is in both English and in Turkish language, front to back, and as a low cost offering it makes available valuable insights into design and research from one of the world thought leaders in the subject. I was wondering if India too could not do this and if some Indian school takes up this challenge they will soon be seen as the design leaders in the region themselves. I have a wish list of a set of books that must be made widely available to Indian audiences from the school level all the way to the level of industry stalwarts and Government officials who should be exposed to ideas in design if we are to see a change in the use of design in India in real sectors of national need. Is anybody listening?

Design Thinking: Is however the Flavour of the Day. Design Thinking Exchange posted a list of thinkers that generated scores of emails and Facebook & Twitter posts that came my way. Thank you all for your mails and Tweets. More about this in my next post, particularly since I am off to Melbourne next month to participate in another conference on Design Thinking organised by the Swinburne University by Prof Ken Friedman, Dean, Swinburne Design.

Prof. M P Ranjan

Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design

2009-09-30T22:50:00.012+05:30

Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design : Keynote address at the 4th National Design Convention at Istanbul on 8th October 2009.

Prof M P Ranjan

Prof M P Ranjan has been invited to deliver the keynote lecture at the 4th National Design Convention at Istanbul that is being organized by the Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey. This gives us an opportunity to look at the forces that are influencing design today and those that have helped shaped it over the past five to eight decades since the Bauhaus and the Hfg Ulm schools in Germany. My lecture looks at the ethical dimensions in design and I am quoting the abstract of my paper below along with a couple of models that I shall be using to explore these dimensions in my lecture. It is supported by case studies that we had researched for the sustainability posters that we had designed for the World Economic Forum in January this year as well as some of our own work at NID that could illustrate these ethical dimensions as we go forward from here. The various ethical dimensions have been grouped into the three orders of design that had been written about in a previous post on this blog and the list of books from my design bookshelf is also quoted below for immediate reference.

Image01: Title page of the visual presentation titled “Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design”

Abstract:

Keynote lecturer at the 4th National Design Conference between 8th and 9th October 2009 at ITU in Istanbul, Turkey at the invitation of the Department of Industrial Product Design at Istanbul Technical University (ITU) and the conference co-sponsors, Koleksion A.S., Profilo and the ITU.

Our understanding of design has been evolving steadily over the past 100 years and in recent years there has been a rush of new research into a variety of dimensions and Ethics is one the many dimensions that have received research attention. In this paper we look at the various dimensions of design and at current and past definitions to see the contemporary understanding of the subject as we see it today with the aid of models that the author has evolved over several years of reflection and research. We then trace the evolution of design as a natural human activity and restate this history in terms of the major stages of evolution from its origins in the use of fire and tools through the development of mobility, agriculture, symbolic expression, crafts production and on to industrial production and beyond to the information and knowledge products of the day. This sets the stage to ponder about the future of the activity and of the discipline as we see it today.

With the use of a model the expanding vortex of design value and action is discussed with reference to the role of ethics and value orientation at each of the unfolding stages through which we have come to understand and use design over the years. Beginning with the material values of quality and appropriateness we explore the unfolding dimensions of craftsmanship, function, technique, science, economy and aesthetics that has held the attention of design philosophers and artists over the post renaissance period. In the last fifty years our attention has shifted through the work of several design thought leaders to aspects of impact of design on society, communication and semiotics, environment and even on politics and culture with some discussion on each of the major contributors in this ongoing discourse. The further developments that lead to systems thinking and on to the spiritual levels are introduced to place the ethical debate at the centre of the design discourse at each of these levels of engagement.

Some critical case examples are introduced to exemplify the arguments that have been made to establish the various levels of ethical actions that design has discovered and with these the author will argue that design is evolving to a more complex form that will require new kind of integrated design education that is already being experimented with across the world in the face of a series of crisis that we have been facing in industrial, economical, social, and most visibly at the political and ecological levels. These ethical lessons are still diffuse and disconnected in the fabric of design action across the world and we will need to find ways of bringing these to the hand, head and heart of design education if we are to find a new value for design that will help us address the deep crisis that we are facing today.

The full paper addresses the following six questions by expanding on each as we go forward with the discussions that each question entails.
1. What is Design today?
2. How did Design evolve from being a core human activity to become a modern discipline with a significant future?
3. What are the unfolding dimensions and orders of Design that we can call the “Ethical Vortex of Design”?
4. Who are the thought leaders who have anticipated these expanding dimensions of Design particularly from an ethical perspective?
5. Are there some critical cases in this broader filed of Design that could provide clues for our journey forward at each of these ethical nodes towards an “Integrated Design of the Future”?
6. How do we move towards a new Design education that can “Create the Unknowable – the future for all of us”, in an ethical manner and still be in tune with the needs of our times?
~

Image02: Three Orders of Design: Model showing the expanding dimensions of the vortex of design thought and action.

Thought Leaders in Design: List of books that shaped design thinking in India.

Image03: The Ethical Vortex of Design with the Three Orders overlapped showing the placement of design thought leaders from my personal view and reading.

Design Theory related books which I call the “Design Bookshelf”.

1. Bruce Archer, Design Awareness and Planned Creativity in Industry, Office of Design, Trade and Commerce, Ottawa and the Design Council, London, 1974

2. John Chris Jones, Design Methods: Seeds of Human Futures, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, London, 1970

3. John Chris Jones, Designing Designing, Architecture Design and Technology Press, London, 1991

4. Johannes Itten, Design and Form: The Basic Course at the Bauhaus, Thames & Hudson, London, 1963, 1975

5. Josef Albers, Interaction of Color: Revised Edition, Yale University Press, 1971

6. Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook, Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1953, 1962

7. Paul Klee, Paul Klee Notebooks Volume 1 The Thinking Eye, Lund Humphries, London, 1969

8. Paul Klee, Paul Klee Notebooks: The Nature of Nature Volume 2, Lund Humphries Pub Ltd, 1992

9. Lazlo Moholy Nagy, The New Vision: Fundamentals of Bauhaus Design. Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Daphne M. Hoffmann, Dover Publications, New York, 2005

10. Nigel Whiteley, Design for Society, Reaktion Books Ltd, London, 1993

11. M K Gandhi, Gandhi: 'Hind Swaraj' and Other Writings, in Anthony J. Parel (Ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997

12. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, Harper and Row, New York, 1965

13. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man, HarperCollins, New York, 1969

14. Robert Prisig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, Bantam, New York, 1984

15. R Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path, St. Martin's Griffin; 2nd edition, New York, 1982

16. Otl Aicher, World as Design, Wiley-VCH, Berlin, 1994

17. Thomas Maldonado, Gui Bonsiepe, Renate Kietzmann et al., eds, “Ulm (1 to 21): Journal of the Hoschule fur Gestaltung”, Hoschule fur Gestaltung, Ulm, 1958 to 1968

18. Tomas Maldonado, Design, Nature, and Revolution: Toward a Critical Ecology, Harper & Row, New York, 1972

19. Gui Bonsiepe, Interface - An Approach to Design, Jan Van Eyck Akademie,Netherlands, 1999

20. Christopher Alexander, Nature of Order, Book 1 – Phenomenon of Life, Book 2 – A Vision of Living World, Book 3 – The Process of Creating Life and Book 4 – The Luminous Ground, The Centre for Environmental Structure Publishing, Berkeley, 2001 to 2004

21. David Pye, The Nature of Design, Studio-Vista, London, 1964

22. David Pye, Nature and Art of Workmanship, Cambium Press; Revised edition, London, 1995

23. Norman Potter, What is a Designer: things, places, messages, Hyphen Press, London, 2002

24. John. Heskett, Industrial Design, Thames & Hudson, London, 1985

25. John. Heskett, Toothpicks and Logos: Design in Everyday Life, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002

26. Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, Pantheon Books, New York, 1971

27. Victor Papanek, The Green Imperative: Natural Design for the Real World, Thames & Hudson, 1995

28. Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, Volume 2, University Of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1983

29. Stafford Beer, Platform for Change: A Message from Stafford Beer, John Wiley & Sons Inc, London, 1975

30. Charles & Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, in John Neuhart, Marylin Neuhart and Ray Eames (authors), Abrams, New York, 1994

31. Jiddu Krishnamurthy, Freedom from the Known, HarperOne, New York, 1975

32. Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin, Discovering Design: Explorations in Design Studies, University Of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995)

33. Victor Margolin, Politics of the Artificial: Essays in Design and Design Studies, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002

34. Victor Margolin and Richard Buchanan, Idea of Design: A Design Issues Reader, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1996

35. Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, Basic Books, New York, 2002

36. Donald A. Schon, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, Basic Books, New York, 1983

37. Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., USA, 1987.

38. Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature: How to Bring Sciences into Democracy, (tr. by Catherine Porter), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., USA, 2004.

39. Hazel Henderson, Beyond Globalization. Kumarian Press, 1999

40. Hazel Henderson, Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2006

41. Bryan Czeck, Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train: Errant Economists, Shameful Spenders, and a Plan to Stop them All, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000

42. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity : Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Harper Perennial, New York , 1996

43. Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and William Damon, Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet, Basic Books, New York, 2002

44. Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and William Damon, Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning. Basic Books, New York, 2002

45. Klaus Krippendorff, The Semantic Turn: A New Foundation for Design, Taylor & Francis CRC, New York, 2006

46. Wolfgang Jonas and Jan Meyer-Veden, “Mind the gap! on knowing and not-knowing in design”, H.M Hauschild GmbH, Bremen, 2004

47. John Thackara, In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World, MIT Press, 2005

48. Harold G. Nelson & Erik Stolterman, The Design Way: Foundations and Fundamentals of Design Competence, Educational Technology Publications, New Jersey, 2003

49. Bryan Lawson, How Designers Think, Architectural Press, New York, 1997)

50. Bryan Lawson and Kees Dorst, Design Expertise, Architectural Press, New York, 2009

51. Kees Dorst, Understanding Design: 175 Reflections On Being A Designer, Gingko Press, Berkeley, 2004 & 2006

52. Peter G. Rowe, Design Thinking, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1991

53. Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1972

54. Frei Otto, IL20 TASKS, Institute for Lightweight Structures, Stutgart, 1975
~

Download full paper titled "Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design" here -PDF file 360kb Full Text
Download visual presentationas a pdf file here - PDF file 4.8 mb visual presentation screen resolution

Download visual presentation at print resolution as pdf file here - PDF file print resolution 14.8 mb

Prof M P Ranjan

Reports on the lecture at Istanbul; have started coming in and these will be pointed from the links here below:

Designophy link: 8th October post on Designophy about the keynote lecture with images

Agriculture under Water stress: Design Opportunities in India

2009-08-28T22:44:00.014+05:30

Design for Agriculture: Who is addressing these issues today?

Prof M P Ranjan

Image01: One of the first design projects done at NID by the first batch of Product Design students in 1967, a Seed Drill that could be pulled by bullocks in small Indian farms. Images are from the NID Documentation 1964-69 (Download 25 MB pdf here)

The World is facing climate change and India is facing severe draught across 250 districts, almost half the country, out of a total of 604 administrative districts have been declared drought hit this year. The stress will be on the local farmers who have to fend for themselves in such times of monsoon failure and they are at the mercy of the elements and also an uncaring administration that would wait till the media raises a stink before any action is taken and usually all too late. This is perhaps where design imagination should come in and anticipate such situations and have strategies in place to meet the contingencies with imagination and viable offerings well before the event takes over. Are we ready for it? Far from it, as it apparently seems to be, but why?. Our design infrastructure is quite incapable of making any immediate and specific offering since no investments have been done in the past to explore and address such systemic eventualities that seem to revisit us time and again. Agriculture is unglamorous and unlike fashion gets very little attention from the media and from the design community as well. In the 60’s and 70’s Bucky Fuller wrote about an anticipatory design science movement that could and would address many of these glaring eventualities and he went about setting a personal example with path breaking thoughts and conceptual offerings that could be followed by others in the years to come, most of them well documented. The Bucky Fuller Institute now has instituted an annual design competition that is looking for mega solutions that follow the Bucky Fuller spirit and each year one design team is awarded the coveted Bucky Fuller Challenge Award while several others are honored as runners-up and finalists, all showcased at the Challenge website here : Bucky Fuller Idea Index

Image02: A low cost grain thresher designed in 1968 by Product Design students at NID as a response to the challenge from the Eames India Report of 1958. (Download 360 kb pdf file here)

At the Government of India level however, we seem to think and act as if design applies only to the needs of organized industry which may perhaps explain why the National Institute of Design (NID) is located under the administration and budgetary control of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and perhaps this also explains why NID has never had invested in an education programme dealing with design for agriculture all these years. On the other hand media thinks and acts as if design is located in the arena of fashion and huge media space is accorded to this form of design at the sad exclusion of all other kinds and genres of design, the kind that is desperately needed across as many as 230 sectors of our economy today. The National Design Policy too is silent on the needs of this vast sector and it is particularly so on the needs of the public goods and services that are usually the domain of Governments to serve, being mostly ignored by private industry since the consumer base is too diffuse to be of immediate value to them. The economists who advise our Governments and industry tend to overlook the sector as a whole and leave these matters to politics and legislative processes under the broad umbrella of development programmes, but usually to provide lip service just before the elections. There are a few exceptions to this rule however and they include Hazel Henderson who debunks the theories of Nobel Prize winning clan of the Chicago School and Brian Czeck who in his obscure book titled “Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train” debunks the “growth at any cost theories” of the Keynesian school and proposes a more humane and ecological form of economics that looks at a steady-state and sustainable models of development.

Image03: A small selection of NID’s Agri-Expo, Rural and Water related projects done over the years.

With much of India facing a severe drought we need to look afresh at the needs of our agricultural sector that are hard hit by the absence of water. Design schools in India have ignored this sector except in fits and starts and that too in some peripheral areas of need. Government too did very little to encourage the design schools to take up the challenges by providing the required funding and the mandate to act in these areas. The NID, did however design a major exhibition for the Department of Agriculture way back in 1977 but this was a trade fair and after much chest thumping about the success of the mega-show which was impact assessed in those days by slick marketing teams from the advertising industry everyone seems to have once again forgotten the sector as a whole. I recall that the early projects undertaken by the students of the first product design programme at NID in the late 60’s included several tools for the agricultural sector but over the years we seem to have distanced ourselves from the needs of this huge sector that provides maximum employment across the country. Perhaps we were still under the influence of the Eames Report and the teachers and studends did look at the grassroots for inspiration and direction for action. Why should not the multiple new NID’s that are proposed under the new National Design Policy look at these different sectors of the economy rather than taking the NID Ahmedabad as a role model and continue to address address only the market driven sectors of lifestyles and automobiles and the traditional sectors of manufacturing and communication sectors. The need is clear from over 230 sectors of our economy and we need to build a market for design graduates who are capable of working in these neglected sectors and the Government has a major role to play if this is to happen. In the late 80’s I do recall that NID had an assignment to design tractors for an Indian manufacturer but like all other product design projects from that period this one too was bound to sit on the shelf due to the lack of any competition in the Indian industry in those days.

Image04: A view from an earlier post on water harvesting system designed by Dinesh Sharma for Furaat Systems in Ahmedabad inspired on the traditional step wells of Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Earlier on this blog I have shared the work of an NID graduate, Dinesh Sharma, who by drawing inspiration from the Gujarat and Rajasthan traditions of step wells made from modular blocks has designed a water harvesting system that is both elegant as well as functional. The Furaat Water Harvesting system is just one of the many possible approaches and we need too make concerted investments into the design and testing of hundreds of approaches to deal with water in our lives to face the realities of our situation in India and to find solutions for all of these, from region to region.

Image05: P Sainath as seen on Google Images search.

Farmer suicides are today a way of life in most drought hit districts since crop failures and the search for local ground water sources leave our farmers with huge debts that they cannot service and the spiral down to suicide is an almost foregone conclusion. P Sainath, an Indian journalist has spent many years studying the phenomenon of rural poverty starting with his seminal book titled. “Everyone Loves a Good Drought: Stories form India’s Poorest Districts”, in a stark commentary on the corruption and lack of care that is symptomatic of the Indian condition, particularly in rural India. According to the review on Amazon.com – “They reveal how poverty is compounded by corruption, incompetence, laziness, greed and stupidity. Instead of improving life, many government schemes/development programs only make the poorest poorer, while making corrupt politicians, land- owners and the complacent new middle class of Mumbai (Bombay) richer.”

A specific Quote from India Together online about the correlation between local borewells and farmer suicides tells us a chilling story. Quote
“Sinking borewells, rising debt  P Sainath.  
June 2004: NALGONDA, MEDAK & NIZAMABAD (Andhra Pradesh): Musampally has more borewells than people. This village in Nalgonda district has barely 2000 acres under cultivation. But it boasts over 6,000 borewells - two to every human being. Over 85 per cent of these wells have failed. The rest are in decline. The desperate search for water has bankrupted a once prosperous village….” UnQuote Read the full story here.
And another view from Wiki on Farmer Suicide here

Image 06: Stills from an online video offered by Nature Magazine about the water hot spot developing in western India with severe water stress and ground water depletion in the States of Rajasthan, Punjab, Harayana and Delhi which also happen to be the food bowl of India.

The alarming news is that this water stress is being felt across the food bowl of India across the fertile plains of Punjab, Harayana and Western Uttar Pradesh. While the Design Concepts & Concerns (DCC) course has been addressing the various issues of water in our lives across many domains and verticals we have constant news flows about the shortage of water coming from many sources. The latest one is the result of a six year long satellite based study conducted by a consortium of scientific institutions led by NASA. The alarming video can be watched at the Nature Magazine website at this link here. We need to seriously address the issues that this holds for the design community in India and how we can rally to deal with these realities on the ground and how well we are currently prepared to face these realities. That design can address this kind of challenge is not really in question since this is the only discipline that can bring an integrated and focused body of human experience to bear on these really wicked problems with imagination and political will to find lasting solutions that will get us through this impasse.

Image07: One of the short listed projects under the Bucky Fuller Challenge–New Mexico Renewable Energy Strategy Maps for sustainable regional development.

The Bucky Fuller Challenge Award for 2009 went to the sophisticated Urban Transport solution that redefines personal transportation in our cities. But for me the runner-up, titled “Dreaming New Mexico” shows great promise as a way forward with local planning taking the lead and with the use of maps local communities are involved in envisioning desirable and viable futures which is followed by a sustained programme of “Bioneering” involving the use of imagination, innovation, technology as well as political processes to get the task done. Regional design schools could help locate these dialogues with the community and assist decision makers build new and imaginative solutions to address a host of local issues towards resolution of the same.

Image08: Paul Polak and his product offerings for marginal farmers in Asia and Africa through his international entrepreneurial initiatives.

India needs to look seriously at the needs of our agriculture and rural micro-industry sectors and not just the crafts sector that brings in export income by through a huge number of export oriented industries. The benefits of the huge export sector rarely reach the remote rural producers but increasingly the strategy has been to cluster the production in class two towns and cities and real rural producers are left to fend for themselves. Paul Polak–founder of Colorado-based non-profit  International Development enterprises (IDE)—is  dedicated to developing practical solutions that attack  poverty at its roots, who in his book “Out of Poverty” outlines strategies and products and services that he has developed to achieve huge successes using appropriate design at the marginal farmer level with huge success. Design in India needs to look at these models of rural development and not just the “Lifestyle product” category for the export markets with our crafts capabilities. Another example of design at the periphery comes for the “d-school” in Stanford University’s Stanford Institute of Design where their Executive Director, George Kembel has taken their students to Nepal and Thailand to search for real challenges to create entrepreneurial designs for extreme affordability. (download pdf of the d.school offering here)

India needs to take a leaf out of these initiatives and try and integrate design into our Agricultural Universities or focus the attention of the next NID fully on the needs of the agricultural sector as an integrated offering that looks after the design needs across all the sectors of need from water harvesting and management to managing the cold chain for reaching the food to the consumers across the land and all the tasks and services that come in between these two extremes from the point of view of our fragmented farm ecology all over the country. Wikipedia gives a list of 41 Agricultural Universities in India and it is my view that all of them need to integrate design abilities and actions into their many programmes if they are to be successful to prevent farmer suicides in the future.

Prof M P Ranjan

India Incubates Design: What is a Design Business?

2009-07-31T23:02:00.010+05:30

Government of India takes a step forward: Supports Design Business Incubation

Prof M P Ranjan

Image00: NDBI Magazine launched today. More at this site.

The National Design Business Incubator (NDBI) was set up at the National Institute of Design (NID) about five years ago with support from the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India. It has now matured into a Section 25 Company with an infusion of funds from the Department of Industrial and Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Government of India when it has received a grant of Rupees 10 crores (Rupees 100 million) to be disbursed to design business incubates over the next four years.

Image01: NDBI incubates meeting Ajay Shankar and Renu Sharma from the DIPP at an informal photo session and tree planting ceremony at the NID Paldi campus.

Today morning the Secretary, DIPP, Ajay Shankar IAS, and Joint Secretary Renu Sharma, IAS visited NID and the NDBI for a special function held at the NID auditorium to disburse the first of the many design incubator grants under the programme called the NDBI’s Venture Ready Fund (NDBI-VRF). Three startups were funded today with seed money to kick-start their design based enterprises, the first in a long series of such investments that are planned by the NDBI with the support of the DIPP as reported by the NDBI CEO Mahesh Krovvidi at the inaugural function this morning. Mahesh reported that so far 13 startups have been given support with funds from the DST and a new phase has begun with support from the DIPP. Plans are afoot to launch more centres to incubate design business in Pune, Delhi, Hyderabad, Guwahati and Bangalore to include 400 designers within 100 startups and which could provide direct employment to over 1000 design and support staff over the next 5 years. Reliance Venture Fund has already supported one startup that is has a patented product offering and is already doing a road show in the US to generate new business for its products with a grant of Rupees 1.5 crores. 17 startups are already lined up for the new centre at Bangalore for which the NID Rajajinagar site will be mobilized as the next major venue for the incubator.

Image02: Ajay Shankar and Renu Sharma visit NID exhibits showcasing potential projects done by NID students and faculty at the campus along with meetings with NID and NDBI management teams.

Pradyumna Vyas speaking at the function called this event a historic milestone and he requested the chief guest to release the first NDBI Quarterly Newsletter and Renu Sharma released the book of profiles of the NDBI startups which was followed by the handing over of the first grant cheques to the three selected incubates to receive the first ever offerings under the present scheme of the Government of India for design businesses with this DIPP support to the NDBI. The NDBI Newsletter gives several examples of new business initiatives started by the incubates as well as the proposals that are in line for future funding. There is a buzz on the NID campus and many students have offered their products to be showcased as part of this new and exciting development. The Government seems to be finally loosening its purse strings when it comes to design and design supports in India.

Image03: Images of the simple event at the NID Auditorium for felicitating the first batch of Design Business Incubatees supported by the DIPP fund.

The Secretary DIPP, Ajay Shankar IAS, spoke at some length about the changing perceptions about design in India and he mentioned the encounter that he had with the NDBI exhibit in Bangalore two years ago when he had mooted the idea of an incubator fund to take the collection of new and innovative items that were on display in the Design Idea Fair that was held on the sidelines of the CII NID National Design Summit of 2007. He spoke of a change towards a green society where sustainable innovations would have a place and urged the NDBI incubates to forge a path forward on two fronts, that of innovation and on the other hand the path of design with branding. He recalled a meeting of a highly respected economics forum where the founder of IKEA, Ingvar Kamprad, was honored much to his surprise, when he saw an entrepreneur being given a platform for the promotion of good design, which by his admission was an unusual event. He urged the young entrepreneurs to read the story of the worlds richest man's, Ingvar Kamprad's, path to success in building an 80 billion dollar enterprise on a simple mission of bringing good design to the masses in his book “Leading By Design: The IKEA Story”. He also recalled an early exposure to design and entrepreneurship when he was a student in the USA when he saw a Professor from the MIT incubate a company based on his research work on sound quality of speakers and he retold the story of the Bose Corporation that had a premium on all its products by virtue of its quality.

Image04: Visit of the visitors and incubates to the NIDUS store at NID followed by the meet with incubates at the NDBI premises.

The entourage moved from the NID Auditorium to the NIDUS shop on the NID campus and then on to the NDBI to meet the young entrepreneurs and see their current offerings after which we assembled at the NID Board room for a session with the NID faculty. This was a highly unusual event and each faculty member present introduced themselves and gave a brief statement about what design meant to them and what they had on their mind for the future of their discipline in the days ahead. In all this was a most satisfying session and I have requested NID to share the video tape of this event with our students and our alumni at an early date. This kind of vision sharing has happened internally over the years but rarely have we seen it in the presence of the Secretary and Joint Secretary of the DIPP who handle the finances of the Institute as well as the policy perspectives for design in India. I hope that this will have long implications for the future of design in India just as the ripples from the design incubation that has finally happened at NID today with Government support for the first time in the history of the Institute and in the history of design in India. In all 37 faculty members were present at this meeting along with the NID Director, Pradyumna Vyas and Mahesh Krovvidi of NDBI. Unfortunately six faculty colleagues from Paldi and Gandhinagar were missed here today and we also missed the Bangalore colleagues who could not make it to this important event at the Paldi campus.

Image05: Meeting with NID Faculty at the NID Board Room facing the lawns. A stimulating session.

While the thoughts are active about the new role for design in India through the incubation possibilities we need to look back at the past fifty years of NID’s efforts to build a profession in India and we now see hope that there may be a thaw in the attitude of Government to the fledgling discipline that has been so under funded and ill-supported when compared to the investments that have been made in the science, technology and management sectors in India. The incubation supports for the technology sectors have been in place in many sectors and the faculty too of those sectors are provided supports and a status that design teachers are yet to see in India today. This too I hope will change in the years ahead and we come out of this long thaw with these changes in National Policy particularly with the implementation of the National Design Policy in the days ahead. I must not forget to mention the hundreds of NID graduates who have managed to incubate their design businesses over the years in a very harsh and unforgiving political, governmental, industrial and business environment in India and have come out with flying colours and it may be an appropriate moment now when NID approaches its 50th year of existence to map out their journeys too for all our policy makers to see and appreciate that design is like a potent seed that needs to be nurtured if it is to flower and bring wealth to our nation and this map will also be a beacon for many young designers to follow.

Prof M P Ranjan

Evolution of Design at NID: 50 Years on and still unfolding...

2009-07-08T20:23:00.015+05:30

Evolution of Design at NID: Lessons for “Deep Design for India”

Prof M P Ranjan
The Government of India set up the National Institute of Design in 1961 through a stroke of madness or of sheer genius. This was a visionary move far ahead of the norms of the day when science and technology were the ruling deities in the country and many institutions were established across the land. This particular move was aided by the visionary document that was drafted by the Eames couple in 1958, called the India Report and fondly known as the Eames Report. The report called for sober investigation into those values and qualities that Indians hold important to a good life….

Image01: The Eames India Report and the famous quote about the role of design in India and its relevance to the grassroots level.

On the 29th of June 2009 I was invited to speak at the National Institute of Design (NID) Auditorium on the occasion of the World Industrial Design Day. I chose to expand on the personal journey that I have had at NID and in that my own reflections about the evolution of design thought and action at NID. The pdf file that formed the slides for my hour long talk as well as the voice file recorded during the lecture are available for download from this link here as “Evolution of Design.zip” that contains two separate files, a pdf file with all the images and an full length MP3 voice file (38.6 MB zip size) that can be viewed together if downloaded. This event gave me the occasion to reflect on the origins of NID and the early years of the Institute that was modeled like a clinical hospital with concurrent teaching and practice where the faculty and students were involved in handling design projects together and over the years many live and vibrant projects of national importance were addressed and through these the design culture at NID evolved as teaching and learning progressed at the Institute while the market for design services matured in the country.
Download Evolution of Design show and lecture here as a zip file.

Image02: The early years of NID education and practice from 1961 to 1975 saw the development of a campus for design education at Paldi in Ahmedabad and a number of significant projects that were handled by the institute where students and faculty worked closely with international consultants to deliver amazing results of high quality benchmarks in the early years of its existance. Fortuitously the first major project was the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Exhibition which brought Charles and Ray Eames and their team back to NID to work with the young team of faculty and students from the first PG course in Visual Communication. Product Design education started soon thereafter and many professional projects were handled by the faculty in those years.

Significant projects from that era were assembled as part of an NID brochure that was prepared in 1998 called the NID Milestones and I used the pictures from that presentation since they were available in an organized manner. However these do not cover all the significant projects that were done by NID over the years since that will be the subject of a huge research project that is still to be done by someone in the days ahead. However this presentation does cover the projects included in the Milestones brochure of 1998 and the images here show the thumbnails of the pictures shown in sequence as they appear on the pdf presentation that I used for the lecture at NID. The early period included many major identities for Indian corporations and shown here are the symbols for Indian Airlines by Benoy Sarkar, State Bank of India by Shekhar Kamat and the Operation Flood for the National Dairy Development Board by Vikas Satwalekar. The caption below each thumbnail picture has the year in front followed by a cryptic description and some identification of the individuals in the picture or the initials of the designers behind the project that is represented here. The voice file would have some further description when each of these were shown on the screen for the audience at my talk.
Download Eames India Report here as a pdf file 359 kb size
Download NID Documantation 1964 to 69 here as a pdf file 25 MB size
Download “NID Milestones 1961 to 1998 from here as a 2.1 MB pdf file.

Image03: The period between 1975 and 1985 saw some significant communication design projects with Ashoke Chatterjee as the Executive Director at NID. The Agri-Expo was perhaps the single largest design projects where the whole school with the exception of the foundation programme was involved in actively for many months in the research, design and execution phase of the massive exhibition project which was a true multi-disciplinary treat for all participants.

NID in those days lived up to the model of a design school as a clinical hospital where all the faculty and students were engaged in live projects inside and outside the classrooms. Pure Industrial Design projects were few and far between since Indian industry did not see the need to innovate in the “license-permit raj” of the day nor did Government have a vision of the potential uses of product design for the social needs of our country. The Jawaja Project that commenced in that period was an exception and Prof Ravi Matthai and Ashoke Chatterjee drew NID and the IIMA into a partnership that went on for many long years to bring the village needs to both the design and the management schools attention. Doordarshan the Indian Television channel got its symbol through a classroom assignment where the offering made by Devashis Bhattacharyaya a student of Visual Communication as part of the class explorations, a real life client inside the classroom and this set the tomne for the decades to follow. My own project where I was the Project Head, that made the Milestones list, was the Manipur Pavilion that was done in 1981 for the State Government of Manipur using the considerable research that we had already done for the Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeast India that was a book still in the making. This project won the Gold Medal for the State category at the India International Trade Fair at New Delhi and it brought me some personal recognition too and a place in the NID Design Office in the 10 years to follow. This gave me a vantage point from which to look at all the NID projects as the then Chairman Design Office and along with it came a huge body of experience in managing diverse projects that flowed into the Institute from a variety of sources.

Image04: Two significant events shaped the decade of the 80’s at NID and this was the arrival of the Sir Misha Black Award for Excellence in Design Education that was bestowed on the NID programmes by the Design Council, London through a function at NID when Ashoke Chatterjee was given this honour on behalf of NID and the second was the Award of the First Eames Award to Kamla Devi Chattopadhayay with the award being given to Kamladevi by Ray Eames in the presence of Prof Yash Pal the then NID GC Chairman and Vinay Jha who was the Executive Director from 1985 to 1989. With Vinaj Jha came many industrial design projects and the most significant amongst these was the design of the Electronic Voting Machine for the ECIL and the Election Commission of India besides a surge of new industry contacts and a renewed association with ICSID, the international body for Industrial Design.

Mega projects in Communication and exhibition design continued in those days but a new fresh crop of product design and craft design projects came up through Government contacts as well as efforts to build bridges with the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) besides active collaboration with a few Indian companies that showed some interest in indigenous design. These were tough years for Indian product design and on an average one project materialized from out of about ten detailed and actively followed up project proposals, a huge body of experience for the faculty concerned but little to show by way of results. However while reflecting on these years in a paper that I wrote in 2001 for the first National Design Summit I called this phase a period of struggle that supported the “blossoming of cactus flowers in a desert”, commenting on what for me was India’s innovation stifling landscape in those pre-liberalisation days.
Download “Cactus Flower” paper and presentation, both in pdf format from here as a 14.1 MB zip file.
Download DesignFolio 7 with a report on two rural crafts and context studies from here as a 2.0 MB pdf file

Image 05: The late 80’s and early 90’s saw the setting up of a formal Publications Programme at NID and many significant exhibition design and industrial design projects were undertaken by NID designers. The area of social communication found special attention with the missions on water, Health and Family Welfare and the Festivals of India brought in more projects such as the My Land My People that traveled to the Soviet Union.

Vikas Satwalekar took over as NID’s Executive Director in 1989 and while many massive exhibition projects were undertaken by NID we also saw a substantial increase in product design and craft design projects coming to the institute and a stable flow of corporate identity projects continued without break. I switched from the Design Office to become the Chairman of NID’s Publications and Resource Centre in 1991 and we were able to launch many new books and establish a design publishing house with strong linkages with the book trade in the country for a limited period but this could not continue due to changes in internal policies. We started the Young Designer series that captured for the first time NID student projects within the covers of an annual publication that continues to date. The Milestones brochure missed all the craft design projects in textiles and handicrafts that continued all through these decades almost as if these were all flying under the radar of both internal as well as external attention. Also missed were the hundreds of corporate logos and other graphic design assignments that were perhaps too numerous to be seen as major landmarks in the NID design journey through the decades. The Bamboo book (Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeast India) which was published in 1986 lay dormant for many years till the UNDP came to NID in 1998 asking us for a vision report for the development of the bamboo sector in India, a project that was assigned to me which spelt the end of a long drought in the flow of funds for design in the bamboo sector, at least from the NID perspective.
Download UNDP vision report here as a 1.5 MB pdf file

Image06: The last of the Milestone entries from 1995-98 are followed by my own articulation of the bamboo story at NID which I used to summarise the insights from the many years of watching design thought and action unfold before my eyes as an observer and a keen participant in the evolution of design at NID. Significant bamboo projects shown are the bamboo house of 1969-70, the Manipur project 1981, Tripura bamboo collection of 1986 and the Bamboo Boards & Beyond 2000-01.

What was significant about the evolution of design at NID was in my view an unfolding of many convictions about the nature of design and the fact and realisation that neither the Government which continued to fund NID nor industry that had intermittent engagements with the institute had any real clue about the deeper value of the design offerings that were coming out of this very small institution located in one corner of the country, in far away Ahmedabad. Our graduates were making their mark in a number of sectors with graphic design being the most visible of professions but in a number of other sectors our graduates were climbing up to be recognized as leaders in their own creative fields such as animation, television, advertising and in the industrial design areas in textiles, engineering goods, consumer goods and most of all in the crafts sector all over India. Many of our graduates had set up their own business ventures that were doing significant work in crafts and textiles – retail and exports, furniture manufacture and interior, design consulting in graphic design as well as a small number in the area of product and industrial design. However during this presentation I had chosen to focus on the lessons from the Bamboo Initiatives at NID in which I was closely involved along with a number of faculty colleagues as well as a very large number of students whom we were able to provide sponsorship that covered materials, travel and in some cases stipend for diploma projects which have been reported as part of our Centre for Bamboo Initiatives reporting earlier on this blog.

CFBI-NID link on this blog
Download CD ROM “Bamboo Board & Beyond” as a 550 MB zip file here.
Download CD ROM “Beyond Grassroots” as a 560 MB zip file here.

Image07: Highlights of numerous bamboo and design projects from 1998 through to date along with the insights about the evolution of design and from these on to an understanding of the nature of design as we know it today. I call this journey the discovery of deep design at NID and look forward to the next 50 years of research and discovery.

While working with bamboo and with people at both ends, at NID and in the field, the linkages between design offerings and its effect on the people become visible quite slowly, just as a seed that germinates in a fertile climate may lie dormant for many years in a hostile environment, it so with design which needs a favorable climate in which it can grow and take root so that the benefits can flow to the people for whom it is being carried out in the first place. A number of insights were gained from the early design efforts which paved the way for new offerings and changes in our strategy that called for a shift from product focus to people focus in the field and through this the creation of a number of new institutions that could provide sustained supports that can help establish the deep value that the design efforts attempted to provide. The Iceberg Factor and the What is Design? Slides seen in the image above deal with the hidden dimensions of all complex design offerings and the need for extensive exploration and nurture as a core value of the design process which are not visible till the process has developed to a more mature level. This is a perennial dilemma in design support since we are face to face with a chicken and egg situation where supports are only forthcoming when some demonstration is made and demonstration is only possible when some faith is reposed in the design offering and it is given visionary support for the explorations and the maturation to take place. Will the next 50 years be better for design in India? Will we have a Ministry for Design that understands thus dilemma and provide the necessary supports to make Deep Design flourish and provide the much needed solutions that address the real quality of life issues that Charles and Ray Eames had talked about in their India report of 1958? Only time will tell.
Download Evolution of Design show and lecture here as a zip file.

Prof M P Ranjan

Gajanan Upadhayay: A new monograph and exhibition of furniture designs

2009-06-20T19:09:00.013+05:30

Gajanan Upadhayay: Documentation and Peer Critique

Design for India: Prof M P Ranjan

The creative professionals of Ahmedabad have bestowed an honor on the former NID Faculty member and designer Gajanan Upadhayay through a week long exhibition that opened at the Herwitz Gallery on 19th June 2009. The exhibit curated by the HPC Design & Project Management Pvt. Ltd headed by architect Bimal Patel and the TDW Furniture Pvt. Ltd. Headed by Ismet Khambatta and is accompanied by a Monograph titled “Gajanan Upadhyaya: Furniture Designer” which was released by NID Director Pradyumna Vyas at a simple function in front of a very distinguished audience of architects, designers, teachers and students of the Ahmedabad’s creative fraternity.

Image01: Inaugural session at the Herwitz Gallery with the monograph launch by Pradyumna Vyas and the brief lecture by Prof M P Ranjan about Gajanan Upadhayay and his design achievements.

The distinguished audience included architects B V Doshi and Hasmukh Patel, Bimal Patel and Ismet Khambatta and a number of designers and faculty from NID, CEPT and students from these schools.
I was requested to speak at the function to introduce the creator and to provide a backdrop that could place the furniture creations in their proper context, a real tall order, when we look at the prolific contributions of Gajanan Upadhayay over a career that spans five decades and his professional experience coincides with the history of design in India and that of NID. I took a few minutes to ponder the question in the morning before the talk and jotted down a few key thoughts that could guide my comments about my colleague of more than 40 years at NID. Yes, we do go a long way together, in the same department and teaching some courses together and working on many joint projects, but still keeping our own separate identities and in some cases, points of view that differed in many ways. Whichever way I look at GU, as we have fondly called him, both his students and faculty deeply respect him for his work and it was no easy task to summarise a lifetime of work that stands tall in my view comparable with the worlds best in the field of furniture design. This small documentation of GU’s work is I believe the first in a long series of future publications that will unravel the mysteries of the man and his work that is as yet unknown to design circles outside a small band students, faculty and associates at NID and other associated designers and friends from Ahmedabad and other parts of India.

Image02: Inside the Herwitz Gallery a view of furniture designed by Gajanan Upadhayay over his career spanning from the early 60’s till date.

I divided GU’s career into four distinct stages. His first stint at NID as a young designer and architect trainee in 1962 to 1965 when he interacted with Gira and Gautam Sarabhai being introduced to the idea of design that was flowing into NID through the regular movement of great designers from Europe and America in those days. GU worked with some of these designers and drew inspiration from their work to make the first tentative explorations into fine furniture design. Even these pieces were exquisite and he was selected by NID to do a stint of formal training at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in the Furniture Design department, perhaps the best place in the world in those days for the deep study of furniture design. At NID he had the opportunity to work and be exposed to the concepts of great world designers such as Charles and Ray Eames, George Nakashima, Louis I Kahn and Hans Gugelot from Hfg Ulm which resulted in two very remarkable ranges of furniture that were prototyped and modeled in those days but never saw production like many NID offerings since Indian Industry was blind to the possibility of design being cocooned in the days of “License Permit Raj” where there was no scope for competition through design but industry survived either through ministerial and bureaucratic patronage or just plain corruption. However, the NID documentation of the days credited the works to the visiting consultants and the young Indian designer was denied the credit due to him, but this has been corrected in the new monograph. I admired the “Round Stick Furniture” inspired by Louis I Kahn and the the “24/42 Furniture” inspired by Hans Gugelot when I came to NID as a student and nobody could tell us more about the people and circumstances under which these items were designed although Gajanan Upadhayay was spoken of in whispered tones and he was already a bit of a legend in those days since he had jumped ship and stayed on at the Danish Academy and not returned to NID as he was expected to.

Image03: A fleeting glimpse of the pages of the monograph showing the range of work done by Gajanan Upadhayay shown here as six groups of four pictures each from top left to bottom right: 1. Early work at NID and Denmark, 2. NID Classics from the early 80’s, 3. Library stackable chairs for NID, 4. Metal range for canteen and Board Rooms and Hostels, 5. New range for TWD in the 2000’s, and 6. Institutional furniture for schools, management school and the High Court at Ahmedabad.

He did return briefly to Ahmedabad in 1968-69 before he returned to Denmark to continue to work as a teacher and designer in close proximity with the great Danish Furniture designers of all time for a long stint of eight years before returning to Ahmedabad to settle down if you can even describe him as settled at any time or place. This was his second important phase of work, which is the Danish phase from 1966 to 1974. Working at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art in Copenhagen closely with some and influenced greatly by the Danish greats of Poul Koerholm, Hans Wagner, Borge Mogensen and Nils Fagerholt besides others and he imbibed the finest traditions of Danish furniture design and construction and he also worked on drawing and making the design expressions of these designers professionally while working with them in school and in their studios while absorbing the values of the structural logic and design principles that are deeply ingrained in his own work ever since. On his return to India in 1974 he soon realized there was little scope for design as a professional occupation those days since nobody was willing to pay for design, not industry. He joined NID as a faculty in 1976 and I too had returned from Madras in the same time to rejoin NID and we seemed to have many interests in common. We criticized the existing Foundation course of Geometry and were immediately asked to reformulate it and conduct it for the 1976 batch of the NID Foundation programme. This course is still being conducted in the manner that we had planned and evolved keeping all the assignments of drawings, paper models and geometric concepts in much the same way as it was offered then. Geometry and structural logic are the striking features of GU’s furniture design work and this is what he tries to instill in his students as they interact with him.

Image04: Canteen chairs used for a poster at NID in the late 90’s to showcase the Furniture Design Discipline at NID shown alongside thumbnails of the pictures that I had captured towards making of the poster seen on the right.

This period from 1976 to his retirement from formal teaching at National Institute of Design (NID) at the age of 60 in 1994 would be for me the third phase of his prolific design career during which he created the wooden classics that are all over the NID campus and the hostels since they were produced in the NID workshops in the first round and in another round in later years the metal range that includes the canteen range, the board room furniture and the metal classroom range were produced here. In the early 80’s we offered the wooden furniture range to the Indian industry through an exhibition at the Trade Fair in New Delhi and Mini Boga took up the license to produce a number of these items through her Taaru factory and shop in New Delhi. In 1986 I traveled with GU to Agartala to make the presentation of the Tripura Bamboo Collection that we had jointly produced and on this visit we went to Katlamara to see the bamboo plantations of pole vault pole bamboos, as we called it in those days. We traveled by local bus, me inside and GU on top of the bus, all the way to Katlamara and we were excited by the possibilities of the material that we saw but we had to wait many years till 2003 when we managed to get limited funding to go again to do a workshop at the BCDI together. The monograph does not however cover all his offerings since it is a very small selection from his vast range of offerings but it is a great beginning and I am sure more will come as a result of this opening.

Image05: Gajanan Upadhayay stands behing four distinct versions of the Canteen Chair. Left to right: Fixed frame and non-stackable, Non-folding but stackable, Folding and stackable model (NID Canteen), Stainless steel frame and stackable.

Among the last projects that he handled at NID was the design of furniture for the Gujarat High Court that brought him into close contact with Bimal Patel of HCPDPM and Ismet Khambatta of TDW Furniture and soon thereafter he started working as a consultant with Bimal in his office and offering new design ranges to the TDW production and these started appearing in their showrooms as well. This is the fourth phase of GU’s design career and I am sure Design historians will study the impact of Gajanan Upadhayay on Indian design for many years to come and also on his influence on the young Indian furniture design industry which has been impacted by many students from NID setting up their own production facilities, first as small scale ventures which have by now grown into fairly substantial and sought after production houses in Bangalore, Jaipur, New Delhi and other cities in India. All of them have been strongly influenced by the Upadhayay design logic of modernist expression and fine craftsmanship. At the inaugural lecture for the GU furniture exhibit I spoke about the great furniture designers of the world such as Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe of the Bauhaus, Alvar Alto of the Finnish design tradition, and Jean Prouve of France, and Hans Gugelot and Gerd Lange of Germany and I do believe that Gajanan Upadhayay too will be one day compared to some of these international masters when the documentation of his work is done in the same depth and with the critical appreciation that it deserves.

References:

1. HCPDPM & TSW, “Gajanan Upadhayay: Furniture Designer”, Ahmedabad, 2009
Monograph available from HCPDPM, Ahmedabad. Pages 88 plus Cover and Dust Jacket.

HCPDPM
http://www.hcp.co.in
email: hcpahd (at) hcp.co.in
Price: Rs.250/=

TDW
http://www.3-dworkshop.com
email: info (at) 3-dworkshop.com

2. Exhibition of Furniture at the Herwitz Gallery with inaguration on 19 June 2009 and exhibit showing from 20 to 25 June 2009 from 4.00 pm to 8.00 pm daily.

Contact Info:

Gajanan Upadhayay’s furniture is available from TDW at their Ahmedabad showroom

T D W Furniture Pvt. Ltd.
Near Iscon Plaza, Satellite Road,
Ahmedabad 380 015 Gujarat India

email: info (at) 3-dworkshop.com

Design for India: Prof M P Ranjan

Katlamara Multiplied : Seeds of Design in Tripura

2009-05-29T01:12:00.015+05:30

Katlamara, Mantala, Sankhela and beyond: Seeds of Design sown in Tripura

Design for India: Prof M P Ranjan

NID and CFBI-NID team consisting of C S Susanth, Subroto Sarkar and Ranjit Debbarma with Prof M P Ranjan conducted a workshop in Bangalore for the IL&FS supported team of craftemen from Sankhala cluster between 17 & 30 September 2009. A new range of products were designed and introduced which the designers felt would be attractive for local markets in Agartala, hence the product range included a number of versions of the local favorite called “Alna” – a cloth rack that is ubiquitous in Eastern and Northeastern India, however these are always made from wood. However this time we decided to use a modular knock-down all bamboo chair as the vehicle for production training and through which the Katlamara and Sankhala craftmen could be introduced to quality control concepts from raw material to end product using good practices and a well designed workflow and management system. This training workshop was conducted from 18 May to 28th May 2009 and full size drawings of the chair design were distributed to both workshop participants as well as other entrepreneurs and craftsmen at Agartala, Nalchar and to the students at BCDI. The design strategy included elements of the micro-macro design approaches that we have been advocating over the years through the Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID to include detail design, product design, tool design, process design, brand building and the macro economic strategies of farm to market with many embedded links that makes the whole both complex and potentially viable in the face of multiple challenges in the area of design for rural development in India today. The IL&FS team is headed by Sharmishta Mohapatra who is supported by S Metoulebi at Agartala and Kirat Debbarma at Katlamara and Sankhela clusters.

Image01: What was a small farm over a couple of acres near Katlamara has now grown to cover 20 hectares of Kanakais bamboo located at Mantala about 5 km from Katlamara. The promise for growth of the bamboo products market gives the farmer in Manna Roy the courage to expand when all others around him are planting rubber. Only time will tell who will take the cake and eat it too.

“Good Design” – is like a fertile seed that is a product of human imagination and supported by deep convictions of experience from explorations that could be spread over the land to generate huge value for all stakeholders. Only when it is nurtured and cultivated does this seed generate value and produce a farm or a forest which is a manifestation of the seeds potency and this nascent value is quite invisible till it is eventually realised on the ground, a bit like the chicken and egg dilemma. This is why we as designers have to struggle to make our visions and convictions accessible and visible to politicians, administrators and industrialists – all those who need our services – and this will always be the case for good design. I believe this will be the case since these design actions are located at the leading edge of the future that we wish to build and these design intentions and the early actions that require support continue to remain invisible till these have sufficiently matured and manifested themselves in visible signs that are tangible and perceptible to onlookers. Even then many attributes and intentional relationships will remain invisible since these would need to be explained before they can be understood to be an outcome of our intentional thought and a product of the design process itself and not an inevitable happening.

Image02: This time, the ‘design seed’, is the newly designed bamboo arm chair that can be made from four major frames and two tie frames, all pinned together with pre-drilled bamboo dowels. No metal nails or screws here so all materials are from the rural farm and with the use of simple jigs and fixtures these frames can be drilled precisely for post-transport assembly at the point of use by the eventual buyer. This opens up the possibility for low complexity knock-down furniture that can be made locally and then shipped easily to all Indian destinations at a low cost. The designed seed that can transform the local economy and its inhabitants over the long term. Can we support and nurture this strategy?

In 1988 J L Naik and I had discussed this particular view of design as a concept for the proposed Eames Award Trophy and last month Naik gifted me a picture that he had taken of a seed that would be dispersed by wind with the fine fibres attached that can carry it far from the source tree in order to find fertile grounds in order to germinate at an appropriate time and climate. This is nature's strategy which works if sufficient seeds are produced that are viable and we too will need to work with those who appreciate our actions and wait for the climate to turn in order to realise our intentional missions. I am attaching below a picture that I had taken of Naik with his photo gift that I did use in a blog post earlier this month.

Image03: This design story is not about the chair but about the people who make and the bamboo products and they need to learn to do costing, learn the technology, and educate their children as well as make a reasonable living all at the same time. This is what the design schemes need to address in the face of all cards being stacked against the producers for so many years. Can the winds change and bring fresh perspectives to the remote land?

In Tripura this time we are trying to excite many producer groups in and around Katlamara where we started our major efforts several years ago with an outpouring of design offerings and this time Susanth and I are holding back our creative juices to make just one product in a systematic manner from raw material to end product using a well thought up process design through all the stages of production with the use of good practices that are articulated and captured in the form of jigs and fixtures which is the stress that we are making this time at the two centres of training in Tripura – Katlamara being one and the other a new centre of Sankhala, about 5 km from Katlamara. Both these groups are being placed in competition with each other, one at Katlamara with a wage compensation training scheme under the IL&FS programme and the other at Sankhela with piece rate offer only. The piece rate group at Sankhala seems to be more motivated, let us see how it develops as the year rolls forward from here.

Image04: Both groups cooperate to book a shared Jeep Taxi that transports ten craftsmen and fifteen new chairs from Katlamara and Sankhala to the rubberwood factory in Nagicherra to make use of their good quality spray painting facility. Lack of power and a compressor at both locations can be offset with a small investment in a micro-generator and a small compressor, all affordable if Government policy is swayed in that direction.

Like the metaphorical design seed that I have been talking about in the previous paragraphs I have been distributing full size drawings of the bamboo chair that I had designed specifically for production in rural settings using solid bamboo culms and poles of small diameter to many other potential producers – Sanjay Das from Nalchar, the other one is Bhola Nath Bhowmik of Agartala, son of the late Rathi Ranjan Bhowmik (who passed away recently) – Others who have shown interest are the Tripura Rubber Wood Development Corporation at Nagicherra near Agartala that is showing interest in development initiatives in bamboo cultivation and furniture production due to the interest of one of their senior techno-managers, Madhumita Nath whom we met at their factory. These chairs were showncased at NID at a number of exhibitions as well as in New Delhi at the Northeast Trade Fair and later in Germany at exhibitions in Berlin and Stuttgart through exhibitions organised by IFA. These experiences have given us the conviction that the market will accept these design offerings and we therefore have decided to transfer the designs to the field for use by our local craftsmen at Katlamara and Sankhela.

Image05: The closing exhibit was organized at the BCDI in Agartala much to the joy of the BCDI students and next day three collections were put up on show – The Bangalore Collection from the previous workshop, the Sankhala and Katlamara batch production of knock-down chairs and the new set of bamboo items from the rubberwood factory. The knock-down chairs were taken to the local courier bookong centres to get estimates for air shipment rates to Kolkatta, New Delhi, Bangalore and Ahmedabad. Will this supply chain get rooted and help a local forest grow? Only time will tell.

We hope to see all of them adopting the strategies that we are advocating at Katlamara. This one chair is the seed of a much larger strategy of getting good production systems in place that can be applied to all the designs that we have in our rapidly growing archive of design offerings. I am attaching a series of pictures that are selected thumbnails of the last few days, one picture from each day, take a look, and I will be using these to tell the story more fully on this blog later this month. The two groups have produced ten chairs each using the production jigs that were introduced to them and the results are very encouraging indeed. Today, exactly ten days after we introduced the new designs to the two groups we brought the chairs to the BCDI campus at Agartala for an informal exhibition of the products of both our workshops with the IL&FS team. The products that were developed at Bangalore during the workshop at IPIRTI and NID Bangalore as well as these new batch produced chairs were placed on display at the BCDI which is another link in our micro-macro design strategy being the educational component of the larger plan for the bamboo sector as a whole. The students of BCDI were excited and they represent the future of the craft in the days ahead. Local officials from the Tripura Government came by and the trainees too had a chance to interact with all the visitors in a stage of high expectation and finally the film crew from the NMBA interviewed me at the BCDI exhibit venue and I hope our message reaches the cloistered heights of the National Mission’s headquarters in New Delhi.

Download "Katlamara Chalo" poster 2MB pdf
Download IL&FS Bangalore_NID IPIRTI Workshop Report 5.1 MB pdf.
Download "Katlamara Chalo Book as pdf 46.5 MB size"
Design for India: Prof M P Ranjan

NID at Crossroads: Leadership Lost and Regained

2009-05-07T14:35:00.011+05:30

NID at Crossroads: Leadership Lost and Regained

Design for India: Prof M P Ranjan
The National Institute of Design (NID) was conceived 50 years ago through the Eames India Report (1958) that was commissioned by the then Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. We are once again at a crossroad having inducted a new Director at NID, this time from the ranks of the NID Faculty, and it is time to introspect and try and regain leadership in a nation that is in the midst of rapid change. There is new hope that the Director, Professor Pradyumna Vyas will be able to open new initiatives as well as cement all the valuable traditions that were rudely disrupted through the number game which came at the cost of both content and quality. Design needs to grow its footprint in India but this has to be done in the spirit of Eames and not at any cost. The challenges are huge and this got me thinking and my offering was a list of 50 agenda points that could be the subject of open discussion, debate and rapid action in the days ahead. I shared this list with my faculty colleagues at NID and with the Directors’ call to our alumni and the design professionals in India through his mail to the DesignIndia list on yahoogroups we have set the stage for a sharing of ideas and to build consensus for the path forward from here. My list is quoted below as a container that needs to filled and fleshed out in detail in the days ahead.

Image 01: Historic images of NID designed Logos for Indian Corporates at Paldi Campus and Pradyumna Vyas being welcomed as the new Director NID by a faculty from IILM, Gurgaon at an NID Alumni meet in New Delhi last week.

When I look back at the various stages of development of the idea and mission of NID over the past 50 years since the Eames India Report of 1958 (download pdf file 359 kb) I believe we have reached a crossroad and need to make active choices at this stage for which a deep application of mind is called for and this task cannot be left to the Government of India (DIPP) and the Governing Council of NID for it is not their role nor would they be adequate to this task if it did not have the full involvement of the Indian design community, the NID Alumni and the NID community. I recall the many stages of crisis at NID through its history, some of which I have outlined in my blog post on the past Executive Directors and Directors at the Institute. (blog post link) Each stage however saw focused intellectual action that resulted in a small report that helped guide the actions of the Institute, its Faculty and its Students. The early years of NID are known through the published
64-69 Report Documentation NID 1964 – 1969 which has been available for some time as a pdf file (link pdf file 25 mb) which must have been based on an internal report prepared by Gira and Gautam with Kumar Vyas titled report 63-69 that has now become available to all of us (pdf file 112 kb) after being kept a closely guarded secret for some unknown reason all these years. The first significant institution building offering was by Gautam and Gira Sarabhai who gave us the NID Structure Culture Document (download pdf file 360 kb) as a basis for sophisticated behavior and Institution building norms that guided the difficult period when Vice Admiral Soman left NID while raising many challenges for the NID Management and the Government of India. This was followed by the Thaper Committee Report (download pdf file 780 kb) that was led by Romesh Thaper and brought in change at NID with the arrival of Ashoke Chatterjee as the Execitive Director in 1975. The next intellectual significant offering was in 1979 with the drafting of the UNIDO-ICSID Ahmedabad Declaration and the Major Recommendations (download pdf file 11.1 mb) followed by the first of a series of Forward Plans (copies not available) instituted by Ashoke Chatterjee with Faculty involvement. AC’s influence continued well into the period when Vinay Jha came to NID and long after with Vikas Satwalekar at the helm. In 1989 we got the Dr Kamla Chowdhry committee report that spelt out the action plans with mission and goals in their “Future Planning and Forward Plans” report (download pdf file 5.5 mb). There are many internal reports that are still unpublished like the minutes of the fifty plus Faculty Forum meetings that are still confidential in the age of RTI and transparency of good governance. I hope this will change and those discussions too will be open to public gaze at some time soon particularly since we need to bring our alumni into the Governing Council and into the India Design Council, both of which need to have the wisdom of our design practitioners and its internal faculty and student body to guide the future actions in the days ahead.

Image 02: Jayant L Naik with his picture of the “Dandilion” or “Silk Cotton” seed that he gifted to me in memory of our joint concept proposal for the Eames India Award Trophy that was being discussed in the late 80’s. In our concept, design offerings for India in the Eames spirit were like these seeds that are created with deep intentions of reproduction and growth and then set loose to be germinated through nature’s processes at a specific location at a suitable and fertile place and time to produce long lasting value for the earth and its species. Think about this view of design…

I have been thinking about this “Seed” metaphor for Design for India ever since I came in touch with John Chris Jones’ book “Design Methods: Seeds of Human Futures” way back in the 70’s. Over the years I have realized that “Design” is indeed like a seed that needs to be carefully nurtured and cultivated before it yields value, real perennial value, which is why I prefer to use an agri-horticultural metaphor for design as opposed to an business-industrial metaphor of speed and strategy which is usually bandied about. Here below, I present the first list of 50 suggested action areas for NID in the changed context of Indian design landscape and invite NID alumni and the Indian design professionals to contribute to shaping the NID of the future. The call is for suggestions and discussions for the course of action to be initiated and followed so that in our eagerness to change and grow we do not throw out the baby with the bathwater! This list is not categorized nor is it prioritized and I invite our stakeholders and well-wishers to contribute to help streamline its acceptance and implementation with some degree of success.

Quote: List of 50 suggestions given to Chairman Education at NID and to the Director NID for their consideration and appropriate action in the days ahead.

Design for India – Leadership Lost & Regained

Wish List NID 2010 - 2012

Prof. M P Ranjan
National Institute of Design

001. Faculty Recruitment Multiplier Programme (for all design schools).
Urgently restructure Faculty Development Programme and make it National Focussed, outward looking and better structured to meet larger goals of national importance
002. FDC Revamp – Programmes + Infrastructure at Gandhinagar.
To achieve this use Gandhinagar campus as a platform for launch of this new programme
003. Faculty Training – New Centre & Programmes.
Build linkages worldwide for design trainers who can help faculty development and research support programmes for existing faculty.
004. Adjunct Faculty & Visiting Faculty – Contact / Exposure.
Expand faculty base in a systematic and sustained manner by signing MOU’s with Adjunct Faculty and Visiting Faculty at an Institutional level and monitor their contributions.
005. Faculty Publication – Education / Academic – Evaluation Criteria – Publish Courses.
Initiate faculty-publishing platform and include this in the faculty evaluation programme
006. Gandhinagar Campus – Modular Structure – Abandon Current Plans.
Stop all further construction at Gandhinagar based on old plans since they do not work and have proved to be poorly conceived. Fast track the redesign of a modular building based on NID Paldi campus that is tried and tested format for a design school. Change architects if necessary.
007. Document NID Education – Foundation + Others.
Initiate immediate documentation of all NID education programmes and get a team in place to carry this out and all faculty shall contribute each of their courses so that at the end of two years all courses are published in a basic form and in another two years all courses are covered in a revised and more detailed format.
008. Website & Intranet Revamp.
Complete revamp of website administration and put together a competent team with faculty committees to manage web content and make policies to make it happen.
009. Faculty Status Review – parity with IIM / IIT.
Initiate dialogue with Government and Governing Council for a review of Faculty status in the country on par with IIT and IIM.
010. KMC Document Archive in PDF + Share.
Initiate the process of converting all NID craft documents, diploma documents and project documents into pdf format along with policies to make them available on the web in a Creative Commons and Open Source format.
011. KMC Prototype Restore (Pompidou Centre).
Initiate process of research and assessment to restore all prototypes in the KMC collection with the assistance of experts and inside research teams.
012. KMC Books Multi Copy List / Multi Centre.
Prepare a list of critical books for design education and initiate processes for getting multiple copies or for local print editions that can make these critical resources available freely inside India to support the spread of design education in India.
013. NID Design Workshop Revamp – 21st Century WS.
Plan and identify a range of machines and hand tools that are available today to build and operate a high quality model building workshop suitable for a world class design school of the 21st century.
014. Design Workshop + Craftsmen Integration.
Initiate processes that will bring high quality craftsmen to the NID studios either full time or part time to support education at the Institute.
015. Faculty Incubation + Liberalisation.
Liberalise norms for faculty consulting and unshackle NID faculty after 50 years of restrictive controls that have proved to be counter productive and build a platform for the incubation of many new initiatives in a design rich environment where teachers and students can build the industry of the future.
016. KMC Photo Archive Digitise & Share.
Strengthen systems and supports in the KMC and NID Photo Department and liberalise the access and use of NID archives and provide digital access to all NID resources since they are a product of public funding.
017. KMC Diploma Projects Digitise & Share.
Initiate methods to collect all future diploma and craft documents in digital format with some uniform guidelines for sharing these as and when they are ready and can be made available for public review and use.
018. Course Documentation and Digital Archive.
Initiate processes for the production and sharing of all course documentations so that these become the defacto standard for teaching across the country and encourage other schools to do so themselves.
019. Curriculum Review & Publication.
Commission systematic review of all courses and curriculum and publish findings and other products
020. National Design Leadership Programme.
Initiate public participation in design action at the local level to build Design Cities of the future
021. NID Alumni in NID GC and IDC.
Advocate the inclusion of NID Alumni on NID Governing Council as well as National Bodies such as India Design Council.
022. Design Thinkers Forum: Cross Institutional Body.
Create a National Think Tank for Design Issues across all Institutes for Academic as well as Professional excellence.
023. Localised Curriculum for Regional Design Schools.
Identify and Build local agendas for local action in Regional Design Centres and Schools.
024. Sector Focused Institutes (IICD & BCDI Models).
Sector specific feasibility studies for new Design Institutes to be undertaken with specific parent Ministries to ensure decentralized funding and nurturing of each sector in design need.
025. Migrate out of DIPP towards Other Ministries (Multiply)
NID is too dependent on DIPP, which has shown limited vision for Design use in India. Other Ministries to be tapped for expanding the user base for design with financial supports from each such Ministry.
026. Develop Design Agenda for Lok Sabha Constituencies.
Design for public good to be explored in cooperation with Lok Sabha MP in each constituency using the discretionary funds available with each MP.
027. Design Library for Schools x 10,000 by 2010.
(Rs 100 crores value – Digitise and deliver in Rs. 1 crore). Build resources for school level action in design education and projects of local relevance.
028. Clean NID Administration – Transparent and Efficient by 2010.
Bring Transparency to all NID Administrative and Accounts actions and make all Administrators accountable and effective with supports and training.
029. Revive Consultative Processes at NID – Document and Share.
NID has a unique tradition of Consultative Processes, which needs to be revitalized and made more visible through Documentation and Public Sharing.
030. Discipline Specific Publications – Multiply.
Design deals with huge variety and this calls for decentralized Publication Programme at the Discipline Level to reach partner agencies in each sector.
031. FAB Lab / Model Lab / Innovation Lab - Multiply.
NID facilities for prototyping and model making have been decimated and are outdated. These need to made best of class and replicated at each centre with education programmes.
032. Alumni Association and Corpus Fund (Alumni Corpus).
Partnership with NID Alumni to be revived with active moves from NID towards the building of linkages and a corpus fund for activities.
033. Industry Association for Design Partnership (CII ++ / Industry Corpus).
Partnership with Indian large, medium and small industries to be revived with active moves from NID towards the building of linkages and a corpus fund for activities with support from appropriate Ministries.
034. 10,000 School Contact Programme – Teacher Registry Online).
Use internet access and build an active school contact programme by offering curriculum and training supports online to a large number of schools – target 10,000 by 2012.
035. T1 Internet for all Users at NID and Web 2.0 Standards for Communication.
Build high quality Internet platform for NID teachers and students for design research and action and use this platform for other value rich activities.
036. Full Transparent Accounts – Full Disclosure Norms.
Adopt new policies for Full Transparency in all Administrative activities and Accounts and build on the RTI principles adopted by Government of India and go further like Infosys.
037. Copy-Left Movement for all Student Projects – Share & Promote.
Participate in Open Source Movement by making all NID student and Faculty Research accessible to all sectors of our society.
038. Co-Create / Co-Incubate / Collaborate – Outreach Policies.
Develop and institute Outreach Policies that encourage and incubate innovative action in hundreds of initiatives across numerous sectors.
039. 230 Sector Survey & Monitor Design Opportunities.
Initiate series of Brainstorming and interaction platforms that can help build a massive Design Opportunity database, which can be categorized, prioritized and action programmed in cooperation with stakeholders.
040. 230 Sector Partner Agencies with Shared Strategies.
Active participation programmes with Partner agencies across 230 sectors of our economy
041. Rooster of Visiting Faculty & Active Contact Programme.
Database of Design Teachers for NID and other schools with focus on their interests and capabilities and the qualifications may be as a backdrop. Encourage documentation of a portfolio of course work and access of these online.
042. Faculty Resource Mapping.
Continue the effort with NID Fulltime faculty and build an archive of interests and capabilities and not just listing of qualifications. Encourage growth and maturation through participation in training and conferences etc.
043. Research Agenda Mapping for Design Action.
Identify and map out areas of priority and need as well as sources of funding for each such area.
044. Sector Specific Strategies & Partnerships.
Sector specific think tank sessions to draw up lists of active partner agencies, individuals and activities that can be sustained by NID Faculty in small buddy teams with common interests.
045. Ministry Specific Budget claims and Action programmes.
Action plans for each Ministry to be managed by active contact with the specific Ministry and an identified champion from within NID Faculty.
046. Policy Level Involvement of NID Faculty.
Encourage NID Faculty to be outspoken on areas of National Policy and support their research in these areas of declared interest to achieve national visibility and credibility through their sustained work.
047. NID Faculty on Planning Commission.
Policy Level involvement to be extended to being included in the Planning Processes at the level of the Planning Commission in a number of sectors where NID faculty have real expertise.
048. Faculty Forum: Discuss / Dialogue / Debate – Document & Share.
Policy shift from being secretive to being open especially in the think tank sessions within the Faculty Forum which should once again become a platform for dialogue, discussion and debate on matters of Institutional action and this should be shared as a source of inspiration for students and other agencies.
049. Design Opportunity Mapping of 230 Sectors & Ministries: Brainstorm / Document / Publish / Advocate.
Build a massive database of National and Regional sector and category specific design opportunities as imagined by NID Faculty and Students and Publish the same a san agenda for action by the National and Regional leaders and politicians. These can be revisited in some chosen frequency, say once every five years, or before each round of National and Regional elections.
050. Celebrate 50 Years of the Eames India Report and 100th Birth year of Charles Eames from 2009 to end of 2010 – Bring 20 great designers and conduct electives with Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation support. Rope in Government of India and CII if needed
Revisit the spirit of Eames Report and do what the Founding Fathers of NID did in the first decade by bringing in the best designers from India and overseas back to our campuses and get students and faculty to use this exchange to build new capabilities and share these in a major celebratory exhibition at the end of the programme and do this through the web as well.
More to come…
UnQuote.

Design for India: Prof M P Ranjan

Significant Landmark: 100,000 page views

2009-04-29T10:07:00.003+05:30

Design for India on One Lakh hits

Design for India_Prof M P Ranjan

Image 01: Google Analytics data on blog traffic to the Design for India blog with source and volume of traffic.

The blog traffic on ‘Design for India” has crossed a significant landmark with the clocking up of 100,000 page views a couple of days ago. This has been accomplished by 58,500 visits from 45,000 visitors from 106 countries and over 4,900 cities across the world.

In India we have had over 32,000 visits from 119 cities with Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai topping the list of visits and visitors. The next country is the USA with 11,600 visits from 52 States and 2300 cities joining the list. The United Kingdon comes in third with 2,500 visits from 358 cities. Canada, Australia, Germany, France and Italy take the next five places on the list.

Design for India_Prof M P Ranjan

What is Design? : A lecture for school teachers

2009-04-28T11:06:00.010+05:30

What is Design? : A lecture for school teachers

Design for India: Prof M P Ranjan

Image 01: Thumbnails of slides used for the “What is Design?” lecture dealing with Dimensions, Processes and Applications.

“What is Design?”, will be a perennial topic since design is and will always be a moving target whenever we attempt a definition since it is always rooted in the present time and can only be understood and appreciated in the context of the “particular” place or location and a “general” description will need to take that into account as well. Each age will need to take stock of the definition and as we evolve so will design and hopefully our design ability. Design is one of our basic abilities, which we have used in more and more sophisticated ways as we evolved and enhanced our human sensibilities and capabilities. In the period of slow transformation through craft based processes of trial and error many of these sensibilities were refined and we could fall back on traditions to find our way forward.

Image 02: Thumbnails of the second part of the lecture dealing with design concepts and models that lead to our current definition of design as a basic human activity and this calls for a greater focus for the subject in our school education in the days ahead.

However in the post-industrial era reach and impact of our senses and abilities have been considerably enhanced by our multitude of tools and our externalized knowledge processes that we now have the capability of changing and impacting nature in dramatic ways, many of them undesirable, and our economic and social frameworks lag behind by a huge magnitude, that we are on the brink of failure as a species. Design becomes all the more important in this scenario and we will need to temper our dependence on science and art which has helped us evolve very rapidly over the past 600 years since the Renaissance if we are to face the crisis that this dependence is to be addressed.

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Podcast
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Code to embed podcast of lecture sent by Satya Murthy using MP3 file provided by me.

I had the occasion to speak to a group of school teachers as part of our programmes at NID and I prepared a lecture that was delivered to this group at NID the other day. The recording of the lecture is available here as a podcast at the link above which is of one and a half hour duration and the 2.5 MB pdf file of the slides used lecture can be downloaded from here at the links below along with an MP3 file of the lecture which too is available for download as a 45 MB file

Link to download the Podcast with images

What is Design? : Dimensions, Processes and Applications (pdf file 2.3 mb download)
What is Design? : Dimensions, Processes and Applications (MP3 voice file 43.8 mb download)
Design for India: Prof M P Ranjan

Directors at NID: A Time to Reflect

2009-04-23T20:57:00.025+05:30

Directors at NID: A Time to Reflect

Design for India: Prof. M P Ranjan

The stainless steel name boards in the picture below as seen outside the Directors office at NID were installed by Dr Darlie O Koshy just before he took premature relief from the post of Director NID in October 2008. This however does not tell the whole story of the Chief Executive positions at the National Institute of Design. The history of NID is yet to be written and the history of design in India too would be intricately intertwined with the actions and roles of the various persons who have played a leadership role at NID, particularly in the position of its CEO, which has had various nomenclatures at different points of time. With the announcement last week of the next incumbent to the post of Director NID, Prof Pradyumna Vyas, we get a chance to reflect on this particular position and to look back at the individuals who have played a role in this particular office at NID over the years.

Image 01: Stainless steel nameplates to celebrate the various persons who had occupied the position of Director NID over the years.
However the inlaid comments show that the actual nomenclature used was that of Executive Director till 2006 when it was changed during Dr Koshy’s second term to that of Director NID for which there has been no real explanation so far from anybody. The names and designations in between the plates are those of individuals who have held charge in the gap between two formally appointed Executive Directors which happened in 1972 and in 2008, both due to an unplanned transition in each case.

However, the NID did not start with its organization being headed by one Executive Director. According to the organization chart that was published in the NID Documentation1964 to 1969 (download the 24 mb pdf file here about the early history of NID) the institute was managed by a Directing Board which was later substituted by an Internal Management Board, both of which were headed by Gira Sarabhai while Gautam Sarabhai held the position of the founding Chairman of the Governing Council of NID. In 1970 they brought in Vice-Admiral Soman as the first Executive Director of NID with the intention of helping the faculty to ease the interface with the Ministry of Industries and the Government of India in order to obtain funds and to manage the general accounts and administration of the Institute. This did not work out as envisaged and there was a falling out of severe proportions and the first Executive Director, a distinguished Ex-Serviceman, was sacked by the Governing Council and all hell broke loose in the media and NID entered its first era of severe crisis of management.

Image 02: Organisation structure of NID before the induction of Vice Admiral Soman to the post of Executive Director at NID and Gira and Gautam Sarabhai with the Eames Office team at NID in 1964. The Directing Board was constituted to include the Heads of Industrial Design, Communication Design, Studios and Workshops, Architecture and the Secretary (Finance and Administration) and Chaired by Gira Sarabhai.

Prof Kumar Vyas and Dashrat Patel were both members of the Directing Board and later on the Internal Management Board, each representing the two major faculties, Industrial Design and Communication Design, respectively. I was a student at NID at that time and we too took sides in the grand battle lines that was drawn up between the ideological design teachers and students on the one side and the then NID Administration on the other trying to control and dictate how design education should be carried out. Vice Admiral Soman was a distinguished public figure but he was also quite unsuitable for the role that he took at NID and his departure from the institute and the controversy that followed left a long period of turmoil at NID after a decade of amazing developments that saw hundreds of great international designers making contributions to the shaping of a unique institution at Ahmedabad.

Image 03: Charles and Ray Eames camped at NID with the Eames Office team in 1964 to work on the Nehru Exhibition and this project was a major training ground for the first faculty at NID.

A list of these international design experts is available at the back pages of the NID Documentation 1964-69. Gautam Sarabhai produced an immaculate document that captured the spirit of NID culture and shared it with all of us students and the faculty in a series of meetings. The document, fondly called the “Structure Culture Document” has returned time and again in the hands of students and faculty whenever administrative problems came to a head at NID. Design was not understood by many and design education was an even bigger mystery for most administrators and Government babus, quite unlike the fairly comprehensible and stable systems that seemed to be present in medicine, technical and management education of the day.

Image 04: Governor of Gujarat, Sriman Narayan being hosted by Gautam Sarabhai at NID studios in 1972 and below Vice Admiral Soman guides distinguished visitors through the NID workshops.

Prof. Kumar Vyas was made the Head of the Internal Executive Committee that managed the affairs of NID from 1972 and 1975 during which time the affairs of the Institute were subjected to much scrutiny by a number of committees appointed by the Government of India to address the acquisitions of the outgoing Executive Director and in this period Gautam and Gira Sarabhai withdrew from the active management of the NID affairs leaving a bit of a power vacuum at the top of the NID management structure. The Wanchoo Commission Report of 1973 and then the Thaper Committee Report of 1974 – 75 gave a clean chit to the Sarabhais while they called for the creation of systems for the management of creative educational activities at NID. Romesh Thaper was instrumental for bringing in Ashoke Chatterjee as the next Executive Director of NID and he joined the Institute in mid 1975. Prof Kumar Vyas returned to being Head of Industrial Design Faculty. In the meantime my own relationship with the Institute was strained since I had joined the Faculty in early 1973 and had signed a bond to serve the Institute for a period of five years in return for the opportunity to travel to Chile, USA and UK as part of the Nehru Exhibition team in January 1973. However in the political turmoil of the era my services were abruptly terminated in May 1974 and I had to return to Madras to work with my father in his factory making wooden toys. Prof Kumar Vyas did not have an easy time at the top due to the constant fire fighting that needed to be done internally and the public reviews that were being conducted by various committees appointed by the Government of India. I was in constant contact with him through my mails from Madras asking NID to take me back as a faculty member and my appeal was forwarded to the then Chairman of Governing Council, Pupul Jayakar. Ashoke Chatterjee eventually invited me to come back to NID in mid 1976 to rejoin the faculty since I had by then made numerous representations to the Institute for a review of my case, and for me this being banished from NID was a blessing in disguise since I had a wonderful opportunity to work full time in a small scale industry and help transform it in a couple of years and in the process build a great deal of self confidence from this deep exposure to the real world of business and design. The story of my explorations with Rockytoys in Madras between 1974 and 1976 which was my period of being away from NID has been on this blog for some time now at these links below:
Rockytoys revisited blog post
Design for Small Scale Inductry: Some Reflections

Image 05: Ashoke Chatterjee with Romesh Thaper and a number of distinguished Governing Council members meeting senior faculty at a display of NID work in the show room and Aquarium area.

Ashoke Chatterjee (AC) came to Madras to meet me soon after he had settled himself in the hot seat at NID as the second Executive Director of an Institute in crisis. My letters for justice to the Chairman Governing Council had landed on his table and this visit besides other tasks was to check out what I had been up to in the year and a half that I had been away from NID. What he saw there at my fathers’ factory and the Rockytoys shop must have comforted him since I soon received a letter from Prof Kumar Vyas offering me a position at NID as a full time faculty, which I accepted and joined back in June 1976. AC was very fair in his dealings with everyone while he was firm in all his dealings and in doing what he thought was right, a stickler for ethics and values, which many feared since it was a new dimension for them in the bazaar values that prevailed in those days. He was interested in and understood Communication Design and in my view had a bias towards this field while the Industrial Design activity languished since there was no sympathy for this fledgling activity and industry in India did not seem to understand it either, need it or want it at all, at least in the form that we were offering it at NID. As a result much investments were made in communications design and designers at NID while the ID chaps bashed on at a lower echelon in the order of things at NID. Ravi Matthai emerged as a major mentor in this period and the Jawaja project.

Image 06: Ashoke Chatterjee and young NID faculty and students welcome Charles Eames on his last visit to NID in 1978.

The Rajasthan Family Welfare & Health project; the Water Mission Projects and the Agri Expo were examples of development action that AC supported and nurtured in his long tenure at NID as its ED from 1975 till 1985. Industrial design being left largely alone discovered other avenues of relevance and many of these were in the development and the crafts sectors in India and with opportunities in rural India, which was not being addressed by the communication design group. Under AC’s leadership NID conducted the remarkable UNIDO-ICSID Conference on Design for Development in 1979 and also won him the Sir Misha Black Award for excellence in Design Education at NID. In this period NID also won recognition at the ICSID-Phillips Award for excellence in Design for Development, a golden period for NID. (download the Ahmedabad Declaration as a pdf file and the Major Recommendations here). During this period NID also got massive financial support from the UNDP to upgrade equipment and send faculty for training as well as afford to invite a large number of international design consultants to review and strengthen its programmes and activities. However much of the UNDP investment went into the Communication Design areas of Video, Photography and Exhibit Design and I was a vocal critic of this imbalance particularly since there was no investment in the area of computers, which I felt was a critical new area to be explored. A huge number of Corporate Identity projects were handled by the NID faculty and students during this period.

Image 07: Vinay Jha and Prof. Yash Pal, Chairman Governing Council with Ray Eames and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya at the Eames Award Ceremony in 1988 on the NID Lawns, now called the Eames Plaza.

The strong bias towards Communication Design changed substantially, though briefly, when Vinay Jha, IAS joined NID for a brief tenure from 1985 to 1989 during which time the linkages with Indian Industry were improved through our sustained contacts with the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and the CII-NID partnership took hold. On the international front the ICSID contacts took a fresh turn when Vinay Jha joined the Board at ICSID and forged strong linkages with a number of international schools and design professionals through his involvement on the ICSID Board. I was fortunate to be handling the NID Consultancy Division as the Chairman Design Office from 1981 to 1991, in an acting capacity in the early years and in with a full charge when Vinay Jha took office at NID. Vinay Jha brought in administrative reforms and decentralized decision-making and delegated financial authority to faculty heads and activity chairmen for the first time at NID. We made grand plans to reach design to industry and a number of road shows about design were rolled out to take NID designers and design teachers out of the campus to meet corporate leaders and this was organized through the CII connections. However the economic liberalization of the Indian economy was still in the making and much of this investment fell on deaf ears but few projects did materialize through all the legwork that was done in those days. 4000 proposals that I was personally involved in drafting on behalf of the NID faculty teams as head of consultancy led to the actual landing of about 400 professional projects, small and large, at NID and this was a huge body of experience which is still to be fully analysed and appreciated, hopefully to be documented and published some day. In all these projects the NID Executive Director had a large role in both client interface as well as in providing internal resources and supports. In 1986 Vinay Jha supported my suggestion that the book, “Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeast India” could be designed and printed at Bombay which we completed and launched in October that year. I had also repeated my plea that NID review its computer policy and Vinay Jha decided with the help of a Governing Council Committee to use the residual funds from the UNDP grants to set up a Mac and PC Lab at NID, which brought in computers for distributed use into NID in a substantial way for the first time.

Image 08: Vikas Satwalekar as a young faculty in 1972 and later after he stepped down as Executive Director, NID in 2003 (picture uploaded by Vikram was taken at the 2003 Convocation exhibition).

Vikas Satwalekar took over in 1988, first as Acting Director and was later given full charge and for the first time an NID trained designer and a faculty member was at the helm of affairs. The bias towards Communication Design however continued at NID and this time the emphasis was on Exhibition Design and many mega multi-disciplinary projects were taken up by the Institute. In other areas the activities got bogged down in many ways and while education took centre stage with a major curriculum review programme the activities with an intention of establishing quality benchmarks in design education. The areas of research and outreach did not flourish much due to an inward looking attitude and in much effort being expended in solving legacy problems with the labour union activities at NID. Ashoke Chatterjee continued to teach and conduct research at NID, first in a special capacity as Advisor during the term of Vinay Jha and later as a Senior Faculty teaching Design Management and then as a Fellow in Communication Design with a focus on Social Communication. The work done at NID was documented in a two-page poster-folder called NID Milestones in 1998 and it lists the major achievements of NID from 1961 to 1998. (download pdf file NID Milestones here as a 2.1 mb file) A major review of education was conducted during this period and I was involved on a committee that undertook this enormous task, which resulted in the production of an eleven-volume document that was placed in the NID Resource Centre. Each course was described and teachers were asked to present their course to the Curriculum Review Committee as it was called along with work examples and the intention was to articulate course objectives, methods and content as well as assignment level details of the various programmes at NID. The quality benchmarks for each course were expressed in the document so that the teachers, coordinators and students would have adequate information about the courses being offered and could be monitored through the various regulatory channels that existed, namely the Consultative Forum, Discipline Meetings, Faculty Forum and the Course Presentations, all of which were dismantled with the arrival of Dr Darlie O Koshy. With education being the focus of Vikas Satwalekar’s term in office, I too was involved in Institution building tasks that took the NID expertise to other centres of design learning and these can be seen in our contributions to the setting up of the Accessory Design Department at NIFT, New Delhi, the setting up of the Indian Institute of Crafts and Design in Jaipur and later in the setting up of the Bamboo and Cane Development Institute at Agartala which is described at this link below.
New Design Institutes for India: Blog post<>
Lecture of Intellectual History of Design: Blog post

Image 09: A quick search of Dr Koshy on Google images came up with these pictures, which are based on his much cultivated media presence over the eight years at NID.

Dr Darlie O Koshy came into NID in June 2000 and immediately went about making mega plans for the expansion of the student base as well as disciplines that were taught at the Institute. Working on a brief provided by the DIPP and NID Governing Council he started profiling the Institute in the media and called for growth in all activities especially education. Hundreds of activities were initiated in setting up NID Satellites at huge costs in as many as 25 cities each being copiously profiled in the National media and all education programmes too were scaled up and the number game was up and running and the Government seemed to love the show and money poured in from all sides. Two new campuses were hastily initiated and set up but this I believe was unfortunately at the cost of both quality and content. He moved at great speed and it can only be compared to the moves of a “Bull in a China Shop” and whatever came in the way was laid waste and new spaces sprung up where workshops and studios existed before, each with a new name and an unclear but significant promise to be delivered down the line. Huge funds were generated from Government and massive expenses were incurred and it seemed that funds were unlimited and the supply was infinite while accountability was a thing of the past. The number game was truly on and the student numbers were constantly quoted as a justification for the critique of loss of quality that faculty and students and later the alumni joined in the chorus that became a crescendo. There was huge media coverage during this period with the NID Executive Director appearing in the media on a regular basis and the message from the Institute was disseminated through the Design Plus and on the web as a continuation of the Milestones list which can be seen at this link on the NID website. However the Milestones list on the NID website is silent on the period between 1997 and 2000 which set the tone for the Corporate Communications from NID as it was renamed like so many other NID activities, disciplines and departments under the new Executive Director in 2000 onwards. History was being rewritten at NID. The Executive Director was given a second extended term of office in 2005 but soon afterwards the designation was suddenly changed to that of Director NID. The final critique came to a head when the new Gandhinagar Campus started creating numerous logistics crises and the last straw was the problems with the buildings and facilities that made both students and faculty react strongly leading to a review of all plans for the immediate use of the new campus. Dr Darlie O Koshy took premature relief and moved to a new assignment in New Delhi. Akhil Succenna was given temporary charge of Officiating as Director in October 2008 and the Governing Council set up a Search Committee to find a new Director for NID. The process took several months and after a process put up three names to the Government for its final decision.

Image 10: Pradyumna Vyas being welcomed by faculty, students and staff of NID in the presence of Salman Haider, Chairman Governing Council of NID and Mahesh Korvvidi, COO of Design Business Incubator at NID at a community function of samosa and tea on the NID lawns.

We now have a new Director in place with the appointment of Prof Pradyumna Vyas as the second in the new series as Director at NID and eighth in the line of all Heads of Institute if we include all Executive Directors, Acting Directors and the Directors who have presided over the affairs of the Institute at Ahmedabad over the years and this excludes Gira Sarabhai who was the defacto Head of NID in her capacity as Chairman of the Internal Management Board in the early years of NID. There is now a new hope amongst students and faculty and they have been vocal in expressing their hope in looking forward to a period when design will once again be given the importance that is due both within the Institute as well as across India in the 230 sectors in which it is needed today. Prof Pradyumna Vyas had a session with the faculty where he talked about consolidation and the need to put together a comprehensive history of NID to make visible the 50 years of efforts at the Institute and I do hope that this will be something that the country can be proud about. We need our alumni and our former faculty to participate in this effort and if we can use this initiative to also map out the contributions of our alumni and graduates it would provide a platform from which design can be brought to the focused attention of Government and Indian Industry in order to bring it on par with science, technology and management after having languished on the back burner for 50 years since the Eames Report. 50 years on it is a good time to reflect and build the seeds for the future of Design for India.

Notes:
Chairman of Governing Councils at NID
1. Gautam Sarabhai - Oct 1961 to Feb 1974
2. Pupul Jayakar – March 1974 to June 1978
3. B G Verghese – July 1978 to June 1981
4. Shrenik K Lalbhai – July 1981 to June 1984
5. Prof. Yash Pal – July 1984 to June 1990
6. H Y Sharada Prasad – July 1991 to July 1994
7. Hasmukh Shah – August 1994 to June 2005
8. Ajai Dua (IAS) – January 2006 to February 2007
9. Salman Haider – March 2007 to date

References:
1. Charles and Ray Eames, The India Report, Government of India, 1958 (download pdf 359 kb)
2. Gautam Sarabhai, “National Institute of Design: Internal Organisation, Structure and Culture, NID, 1972 (download pdf 357 kb)
3. National Institute of Design, “National Institute of Design Documentation 1964-69, NID, 1970 (download pdf 25 MB)
3. Romesh Thapar, “Report of the Review Committee on the National Institute of Design” NID, February 1974
4. National Institute of Design, “Ahmedabad Declaration on Industrial Design for Development: Major Recommendations for Promotion of Industrial Design for Developemnt”, UNIDO-ICSID INDIA 79, NID, 1979 (download pdf file 11.1 mb)
5. National Institute of Design, “25 Years of Design Service: 1961 to 1986 – The Trainers” A poster of 43 faculty profiles from NID, NID, 1986 (download pdf 490 kb)
6. Kamla Choudhury, Report of the Review Committee on Future Directions and Forward Planning for National Institute of Design, August 30, 1989, NID, 1989
7. Ashoke Chatterjee, R K Bannerjee and Neera Seth, “40 Years of NID” (an unpublished draft manuscript), NID Publications, 1998.
8. National Institute of Design, “NID Milestones: 1961 to 1997”, NID, 1998 (download pdf file 2.1mb)
Design for India: Prof. M P Ranjan
9. Milestones on the NID website ; 1961-1970 ; 1971-1980 ; 1981-1990 ; 1991-1997; 2000-2001 ; 2002-2003 ; 2004-2005; 2006-2007 ; Integrated Design Services 2001-2005

National Design Policy: India Design Council (IDC) formed

2009-03-31T20:58:00.006+05:30

National Design Policy: India Design Council (IDC) formed

The Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP), Government of India, has released an extrodinary notification that is soon to be published in The Gazette of India about the constitution of an India Design Council (IDC) in pursuance of the National Design Policy announced by the Government of India on 8th February 2007. This particular Central Government notification is dated 2 March 2009.

Prof. M P Ranjan

Image01: Composite image of two models created by design students at NID while exploring the concept of sustainability across two key areas of design opportunity as part of the Design Concepts and Concerns course at the Institute. The two areas represented here are “Roti” – Food and “Rojgaar” – Occupations, both critical needs of our people that are to be served by design action and imagination.

We hope that the agenda of the newly constituted Indian Design Council will eventually expand to include and then address these critical development issues along with the list of major activities listed in the notification reported below. We also hope that the members of this Council will bring greater awareness to these critical design issues and improve the use of design by the various sectors of our economy, particularly in the development sectors where it is needed as a critical input and not just promote the use of design as a handmaiden for organized industry to generate profits and contribute inadvertently to global warming. Perhaps as we go forward we can hope to see a greater representation from the design profession and design academia in India on this Council as well as a vigorous participation of democratic representatives of numerous Associations of Design Professionals from various fields which is glaring by their absence from such a Council. Indian design professionals and academics need to get their act together and work towards contributing to the initiatives taken by the Government through the Design Policy initiatives.

The members of the India Design Council (IDC) as constituted are as follows:

1. Anand G. Mahindra of Mahendra & Mahindra Ltd., President

2. Eminent persons from various fields related to design industry

1. Akhil Succena, National Institute of Design - Member
2. Ritu Kumar, Fashion Retailer - Member
3. William N. Bissell, Traditional Indian Design - Member
4. Dr. Naushad Forbes, Technology-Design Specialist - Member
5. Mahesh K, Design Incubation - Member
6. Ganesh N. Prabhu, Management/Design - Member
7. Ajay Chowdhry, IT Design - Member
8. Rouble Nagi, RN Studios, Artist & Muralist - Member

3. Representatives from Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP)

1. Additional Secretary & Financial Advisor (AS&FA), DIPP - Member
2. one Member (not below the rank of Joint Secretary) to be nominated

4. One Member each from Department of Commerce, Higher Education, Informationm Technology and Ministry of Textiles

(Officers not below the rank of Joint Secretaries) - to be nominated

5. One Member each from each of the three apex industry organizations

1. Sr. Representative as nominated by President ASSOCHEM - Member
2. Sr. Representative as nominated by Director General CII - Member
3. Sr. Representative as nominated by President FICCI - Member

6. Heads of two design institutes in the private sector or Hedad of Departments of Design education in Universities, IIT’s etc,

1. Ravi Pooviah, Head, IDC, IIT, Mumbai - Member
2. Prof. Ranjit Mitra, Director, School of Planning &
Architecture, New Delhi - Member

7. Eminent designers

1. Satish Gokhale, Design Directions, Pune (Product Design) Member
2. Bidyabijay Bhowmik, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.,
(Automobile & Engineering) - Member
3. Jagdish Hinduja, Gokaldas Images Ltd., Bangalore
(Design for Exports) - Member
4. Rina Dhaka, New Delhi (Fashion Designer) - Member
5. Sarabajeet Singh, Fab Interiors, New Delhi
(Interior Design) - Member

8. (Heads of all Design Institutes set up by the DIPP)

Director, National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad - Member-Secretary

According to the notification this Council would have a tenure of three years besides other rules as notified for its routine functioning.

The major activities of the India Design Council are listed in the notification as follows:

• undertake design awareness and effectiveness programmes both within India and abroad.
• act as a platform for interaction with all stakeholders.
• undertake R&D and strategy and impact studies.
• accredit design institutions.
• develop and standardize design syllabi, etc. for all institutions in India imparting education.
• conduct programmes for continuous evaluation and development of new design strategies.
• develop and implement quality systems through designs for enhancing country’s international competitiveness.
• coordinate with Government to facilitate simplification of procedures and system for registration of new designs
• assist industries and design–led exports of Indian products and services including outsourcing its design capabilities by other countries.
• take effective steps towards “cradle to grave environment-friendly approach” for designs produced in India so that they have global acceptance as ‘sustainable designs’.
• enable Indian designers in India to have access to global trends and market intelligence and technology for product development and innovation.
• encourage close cooperation between academia and industry to produce proprietary design know-how while encouraging creation of new design-led enterprises for wealth creation and
• encourage and facilitate a culture for creating and protecting intellectual property in the area of designs.

This notification is issued by N. N. Prasad, Joint Secretary, DIPP, Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

Prof. M P Ranjan

Beyond Grassroots: CD ROM on Institution Building at BCDI

2009-03-23T21:26:00.012+05:30

Bamboo & Cane Development Institute, Agartala (BCDI): CD ROM as a live documentation of intentions and actions of the design team from NID, Ahmedabad in partnership with the team from BCDI, Agartala. – “Beyond Grassroots: Bamboo as Seedlings of Wealth”.

This CD ROM was produced in 2003 - 2004 using reports, movies and pictures that were part of the very detailed visual documentation that was maintained by the NID and BCDI teams using digital tools that were constantly available as a project policy. The intention was to build an Institute that could address the very complex needs of the “Grassroots sector” in rural India through the creation of human resources, knowledge resources as well as market linkages with the use of a potential local material such as bamboo which could be used to support a whole spectrum of development activities that could lead to positive change in the lives of the people. This CD ROM is available for download from this link here as a 560 mb zip file that unpacks into hyper linked folders and files all connected through a series of navigation screens shown below. We believe that India needs many institutes like this one if we are to transform our rural economy with the use of local resources in a sustainable manner and in a politically stable eco-system that can survive well into the future with the use of design, decentralized local governance and local entrepreneurship.
Prof M P Ranjan

Image 00: Feasibility Report for the setting up of the Bamboo & Cane Development Institute on the left and the two stages of BCDI Curriculum Development are on the right.

This institute was proposed in 2001 and experimentally managed by the NID team till mid June 2004 during which the curriculum development and many product design projects were carried out at Agartala. The Development Commissioner of Handicrafts commissioned this project as part of the UNDP funded National Bamboo Mission project and the project was handled by a team from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad as well as a team of faculty and staff at the BCDI, Agartala. These three reports show the articulated intentions and the process of curriculum development and these three reports can be downloaded as pdf files from these links below:
1. BCDI Feasibility Report: December 2001 – pdf file 366 kb size
2. BCDI Curriculum Structure – pdf file 4.7 mb size
3. BCDI Curriculum Review – pdf file 3 mb size
4. Achievements of BCDI: Summary - 2001 to 2004 – pdf file 789 kb size
5. Complete interactive CD ROM: “Beyond Grassroots!: Bamboo as Seedlings of Wealth – zip file 560 MB size

Image 01: This CD ROM opens with an introduction, which provides an overview of the resources as well as the intentions of the design team at NID.

The reader is guided to an index page shown besides the CD face image above which directs the reader to seven sub-indexes that go to access the full content of the CD ROM, mostly pdf files and reports, movies in QuickTime and brochures and publications prepared by the BCDI project between 2000 to 2003. The Seedlings of Wealth model was first articulated in 1995 as part of a paper by the author for the World Bamboo Congress at Bali, Indonesia that called for concerted action to study the fast depleting resource of traditional wisdom in the bamboo culture of the Asian region. This living resource is rooted in the local culture of the populations of Asia, Latin America and Africa and it is a major asset that can be used by development initiatives as a resource for sustainable development. Previous work done at NID on bamboo is introduced here through pointers to the book on the Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeast India (which can now be downloaded from here as a 36 mb pdf file) and the Bamboo Boards & Beyond CD ROM (which can be downloaded from here as a 550 mb zip file)

Image 02: The Introduction screen, the Main Index screen, and two of the seven sub-index screens are shown here.

The seven sub-index sections lead to a variety of resources that were either created as part of this project or were used as background resources to inform the thoughts and actions on this very interesting design initiative in institution building for the growth of the bamboo sector with the specific objective of addressing poverty and development needs of the rural sector with the use of design and local crafts skills. The Development Commissioner of Handicrafts Government of India supported this project through the funds available from UNDP as part of the National Bamboo Mission initiatives at the turn of the century. The support for the project continued till mid 2004 and the work done during the project phase is documented in the CD ROM mentioned above.

Image 03: Four sub-index screens dealing with Craft and Product development reports, Design and Bamboo shows, Systems Thinking project reports and the index for movies that documented 12 days at BCDI in May 2002.

The Craft and Product development reports were created as part of the ongoing product design explorations in bamboo and craftsmanship that involved NID faculty, students as well as BCDI faculty, students and craftsmen. Each project had individual goals and focused on one type of product be it furniture or domestic and office accessories that could be crafted in bamboo. Besides these reports we have also included Systems Thinking course outcomes for the NID Furniture Design programme where several batches of students were assigned individual projects in the area of bamboo and rural development initiatives with the use of this local resource. These explorations and the prototypes created are discussed in these reports included in this section. All these visits to BCDI were extensively documented using digital images. On one such visit to the BCDI the author made 12 mini movies using these digital still pictures and these movies are included in this section of the CD ROM.

Image 04: View of the Bamboo Boards & Beyond exhibit on the UNDP lawn in 2001 and a note about the CD ROM about that project shown alongside the crafts and bamboo shows available in the Beyond Grassroots CD ROM.

The Bamboo Boards and Beyond was a major project that preceded the BCDI initiative and has been discussed on this blog earlier. This image of the final exhibit at the UNDP lawns in New Delhi was not included in the previous CD ROM but it is included in this offering as shown above. This project helped open minds in Delhi and several National initiatives sprang from this particular event, which makes it significant for design for India.

Image 05: CD ROM face graphics and view of CD Jacket for the Beyond Grassroots, a joint CD publication from NID and BCDI.

While the CD ROM is available from the links on this page the CD Jacket can be downloaded as an A4 size printable artwork from this link here as a pdf file of 1 mb size. The BCDI Feasibility report was redesigned for print in a compact A5 format and the artwork can be downloaded from this link as a pdf file 368 kb size.

Prof M P Ranjan

Bamboo Boards & Beyond: Multimedia CD ROM on design explorations for India

2009-03-14T17:06:00.013+05:30

Interactive CD ROM authored in linked PDF modules with Quicktime movies and pictures of a product design and development initiative at the National Institute of Design in 2000-01. Download 550 MB zip file here.

“Bamboo Boards & Beyond” : Bamboo, the sustainable, eco-friendly industrial material of the future.

M P Ranjan

Image 00: CD ROM Graphics and first interface screen with six major sections that include Inroduction, Index of Papers, Presentations, Pictures and Sketches, a section about NID including the Eames Report and a interactive walk-through NID building in QiickTime VR.

In November 1998 through February 2001 the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Asian and Pacific Centre for Transfer of Technology (APCTT), New Delhi, had supported field research on laminated bamboo, a concept development workshop on the creation of new applications with laminated bamboo boards through a research and development initiative by India’s premier design Institute, the National Institute of Design. This workshop aimed to position bamboo as a sustainable eco-friendly industrial material of the future.

The workshop at the NID campus involved professional designers and architects working with students from NID and other design, technical and architectural schools. They created numerous design concepts using the new material, bamboo boards, currently being sourced from China and India. A product development lab at NID created refined prototypes that are on display.

Image 01: Interface screens from the interactive CD ROM showing the arriving screens at the index level that each lead to the specific resources listed therein. These include numerous papers on bamboo and design, 300 pictures from an album of selected pictures with captions from the workshop and its resources and outcomes.

This exploration and product development workshop was preceded by a number of field visits conducted by Prof M P Ranjan and his team in the field in India and China that started as part of a consulting project at NID for the UNDP in India. These visits produced a number of reports and the insights that were gleaned from these studies went on to inform the further developments in the National Bamboo Mission initiatives that followed with financial support from the UNDP to the Government of India.

This particular workshop and the product development lab were supported and endorsed by the following agencies:

Supported by:
UNDP United Nations Developemnt Programme
New Delhi, India

APCTT Asian and Pacific Centre for Transfer of Technology,
New Delhi, India

Endorsed by:
INBAR International Network for Bamboo and Rattan
Beijing, Peoples’ Republic of China

ICSID International Council of Societies of Industrial Design
Helsinki, Finland

Conducted by:
National Institute of Design,
Paldi, Ahmedabad 380 007 India

Image 02: Thumbnail images that are links to particular sections of images as listed in the Image Index.

This CD-ROM provides background information on the emerging status of bamboo through papers and pictures from ongoing research at NID. The complete CD ROM was reproduced and distributed in over 4000 copies as a free service from the Centre over the past six years and it is now available for free download here as a single zip file that is 580 MB in size that unzips into a folder which contains all the necessary files and hyper links to afford interactive viewing from the individual desktop for offline viewing. The files are in hyperlinked pdf and Quicktime format for easy viewing across platforms on Windows Mac or Linux computers using free software available on the web.

Image 03: Sample screens from the major presentation slide shows that are included in the CD ROM as pdf files that can be seen in an interactive manner. The little Red square goes to the next page while the little Green square takes one back to the main index above.

“Bamboo Boards & Beyond” was a large team based project with the following participants

Project head and Chief Consultant:
Prof. M P Ranjan, National Institute of Design, Ahmedanad, India

Project consultants:
Prof. Yrjo Weiherheimo
UIAH, Helsinki, Finland

Prof. Yanta H T Lam
Hongkong Polytechnic, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Long

Mr. Haruhiko Ito
President of AT Design, Nagoya, Japan

Prof. G Upadhayaya
National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India

Project Participants:
Faculty & students from leading design schools in India and Finland, architects and professional designers from all over India as well as experts from technical and development institutes dealing with forest products and engineering applications in wood and related materials.

Image 04: Sample pages from one multipage presentation offered in pdf format shown as thumbnail images.

This CD ROM was authored in PDF format so that they would be easily available for students and researchers interested in bamboo applications and design even if they are located in remote areas away from web access.

Image 05: The QuickTime VR presentation shown as popup windows in the upper row and other prresentations as thumbnails in the lower row.

The numerous QuickTime movies available on this CD ROM run within the pdf files to which they are connected in order to supplement the content that is being discussed in each file or visual presentation. The QuickTime VR provides a walkthrough of the NID campus as it was organized in 2000 and much has changed on campus since then but the walkthrough will be a nostalgic reminder of the old NID for our students and faculty who have known NID in the Ninties and earlier. The elaborate wood and metal workshops that were planned by international consultants when the NID was founded can be seen in this walkthrough.

Image 06: Thumbnail images of photo album that contains 300 selected images from the workshop and from the background research that led up to the workshop at NID.

The research and the workshops generated a lot of creative energy from all the participants and this digital picture gallery captures this energy to show the flow of design action when exploring and developing applications using a new material such as bamboo boards for exciting future applications.

Image 07: Graphics for the set of three CD ROMs that were released by the Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID in 2001, 2003 and 2004 respectively. The first CD ROM is available for download as a 550 MB zip file from this link below. The other CD ROMS will be made available at a future post on this blog in a week or two from now.

“Bamboo Boards & Beyond” : Bamboo, the sustainable, eco-friendly industrial material of the future.

M P Ranjan

Stephen Huyler: “Daughters of India” and other stories

2009-03-07T16:03:00.007+05:30

Book launch at NID: Stephen Huyler speaks of “Shakti – The dominant female principle in India”

Prof M P Ranjan

Image 01: Stephen Huyler posing in the NID Library with five of his books, all well used by students and faculty, from the NID archives.

An impromptu display of books was created in the NID library to let the students know that the author of the five books on Indian art and culture was also speaking at the NID Auditorium on the evening of 4 March 2009. The occasion was the promotion of his new book “Daughters of India” across India and the stop at NID was one of many pit stops across many cities in India at the invitation of the publisher, Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad. I had met Stephen Huyler first in 1986 at a conference on Design of Crafts Museums at New Delhi, which was organized by the Crafts Council of India in October 1986. It was during this very conference that my book “Bamboo and Cane Crafts of Northeast India” was formally released at a simple function at the National Crafts Museum at Pragati Maidan and Stephen Huyler and all the other speakers of the conference were present at the release function where Shri P A Sangma, MP from Meghalaya was to chief guest. Stephen Huyler’s then new book had been released a year earlier and “Village India” (1985) still remains the only significant study on rural arts and crafts and lifestyles that cover the whole sub-continent between the covers of one richly illustrated book. This was followed up “Painted Prayers: Women’s Art in Village India” (1994), “Gift of Earth: Terracotas and Clay Sculptures of India” (1996), “Meeting Gods: Elements of Hindu Devotion” (1999) and now with his inspired offering, “Daughters of India: Art and Identity” (2008).

Image 02: Stephen Huyler featured in a series of events at NID. Exchange of books “Handmade in India” for “Daughters of India” between the Editors and the Author at the Gautam-Gira Square under the Big Tree at NID, followed by a visit to the NID Library and then onto the NID Auditorium for the book sale and talk by the Author.

Aditi and I got a signed copy of Stephen Huylers book for the man himself and we in turn gifted him an inscribed copy of Handmade in India in the presence of a small entourage of NID Faculty and Bipin Shah the Publisher from Mapin Publishing. A small audience had assembled to hear the talk, which was as usual a rich presentation of images and an impassioned sharing of experiences with the selected women of India who had been featured in his book. The stories were touching as well as inspiring. I introduced Stephen Huyler to the NID audience and spoke about his passion for travel and his long and winding journeys through India that started in 1971 and continues today, and each year he has been in India for three or four months each year, all the time with his camera and recording his experiences of living with the people wherever he went.

Image 03: Stephen Huyler at NID Auditorium on 4 March 2009 for his talk about his book “Daughters of India: Art and Identity”.

Stephen Huyler spoke at length about the book “Daughters of India: Art and Identities” and he illustrated his talk with images and stories of a few of the women featured in his book. The book profiles the lives and art of 20 women he had carefully chosen from a vast range of experiences so as to cover many facets of India across many regions and class barriers while he looked at women and their roles in the Indian sub-continent. Here at NID he chose to speak about Pushpa, who works as a sweeper at Mumbai Airport and lives in the slums next door, and this reminded all of us of the Oscar winning film “Slumdog Millionare” that has caught the attention of the West like none other before it. He also spoke of Indira from Jaisalmeer, Kusima from Badami in Karnataka, Sambai from Ludia in Kachchh in Gujarat and finally about Sonabai from Sarguja District in Chhattisgarh, all touching tales and full of appreciation of both their art and their character that was shaped by the many difficult experiences that they had related to him on his journeys across India.

Bibliographic Data: and link on Amazon and the publishers in the USA, The Abbervile Press and in India, Mapin Publishers Pvt Ltd.
Daughters of India: Art and Identity
Text and Photographs by
Stephen Huyler
Size 9’ x 11 11/16” – Cloth, 264 pages
250 illustrations in full colour
Published by Mapin Publishers Pvt Ltd
ISBN: 978-81-89995-01-0

Prof M P Ranjan

Katlamara Chalo: Seedlings of Wealth in Action

2009-02-28T17:40:00.010+05:30

“Katlamara Chalo”: A call for design and political action using the “Seedlings of Wealth” strategy for rural development in India.

Prof M P Ranjan

Image 01: A collage of images from the field workshop in May 2005 at Katlamara in Tripura State. A cultivated field of Kanakais bamboo at Katlamara, one of over two hundred such fields in the area. Nomita Debbarma with the DDPJoint and Nomita with Bani Urang at the drill machine set up during training sessions in summer of 2005. Samir and Ranjit the master trainers who worked with the design team in the field.

We first visited Katlamara in 1986 while on a project for the Government of Tripura and on that visit Gajanan Upadhayay and I found that systematic plantation could indeed provide high quality material for new applications of great value. We collected a few poles of “Kanakais” – Bambusa affinis – and brought these back to NID where they stayed dormant for several years but they also excited all of us and stimulated students to explore concepts with the use of this strong and straight rod shaped material. This provided grounds for our further strategies with bamboo and in my Bali paper of 1995 I had proposed for the first time my evolving conception of the farm to industry model for rural development using bamboo as a material driver which I later elaborated as part of the UNDP National vision report called "From the Land to The People: Bamboo as a Sustainable Human Development Resource for India". The six stage model for development proposed then was accepted by the UNDP in 1999 and the major initiative of bamboo promotion was started in India with UN funding being channeled through the Office of the DC(Handicrafts). You can read more about these interventions from my website at these links below:
1. Katlamara Chalo! Lesson in Rural Development
2. Bamboo Initiatives at NID
3. All bamboo joinery strategy

Image 02: Seedlings of Wealth model that was proposed in 1995 at the Bali Conference was implemented at Katlamara and the book about the field work and design strategies are now available between the folds of this cover, in a 64 page book titled “Katlamara Chalo: A Design for Development Strategy” (see link below or download 46.5 mb pdf file here).

In this book we have shared the process of how the farm to market strategy was developed through the various stages and how these concepts provided us with the background and conviction that the sustainable use of bamboo could bring economic sustenance to the local village farmers as well as to local bamboo craftsmen and entrepreneurs who depend on their craft as a source of their livelihood. The various prototypes that were developed as well as the strategies adopted by the design team are described along with numerous illustrations of the examples and the work in progress as a documentation report. Between 2001 January and June of 2004 we had the additional task of building a new Institute at Agartala called the “Bamboo & Cane Development Institute” (BCDI, Agartala) where we innovated a curriculum structure that helped train 160 craftsmen in the five batches that were conducted using our new curriculum, all involving NID faculty and research teams as trainers and catalysts in this education experiment. You can read more about the BCDI experiment at these links below:
1. BCDI, Agartala: A new Curriculum for Rural Transformation – Links to papers
2. Achievements of the BCDI, Agartala – Link

Image 03: Sample pages from the “Katlamara Chalo” book – illustrated pages that introduce the strategy as well as show the products and the story so far. Since this project in 2005 we have extended the range of products as well as conducted additional training for craftsmen from adjacent village clusters as part of the Tripura Bamboo Mission initiatives.

Design at the strategic level is not well understood in India or for that matter in many other parts of the world and in most cases almost all of the development success is attributed to the good use of science and technology and of management and planning skills while contributions from design are all but ignored. This is also reflected in the scale and frequency with which science and technology efforts and research are funded by our governments and in India the science and technology sector draws several thousand times more funding for development initiatives and the case for the use design is only considered if one of us, faculty from the design Institutes, happens to be present at some critical government or planning board meeting and we speak out in support of using design as a development resource.

The furniture development using the Katlamara bamboo for the rural development strategy is just one leg of a multi-pronged, multi-location and multi-year design and development effort that we have been pursuing at the NID Centre for Bamboo Initiatives over the years. We are pursuing this to show an even larger story that design at the strategic level (as we understand it at NID) can be a great and powerful force that can transform India if it is used in the 230 sectors in which it is needed but unfortunately which is not yet understood when compared to the manner in which with science and technology and management is understood in India. Many industrialists and government officials in control of development funding still think that design is a cosmetic addition to technology but this is far from the truth although the design media (in India and across the world) still seem to focus on fashion and aesthetics aspects of design and this I call "page 3 design" and I wish to promote the strategic design initiatives in India across all the sectors of our economy.

You can see Katlamara explorations as well as the range of furniture developed in 2005 at this link below:
1. Katlamara furniture workshop 2005 – Links and pictures
2. Download “Katlamara Chalo” book as a 64 page pdf file 46.5 mb

Image 04: A collection of products developed as a follow-up to the Katlamara Chalo Workshop. The Dismantling and stackable tables, benches and storage racks are based on the component stackable configuration developed by Sandesh R using the Katlamara Bamboo Joint using the DDP strategy.

This is an ongoing engagement and after the project in 2005 we have had the occasion to revisit the project location as well as collaborate with a number of partners in furthering our objectives of providing development interventions using design strategies of product diversfication and matching these to local capabilities as well as aspirations. In recent times we have a major project with the Tripura Bamboo Mission where we helped develop a new collection of products that could sustain local markets and these were introduced to local craftsmen in an effort to seed local entrepreneurship based on local demand. This “local to local” strategy saw the design team focus on one product category called the “Alna” a local favorite, a clothes rack, which is found in every home in the region, but is rarely made in bamboo. I have reported about this collection in a recent post which can be seen at this link here.
1. Tripura Bamboo Mission workshop at Bangalore – Link
2. Bamfest show 2006 – Sandesh R and M P Ranjan collection – Link and pictures
3. Bamboo Initiatives products catalogue – Links and pictures

Download related papers, reports and books from here:

1. Ecology & Design: Lessons from the Bamboo Culture, Oita, 1991 – (202 kb pdf file)
2. Green Design & Bamboo Handicrafts: A scenario for action in the Asian Region, Bali, 1995 – (pdf 217 kb)
3. From the Land to the People: Bamboo as a Sustainable Human Development Resource, New Delhi, 1999 – (pdf 1.5 mb)
4. Rethinking Bamboo in 2000 AD (text file), Haikou, Hinan, 2000 – (90 kb pdf file)
5. Rethinking Bamboo in 2000 AD (visual presentation), Haikou , Hainan, 2000 – (8.7 mb pdf file)
6. BCDI: Feasibility Report, New Delhi, 2001 – (371 kb pdf file)
7. Achievements of NID-BCDI, Ahmedabad, 2004 – (21 kb pdf file)
8. Bamboo Initiatives Catalogue: Design Strategies from NID-BCDI, Ahmedabad, 2004 – (16.6 mb pdf file)
9. Traditional Wisdom: Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeastern India, New Delhi, 2004 – (34.7 mb pdf file)
10. Katlamara Chalo: A Design for Development Strategy – Design as a driver for the Indian Rural Economy, Ahmedabad, 2007 – (46.3 mb pdf file)
11. NID Bamboo History: A Slide Presentation – 1969 to 2009 – (22.4 mb pdf file)
12. UNDP Lawn Exhibition, New Delhi – February 2001 – (540 kb pdf file)

Prof M P Ranjan

Indian Saris: Woven fabrics of fantasy and folklore

2009-02-26T19:29:00.011+05:30

Indian Saris: Woven fabrics of fantasy and folklore – A new book from NID on the subject of design will soon hit the stands.

Prof. M P Ranjan

Image 01: Vijay Singh Katiyar reviewing pages of his new book “Indian Saris” in his office at NID, Ahmedabad.

Something to celebrate has come up and I will share this with you. A new book is to be launched shortly by one of the faculty colleagues at NID, Vijai Singh Katiyar, of the Textile Apparel Design Faculty is ready to launch the new offering called “Indian Saris: Traditions – Perspectives – Design” which is published by Wisdom Tree, New Delhi. Katiyar has a blog on the subject, which promises to tell us all the details as they unfold in the days ahead and I do wish it all success as we move forward from here. I have not yet had a chance to read the book and post a review but the fact that such a book has been created is a welcome event since so little has been published on Indian design and I welcome all these contributions with an open mind and hope more people will come forward to share their insights and experiences and this would apply to all my faculty colleagues at NID and at other design schools across India. There is much to be done in this space.

Image 02: Glimpses of the new book “Indian Saris” in the hands of the author, Vijai Singh Katiyar.

Vijay Singh Katiyar did his Diploma in Textile Technology at the Central Textile Institute, Kanpur before joining NID in Textile Design as part of the Advanced Entry Programme (AEP). He graduated from NID with the AEP Diploma in Textile Design and then joined the NID Faculty in 1993 and he has been working at NID since then in a number of capacities including administrative roles and teaching roles that cover education, research and projects as part of any faculty member’s activity at NID. In recent years Vijay Singh Katiyar carried out several sari design and development projects for the States of Tamilnadu and Kerala and these have helped support his deep research into the subject of woven sari production which is the subject of his book. We will hear more about the book after its formal release that is to take place in London at the Nehru Centre on the 20 April 2009 at an evening function that promises to be an intellectual and stimulating social event since the Indian High Commission in London has agreed to host a panel discussion titled “Design for Indian Textiles & Fashion: Tradition to Modernity – A UK – India Deliberation” as a curtain raiser for the evening event and the book launch. More about this event at the blog “Indian Sari”, here. I was told that Wisdom Tree has arranged for pre-orders at a number of online booksellers including Amazon and I hope that the book is well received by the design community.

Image 03: Goddesses and mortals draped in the sari as visualized by Raja Ravi Varma who has influenced India in how we see ourselves and our deities in more ways than we can possibly imagine. Lakshmi, Saraswathi – Hindu Goddesses and mythological characters from the Mahabharatha – Damayanthi and Nala story, as well as the Shakuntala story, all depicted with the sari clad persona as imagined and visualized by the great artist.

The impending launch of the book gives me an opportunity to reflect on the topic of the book, the Indian Sari. A length of cloth, sometimes plain and at others highly decorated, the sari, has been the source of many fables and a fabric of our imagination as a society and a culture. While working on this post I looked up the Wiki on various aspects of Indian garments and the Sari in particular and was amazed at what we can find on the subject online today. I came across Raja Ravi Varma’s depiction of sari clad goddesses and immortal mortals – our mythology is full of their stories - as well as stories of love and intrigue all part of the Indian cultural traditions, some I remembered from my childhood stories told to me by grandmother and also my father. Nala and Damayanthi, Shakuntala, Uruvashi and Puraravas – were all depicted by our visionary painters – as sari clad women and men in draped garments, in their various settings and here Ravi Varma has taken hold of all our collective imaginations of how we see our past through his realistic paintings that got transmitted to us through the rich tapestry of the calendar art from the hot printing presses of Shivakashi and elsewhere, to reach every nook and corner of India, in the tea stalls as well as in the homes. “Bharat Mata” – Mother India – was shown in a sari on matchbox labels and all of these images contribute to our collective imagination of India and the Indian reality, if there is one such singular thing that can be called the “Indian reality”. I do not know how much of these aspects are covered in Vijay’s book but I will look out for it when it reaches my hands, hopefully soon.

Image 04: Images of Uruvashi as visualized by Raja Ravi Varma on the left and by Ramachandran on the right.

The stories of love and life as well as the depictions of Indian women in theatre, film and in print have been in sari mode for the past 5000 years of our civilization. From the expressive depictions of the sari clad goddesses in cave paintings to the realistic images of Raja Ravi Varma and the depictions of the love story of Uravashi and Puraravas by Verma and later by Ramachandran show just a tiny fraction of our visual landscape and story-scapes which has been the images of our mythology on which all of us have been educated in the real world that is India today. The sari continues to thrive in rural India while urban India has adopted various new forms of expression – from the salwar khameeze to the business suit in the BPO’s and IT enabled offices around the nation and ofcourse the jeans and T-shirt of our schools and colleges. New visions of feminine expression have emerged and the sari still plays a role in a number of fashion interpretations and it will be interesting to see how the Indian imagination and fashion will shape the sari of the future.

Vijay Singh Katiyar, “Indian Saris: Traditions - Perspectives – Design”, Wisdom Tree, New Delhi, May 2009

Hardcover: 228 pages
Publisher: Wisdom Tree (May 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 8183281222
ISBN-13: 978-8183281225

Wisdom Tree, New Delhi
Link to Amazon - Indian Saris

I have requested the NID Library and Knowledge Management Centre for a full list of original documents in their archival collection which deals with the design of saris and they have promised to give me a list of Craft Documentations, Craft Design Diploma Projects, Faculty Research Projects and Faculty and student sari design projects that were carried out at NID over the years. I am told that there are many and none of these have been published so far so I will bring out a full list as soon as I get the copy from the library, hopefully very soon. I remember several memorable sari design projects done by NID faculty in the past and I do hope that these are also published at some point even as pdf documents that may be available from the web, why not? Gitto, Aditi and Krishna had all done saree design projects and more recently Vijai too has completed his own collections and I do hope that these are all made available through the NID Library soon as a result of my request here.

Prof. M P Ranjan