Indian Saris: Woven fabrics of fantasy and folklore

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

The Three Orders of Design: Lessons from Northeast India

The Three Orders of Design: Lessons from our study of the baskets from Northeast India

Prof M P Ranjan
Design overview lecture delivered at the “Uttar Purva Utsav” organized by the Crafts Council of India at the “Dilli Haat” on 2nd February 2009 to celebrate and promote the crafts of Northeast India in association with the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, Government of India.

The lecture was simultaneously translated into Hindi by Ms Asha Bakshi, Dean Fashion Design, National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), New Delhi.

Image01: Speakers at the “Uttar Purva Utsav” organized by the Crafts Council of India at Dilli Haat in early February 2009.

This invitation to speak at the “Uttar Purva Utsav” organized by the Crafts Council of India at the “Dilli Haat” gives me the opportunity to reflect on my three decade old association with the crafts of the Northeastern Region of India and to ponder on the lessons that we have learned about design and bamboo from the craftsmen of the Northeast over the years since our first contact with their work in the field in late 1979. We began our year long fieldwork November 1979 in the Northeast as part of the project sponsored by the All India Handicrafts Board in those days, now the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts [DC (H)], to study the bamboo and cane crafts of the region which resulted in a book which was eventually published in 1986 by the DC (H) and the National Institute of Design (NID), titled “Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeast India” by M P Ranjan, Nilam Iyer and Ghanshyam Pandya. (download book here as PDF file 35 mb size) It is also an opportune occasion to connect once again with the resources that were generated by that project particularly in the form of the very large collection of baskets that were collected in the field as part of our study and these are today available at the National Crafts Museum and I am told that these are on special display to celebrate the crafts of Northeast and in conjunction with this particular event at the Dilli Haat. The craftsmen and the crafts promoters are invited to visit the National Crafts Museum at Pragati Maidan and see for themselves the quality of crafts that is still a living tradition of the region as these products are still in active use across the region but times are changing fast and these may not remain that way for very long. Digital pdf copies of my book can be downloaded from my website and in-print copies of the paperback edition (2004) are available from both NID and the DC (H) and the original hard-bound edition (1986) is now out of print.

Image02: The Paikawng from Mizoram, side and top view seen with drawings of the base, sides and rim construction and the detail of the base strengthening detail using cane binding over a bamboo base.

I must share the learning that we were able to glean from our journeys into the Northeast as well as from our interactions with the local craftsmen which was followed by a period of deep study that we could invest into the collection of 400 baskets that we had gathered during our field work in the Northeastern region. Besides giving us numerous insights about bamboo that were invaluable we were also quite surprised to see the deep appreciation of design principles that were both applied by the craftsmen as well as something that we found embedded in the range of products that we had collected in an extremely selective manner during our year long field work in the seven states of the Northeastern region. Now Sikkim has been included in the definition of the Northeastern Region and rightly so, since these states share so many common characteristics with each other while keeping their individual identities intact. Learning from the Northeast’s craftmen was an exhilarating experience and in all very enriching experience. As a designer and a design teacher traveling with two colleagues through a culture that was rich with knowledge about bamboo and design it was a stimulating experience for us and a huge source of new learning from the field. This learning we tried to capture in our book about the Bamboo and Cane Crafts of the Northeastern Region and while the content may look like a normal documentation a look at the back of the book will reveal a meta-structure of information and local knowledge contained in two indexes, one a “Technical index” that captures all the nuances of the local wisdom across many fields and the other a “Subject index” which links and makes accessible word concepts as they appear across the book. Our sense of amazement at each product that we saw and the level of detail to which the thought process had helped evolve that product was always a source of great pleasure, amazement and admiration. From all these products I would like to draw out one specific example, The Paikawng, a Mizo basket used for carrying firewood, not because it stands above the rest but simply because it is one of many products that come to my mind as I stand here and reflect on our deep learning from the field about design itself. I will therefore use the example of the Paikawng to set out the boundaries and contours of the three orders of design as they appear in the fine hand crafted baskets of Northeast India.

Inage03: A general understanding of structure of baskets from Northeast India from our book along with two particular baskets from the Tengnoupal hill district of Manipur State, one closed-weave for grain and the other open-weave for grass and fire-wood.

Let me first give you an overview of the three orders of design that I shall be dwelling on over the next few minutes. What are these and how do they relate to our understanding of design and in particular how these can help us use design to further our objective of building better products and systems for the people of the Northeastern region? The fine detailing in the baskets from the Northeast represent the climax of a bamboo culture and the field study and our book tries to pay homage to that spirit. The three orders of design are listed here and I shall proceed to explain how these were appreciated in the Paikawng and in all the other products that were equally rich and deserving of our attention.

The First Order of Design:

The Order of Design of Material, Form & Structure
This level of design is recognised by all people and is the most commonly discussed attribute. Here material, structure and technology are the key drivers of the design and these help shape the form that we eventually see and appreciate in the product. We can appreciate the product as an honest expression of structure and material used and transformed to realize a particular form that is both unique as well as functional. It is here that skill and understanding of the craftsmen are both used to shape the product through an appropriate transformation of the material with an understanding of its properties and with an appreciation of its limitations and possibilities.

Image04: Description of the open-weave structure and its varients from the Northeast and the Paikawng shown in use for fire-wood carrying from the pages of our book.

Let us take the Paikawng and examine it at the level of material and form – this basket is made of long strands of stout bamboo splits that are first interlaced to form a square base before these are bent up to form the sides of the basket. In forming the sides these very same splits form elongated hexagons that are a result of the three horizontal bands that anchor the inclined verticals between the base and the rim structure. At the rim these splits are each divided laterally into a number of sub-splits which lend themselves to a form of braiding so as to create a wide braided band that is both soft as well as very strong but being flexible. The material of the split is thus transformed at each stage, the base as flat and wide, the sides as thick and stiff and the rim as soft and flexible, while still remaining one single piece of bamboo that is responding to a particular structural need at the point where it is needed. The four corners of the square base are covered by a interlacing knot, each made of a length of cane splits which does not unravel easily if some of the overlapping strands are cut while the basket is in use. Cane, here is used sparingly to conserve costs and to save the critical part of the bamboo basket from friction and were and tear at the corners which are the most vulnerable parts of this basket when in contact with the ground. Further, this additional feature can be renewed or replaced in case of damage in use and the whole basket would therefore have an extended life. This lends the basket a degree of toughness that is essential for the intended function, which is to carry rough cut fire-wood from the field to the home and this brings us to the second order of design.

The Second Order of Design:

The Order of Design for Function & Feeling – Impact & Effect
This level is influenced by utility and feeling and is largely determined by the marketplace as well as by the culture in which it is located. Here aesthetics and utility are informed by the culture and the economics of the land. We can sense and feel the need for the product and the trends are determined by the largely intangible attributes through which we assess the utility and price that we are willing to pay for this particular offering and this is quite independent of its cost.

Image05: Pages from the book “Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeast India” showing the construction of the Paikawng in line drawings of base, sides and rim structure with description of its uses at home and at work.

In order to examine this level of design we will need to compare similar products across a number of different social and cultural situations. Firewood baskets are made by many communities of the Northeast and each of these have a distinctive form that is informed by the asthetic preferences of that community. The Paikawng offers the Mizo a particular form and structure and for lighter applications they have a sister product called the Emsin which is lighter and smaller than the Paikawng but with very similar structural and formal characteristics of the latter. The other tribes have distinctly different forms that are arrived at by differences in the size, shape, contours as well as the shape of the hexagon used to form the sides of the baskets in question while addressing the same set of functions that the Paikawng addresses for the Mizos.

The Third Order of Design:

The Order of Design for Value – Meaning and Purpose
This level is shaped by the higher values in our society and by the philosophy, ethics and spirit that we bring to our products and events as well as all the associated services and the stories that we can tell about the relationships between these entities and our lives. At this level value unfolds through the production of meaning in our lives and in providing us with our identities and these products becomes a medium of communication itself, all about ourselves. It is held in the politics and ethics of the society and is at the heart of the spirit in which the products are produced and used in that society. There are deeply held meanings that are integral to the form, structure as well as some of the essential features which may in some cases be the defining aspects of that product, making it recognizable as being from a particular tribe or community. These features define the ownership of the form, motif or character of the product and these are usually supported by the stories and legends about their origin and these give meaning to the lives of the people for whom they are made.

Image06: Views and description of the Emsin, a sister product of the Paikawng which is used for lighter tasks and as a ‘fashion’ product by the Mizo youth for visits to the bazaar and other light chores.

The Paikawng has this distinctive character and can be recognized as a typical Mizo product both by the Mizos themselves as well as by those around them. The braided band at the rim has a unique name in the Mizo language – it is called “vawkpuidang phiar”, meaning “the braided pattern or palete of the pig or sow” which has a similar knitted pattern. These stories bring value to the product that goes far beyond its material and utility value that is usually embedded in such functional products. We need to recognize the characteristics that these three orders of design bring to the contemporary products of our own society and in doing so we can learn to enhance the value that it brings to the market as well as tone the quality standards that are applied to each instance of these products at the various stages of production, marketing and utilization in the society.

All three layers are important and we need to learn to appreciate our creations along all three axis if we are to reach a sustainable offering in the handicrafts sector in the days ahead. Design therefore has a number of layers that are addressed in our traditional artifacts and when we embark on the making of our new and innovative products for new markets we will need to pay a great deal of attention to all three orders of the design spectrum if we are to reach a semblence of sustainability and order in our creative offerings for the future.

Download the book here: 35 MB PDF
M P Ranjan, Nilam Iyer and Ghanshyam Pandya, "Traditional Wisdom: Bamboo and Cane Crafts of Northeast India", Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, Government of India, New Delhi, 1986 (HB) & 2004 (PB)
Prof M P Ranjan

Sustainability & Design at Davos 2009: Posters in PDF

Sustainability & Design at Davos 2009: Five Posters in A3 size in printable PDF format

Prof M P Ranjan

Image01: Views of Sustainability Design Charette at New Delhi on 15 November 2008 as part of the India Economic Summit which was organised by the World Economic Forum.

The “Sustainability for Tomorrow's Consumers: India Innovation Charette” was organised on the 15th November 2008 at New Delhi as part of the India Economic Summit 2009 under the auspices of the World Economic Forum. The Charette consisted of mixed groups of business executives, sustainability experts, social entrepreneurs, designers and design students, all working together to build on the three pillars which define the initiative were proposed by the World Economic Forum team headed by Marcello Mastioni:

A. Business Case for Sustainability,
B. Innovation for Tomorrow’s Business, and
C. Building the Framework Conditions.

The day long discussions and workshop sessions at the Design Charette at New Delhi saw six key themes emerge:
1.ENGAGE CONSUMERS: co-create and close the loop
2.Move from stuff to VALUE BUSINESS MODELS: consume right, not less
3.Embrace OPEN SOURCED innovation: leverage copy left
4.INTEGRATE to deliver innovation: collaborate along the value chain
5.REDEFINE THE CORE: meta-morph and reinvent
6.Leverage EMERGING TECHNOLOGY: put science at work

Image02: Views from the two day Visualising Sustainability Workshop conducted at NID on 26 and 27 December 2008 for a hands on session for visualising approaches to sustainability along six selected themes.

The push for the follow up meet at NID would now be to understand the ideas that will leverage these broad frameworks into the future. The aspects that currently maintain the status quo must be examined, and concepts that will bring about transformation will have to be envisioned and articulated. The broad themes have to therefore be detailed, visualised and made tangible.

In order to take these themes forward, the National Institute of Design (NID) proposed a two day workshop, ‘Visualising Sustainability for Davos 2009’ and the same was organised on the 26th and 27th of December 2008, where six multidisciplinary teams of design students, faculty, and invited experts explored these six themes, in order to create detailed concepts within each of these broad frameworks.

Image03: Selection of thumbnail sketches that could capture various themes and issues associated with sustainability visualisation as a preparation for the poster making that would follow.

The outcomes of this workshop was further developed by a core team of three faculty and five students at NID so that these could be presented at the “Sustainability for Tomorrow's Consumers” Governors Meeting Session, on the 29 January 2009. What emerged was a set of five posters that drew on the six key themes that were proposed earlier in consultation with the World Economic Forum organisers through online and telephonic discussions while the core team developed the concepts and visualised the specific themes at the NID, Ahmedabad.

Image04: Posters on five themes that were sent to Davos for the closed door meeting of CEO's that discussed various approaches and strategies for sustainability in the business world in the days ahead.Let us look forward to their proposals for all of us.

The five posters are offered here as printable A3 size PDF downloads for use in schools and business settings alike to stimulate the use of design thinking and sustainable practices in the creation and delivery of new and improved products, services and business strategies that are sustainable – both people as well as environment friendly – in both thought and action.

0. Poster introducing the set of five posters on sustaibnability and the process of making these for the World Economic Forum in Davos 2009.

1. Poster on the theme of Co-Creation for Sustaibnability: PDF file 2.9 MB

2. Poster on the theme of Dematerialisation for Sustaibnability: PDF file 2.2 MB

3. Poster on the theme of Essence Making for Sustaibnability: PDF file 3.1 MB

4. Poster on the theme of Innovating the Value Chain for Sustaibnability: PDF file 2.7 MB

5. Poster on the theme of using Emerging Technologies for Sustaibnability: PDF file 2.7 MB

6. Full set of six posters as a compact booklet in A3 size_4 MB pdf.

7. Full set of six posters as a printable booklet in A3 size_16 MB pdf.

Prof M P Ranjan

World Economic Forum – Sustainability & Design at Davos

World Economic Forum – Feedback from Davos.

Prof M P Ranjan

Image 01: CEO’s of major global corporations at the Sustainability session at Davos using the NID designed posters.

We got a brief message from Davos on 31 January 2009 from Marcello Mastioni of the World Economic Forum on the successful completion of a collaborative journey between NID and the WEF that started last year with the Sustainability Design Charette in New Delhi on the 15 November 2008 about which I reported earlier on this blog. The event on sustainability took place at Davos on the 29 January 2009 using the visual materials that were designed for the purpose by students and faculty teams at NID through a two day workshop on the 26 and 27 December 2008 which was followed by an intensive effort to capture all the insights into an expressive set of five posters shown below.

I Quote this below:
“Dear NID Team,

The Sustainability meetings have been successfully completed, but the Davos Meeting is not over yet, and we are still busy closing it. You will forgive us for now for not reaching out with as many details as it would be appropriate.

The sessions went very well, with extraordinary participation and with the definition of a clear mandate for action in 2009, which was our primary objective. The visuals contributed greatly to creating a conducing environment that would inspire the CEOs towards innovation and collaboration.

The pictures the official photographer took are not yet available to me, but I wanted to attach a few pictures to show you how close we put our leaders to the visuals, and the type of environment we created for the event.

Many thanks again for your extraordinary support.

We look forward to talking to you in one week or so for a more thorough debrief.

All best,

Marcello”
UnQuote

Image 02: World business leaders meet world thinkers on sustainability at Davos 2009 and use the NID designed posters on Visualising Sustainability.

In an earlier message on 23January 2009 sent to us after we had submitted all the five posters Marcello informed us of the intentions of the WEF in using the posters at Davos this year.

I Quote from his mail below:
“Dear NID Team,

I wanted to take a moment to say a big thank you to all of you.

The posters are printed and on their way to Davos, where they will be featured in an event with 50 participants, including the CEOs of companies such as Nike Inc., The Coca-Cola Company, Unilever, Land O'Lakes Inc., Nestlé SA, Monsanto Company, Young & Rubicam Inc., METRO Group, Best Buy Co. Inc., Yara International ASA, IDEO Inc., The Olayan Group, nGenera, The Reitan Group, S. C. Johnson & Son Inc., Kraft Foods Inc., General Mills Inc. and Dow Jones & Company Inc., amongst others.

Everybody here expressed wonder and admiration on the work done. You have been very courageous to tackle such a complex systemic issue as Sustainability with an open universal approach, and then go through the immense task of distilling the discussions into meaningful conclusions and relevant visuals.

You had success at your mission, and you can proud of that. Please let us praise your achievement.

I won’t of course miss to keep you in the loop as things develop here.

All best,

Warmly,

Marcello

Marcello Mastioni
Associate Director, Head or Retail and Consumer Goods Industries
Global Leadership Fellow
World Economic Forum”

UnQuote

I will make a detailed post about the process of exploration, cooperation and design that we used to make these posters and the various players involved in this process at NID and at Geneva office of the WEF. I include below images of the five posters for immediate reference and pdf files will be made available soon along with the posts that follow as the story unfolds.

Image 03: Essence Making: Rethinking the Business Models.

Image 04: Innovating the Value Chain: Collaborate along the Value Chain.

Image 05: Co-Creation: Meaningfully Engage Consumers.

Image 06: Dematerialising the Economy: Innovate out of Stuff and into Value.

Image 07: Emergent Technology: Explore Emergent Technology.

Prof M P Ranjan

Rahul Gandhi visits NID: All informal and chatty

Rahul Gandhi's visit to NID today: An opportunity to reflect on the status of "Design" in India

Prof M P Ranjan

Image 01: Rahul Gandhi with NID students, faculty and staff at the Amphi-theatre behind the NID Charles Eames Plaza.

It is many years since we have had a national politician showing any interest in design and here we had a young and enthusiastic cutlet of a politician dropping in for lunch at the student canteen with the z-level security team running around in circles while he tried to integrate with the young design students and have a cozy conversation. The NID Director, Akhil Succenna and the Chairman Education, Pradyumna Vyas and their large entourage of followers had to literally run to keep up with the swift movements of the young national leader and Member of Parliament from the Youth Congress while he whisked his way through the NID lawns and to the back campus for lunch date with students in an impromptu visit that was as informal as it was stimulating. Rahul Gandhi came visiting an almost forgotten place three generations after his great grandfather Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru the then Prime Minister of India had approved the formation of the National Institute of Design at Ahmedabad and this is also exactly Fifty Years after the writing of the insightful Eames India Report of 1958. This gives me an opportunity to reflect on the state of design in India and its status in the country vis a vis Science, Technology and Management, all of which receive substantial support from the Government for a variety of activities and this has been the case over the past five decades while design has remained on the back-burner of Government Policy all through this era of development and change.

We now face climate change and financial meltdown of the global economy and perhaps it is time to look at design for some answers if only a reasonable investment can be made in this activity and some policy intiiatives can also be initiated to nurture the disciplines of design that are needed by as many as 230 sectors of our economy that is still breezing along in blissful ignorance of this crying need. After his four hour long tour of NID canteen, studios, workshops and lawns and finally in the shade of the large Neem tree over the NID amphi-theatre we got to meet him face to face in a very informal and human setting. I was particularly surprised and pleasantly so when he walked up to me and shook my hand asking what I did at NID!! Everything – teaching, research and living… I said.

Image 02: Rahul Gandhi in a group picture with NID community at the NID amphi-theatre.

In the discussions that followed he asked students what they felt about the state of politics in India and what they felt about the politicians in India. They responded with candid statements and some naïve ones that gave Rahul Gandhi an opportunity to show his maturity as a national politician and share his own journey into politics after the death of his father, Rajiv Gandhi who was also a former Prime Minister of India. His grand mother, Indira Gandhi, another great Indian Prime Minister, had visited NID in 1964 when Charles and Ray Eames were working at NID on the classic Nehru Exhibition that went on to tour the world across many countries. This exhibition gave me the opportunity to learn design in the Eames tradition when I worked on it for the 1972 version that was set up at New Delhi and then travel to Chile in January 1973 to help set it up in the museum at Santiago, a life changing experience for me, personally. This is where I met President Salvadore Allende briefly on the 26th of January 1973 when he came to open the exhibit in the presence of the Indian Ambasador and his delegation in Chile. A few years later we got the book “Platform for Change” by Stafford Beer and this informed us of the strategic role that design had played in the shaping of the Chile’s economy in the Allande era which caused his assassination because it threatened the big brother nearby and the rest is history. Design is a political tool and it is also a political activity if one looks at the definition by both Tomas Maldonado in his book “Design, Nature, Revolution” and the other by Harold Nelson and Eric Stolterman titled “The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World”. Both these books strip the myths about design as a mere associate of art used to bring aesthetic value to industrial produce and places the true role of design as a transformational process that can indeed bring intentional change of great value across society and in India this is what is needed in the 230 sectors of our economy today.

Image 03: Rahul Gandhi and NID Director, Akhil Succenna at the amphi-theatre meeting with NID students and faculty today.

I asked Rahul Gandhi what he would do for design when he went back to Delhi and back to the Parliament. He asked back, what do you want me to do? NID students and faculty and its wide spread alumni need to ponder this question and act quickly and empower the NID Director to write a coherent letter to the potential champion of design in New Delhi on the possible agenda for design in India in the days ahead. We do hope that the next 50 years is an entry into the era of Design for India and Design with India….. We can dream and act quickly. What do you think can be done? Do we need a Ministry of Design? India needs design across all its Ministries – Rural Development, Education, Communication, Industry – and many more. Will this happen soon? How do we make it happen? Can the National Design Policy be rolled out of its cocoon and made active in the field sooner than later? I look forward to some answers and some real action, soon. I am however happy that NID gifted him a copy of our new book "Handmade in India" and I do hope that he takes this forward as a starting point for design action across India.

Image 04: Five posters on “visualizing sustainability” that were discussed at Davos at a special session on Sustainability on 29 January 2009.

Perhaps this is what the World Economic Forum (WEF) had in mind when it asked NID and its faculty and student teams to explore the issues that faced the world on the subject of Sustainability and asked them to offer some insights into how these intractable problems – nay wicked problems – could be addressed by the business community in the days ahead. As an outcome of this invitation from the WEF, NID and its teams prepared five posters that attempted to visualize the approaches towards a more sustainable world and these have been discussed at Davos and we await news from the Forum of the outcome of the deliberations there. We hope that the impact is not just immediate but also long term, the world is in dire need of such a long term impact. I hope that we have succeeded in our mission here, only time will tell.

Photographs by Deepak John Mathew of NID

Prof M P Ranjan

British Council on Design Cities Debate

British Council on Design Cities Debate

Prof M P Ranjan

Image: The British Council Arts and Architecture page with the participants from the BRIC nations at the Design Cities Debate: Ruy Ohtake: Brazil, Denis Cherdantsev: Russia, Professor M P Ranjan: India and Ou Ning: China.

The voice files of the Design Cities Debate at the Design Museum in London are now available from the British Council Arts site at this link here below:
Audio version of the Design Cities Debate.
Or download the 44MB mp3 file directly from here.
and their page on the event and the participants is here below:
Advocate Biographies link
Other links to the event are here below from the earlier posts on Design for India.
Design Week on Bangalore: “Design City” of the Future
Prof M P Ranjan

Design Week on Bangalore: “Design City” of the Future

Design Week reports on the “Design City” debate in London

Prof M P Ranjan’s papers

Image: Screen shot of the Design Week website reporting the success of the “Design City” Debate in London.

Adam Welch reporting from London has carried a report in the Design Week of 8 January 2009 about the Debate at the Design Museum in London that was held on the 15th December 2008. Adam Welch was amongst the audience that polled at the end of the four nation debate that involved Sao Paolo, Moscow, Beijing and Bangalore.

Read more about the event and the outcome of the debate on the Design Week website here.

Other links to the event are from previous posts on this blog at the links below:
1. The Design Cities Debate and pdf of presentation

2. Bangalore as Design City of the Future

3. BBC Radio features Bangalore and Beijing

4. Design & Politics: “Jaago Re” Initiative from the Jaanagraha in Bangalore

Prof M P Ranjan’s papers

“Somewhat Different”: IFA Exhibition arrives from Germany

Contemporary Design and the Power of Convention: “Somewhat Different”

Prof M P Ranjan’s papers

Image 1: Fence Bench designed by Andreas Bergmann which arrived as part of the “Somewhat Different” exhibit after unloading from trucks at the Design Gallery at NID. Volker Albus, designer and curator of the exhibition is seated in the middle with his colleagues with Dimple Soni, NID Faculty standing besides while the task of unloading and setting up is in progress.

“Somewhat Different”, an exhibition organized by IFA – Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations in Germany opens later this week in NID. The trucks arrived over the weekend and everyone was curious to see a long row of six trucks each with a huge container as its load standing at NID for a couple of days. Yesterday the Germans arrived and the containers wee opened and out came the boxes in very systematic German design and each box was carefully labeled and carefully unpacked and put away in the car park to be used again when the exhibit had to be repacked for further shipment. “Somewhat Different” is the theme of the exhibition and in all the curator, Volker Albus, has selected forty-seven individual designers and design studios from Germany and along with this he has included the work of twenty other designers based in several European cities. These designs have been selected for their being a slight twist away from the conventional and not for their being unnaturally different! A subtle twist brings all the difference, and this he claims is a new trend for good design from Europe today. The exhibit opens in a few days from now and I will make a more detailed post when the exhibit is formally announced and made open to the public. Those interested in knowing more can contact the Corporate Communications at NID by email at pro@nid.edu.

Image 2: Rows of trucks with container load filled with exhibit materials and the unloading and unpacking sequence at NID near the Design Gallery and the BMW (Cafe, Behind the Metal Workshop – BMW – as named by the NID students)

The systematic manner in which the unpacking and handling of the cases was a lesson in logistics for those students and faculty who wished to stay informed. Some were curious and came out with their cameras while others failed to turn up on the BMW side of the campus and may have missed the event altogether. There is always something interesting happening on campus and we have learned to stay curious and learn as we go along. The open electives in now on across the campus and several visiting faculty are also involved in conducting these workshops. I will come back with more about this particular exhibit and the “Swords into Ploughshares - Fences to Sit” by Andreas Bergmann is just one of the numerous designed objects that have arrived to stir up a debate about trends, relevance and sustainability, I hope. With Satyam having shown us yesterday how wrongly a sacred word can be used and abused as a slogan for a company that has now become an antithesis for the concept itself, perhaps cultural and commercial expressions in materials too have an element of honesty that needs to be appreciated and recognized. More, as we examine the exhibit in it’s setting at NID next week.

The “Somewhat Different” exhibition will be open at NID from 16 January 2009 to the 7 February 2009 after which it will travel to the Lalit Kala Akademy, New Delhi and be on display from 10 May 2009 to 30 May 2009. Both these exhibits are being coordinated by the Goethe-Institute in Mumbai and New Delhi respectively.

Prof M P Ranjan’s papers

Eames Demitrios at NID : Eames Photo Exhibit and Reflections on 50 Years after the Eames Report

Revisiting the Eames Legacy and Design Education in India and at NID

Prof M P Ranjan’s papers

Image 1: Eames Demitrios at the opening of the Eames Photo Exhibit at NID, the book of 100 Eames Quotes and his personal inscription on my copy. The 100 quotes are presented in the following languages: English, Complex Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Brazilian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Eames Demertios visited NID to launch the Eames 100 Photo Exhibition, which he had contributed to select on behalf of the Herman Miller Inc. and the exhibit has traveled across many nations before coming to NID to coincide with the celebration of Eames India Report (download PDF 360 kb) reaching the 50-year landmark. This gives us an opportunity to reflect on the impact of the Eames legacy in India and the impact of the National Institute of Design on the design needs of India, which is still very large and complex. However the larger series of events that I had proposed for the Eames Report Silver Jubilee celebration was unfortunately truncated due to lack of official fervor to back the event, which were however announced over one year ago. However, for this particular event I was away at a lecture meeting in Pune organized by the Interior Designers Association of India which was also planned to coincide with the Eames India Report celebrations and this meant that I missed being at the NID event since the dates clashed. I was however able to see the student and faculty excitement before the event and later hear about the opening ceremony when I came back to NID a couple of days later. I missed meeting Eames Demetrios this time but I was able to visit the photo exhibit several times and ponder on the Eames vision of India as shown through the pictures that only he could compose and capture with his inimitable sense of vision and purpose. Eames Demetrios was kind enough to leave an inscribed copy of the Eames 100 Quotes book for me as shown above. Charles and Ray Eames had much to say about the world and about design and this book is a handy guide for students from across the world.

Image 2: Eames Demetrios at NID with students and faculty on the occasion of the Eames Photo exhibit opening ceremonies at NID Gallary, an event that I unfortunately missed.

NID has been a Mecca for great world designers and in the 60’s and 70’s we had some of the most distinguished international designers, over a 100 of them, visiting NID in the aftermath of the 1958 Eames India Report, based on which the NID was set up in 1961 by the Government of India. Having his grandson visit NID in 2008, exactly 50 years after that writing of the report was indeed a significant line of continuity for the shaping of design for the Indian cause. The documentation of NID’s contribution is however very sketchy due to some deep seated apathy to documentation and publication from the official and faculty sources at NID which unfortunately continues to this day. The last comprehensive publication of the NID’s professional and education work was prepared by Gira Sarabhai (one of the founders of the NID and the Calico Museum in Ahmedabad) in 1970 titled “NID : Documentation 1964 to 69” which is now fortunately available as a PDF file for download from this link below. (NID Document PDF File 25 MB). Aditi and I started the Young Designers series of publications that documented the work of Diploma Projects of our students from 1989 and this has fortunately been maintained by the Institute as an unbroken tradition since then with one book being produced each year and last year onwards the student diploma work has been showcased on the website at these links below. Young Designers 2007 and Young Designers 2008. However this still leaves out several major areas of work done by students and faculty through education, research and outreach activities and the full range of professional work done be the faculty of the Institute. The tradition at NID has been that faculty have not been permitted to do any personal practice and all the work had to be done through the Institutes professional practice wing or outreach wing. The Institute does have some research publications such as my book on “Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeast India” (download PDF 36 MB) and more recently the “Handmade in India” which I have reported about on this blog at these links here. There have been a handful of other publications by faculty colleagues but these however do not cover the vast contributions made by the NID faculty and this represents a huge research opportunity for some young design historian to follow up on in the days ahead.

Image 3: NID students and faculty from the Furniture design discipline in hands-on mode planning the setting up of the Eames Photo Exhibit at NID Gallery. Anuya Naik, Rama Krishna Rao and L C Ujawane in discussion with Furniture Design students on how to mount the Eames Photo Exhibit in the NID Gallary.

Eames, both Charles and Ray, visited NID several times together at first and individually in later years, 1978 and 1988, and they contributed to the building of a work ethic at the institute which thankfully continues to date. This photo exhibit was another such opportunity for NID faculty and students to get together once again in a typically Eames style "hands-on mode" to help set up the exhibit on campus for a wider audience to participate in. This tradition of working together has however been eroded somewhat in recent years but we need to remind ourselves of this great Eames tradition of hands-on design that was practiced in the Eames Office and at NID ever since the great Eames’ Nehru Exhibition was designed and executed at the Institute in the mid 60’s as a project commissioned by the Government of India and this tradition continued for many years through major exhibition projects done by the institute where students and faculty worked together and built a shared understanding of great design action. I have a paper, which I had prepared about exhibition design at NID in 1986, which may give some insights into the learning process that was truly the NID way in those days. (download paper here - PDF 36 kb)

Image 4: NID students and faculty in active mode of setting up the Eames Photo Exhibit and being inspired by the Images of India from an early visit by Eames.

The furniture design programme at NID was inspired by the work of Eames although the formal education programme started in 1969 with design teachers from Germany, the early beginnings of the Eames influence came from the full set of furniture and products that were donated from the Museum of Modern Art’s classic design collection which included many items of Eames furniture in wire, plywood, fibre glass and cast aluminium range besides original products by Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and others too numerous to be named here. These originals in our prototype collection were a source of inspiration and all students of furniture design got an opportunity to study these in detail as part of their education at NID. Further the NID’s wood and metal workshops were constantly producing a number of furniture designs by international masters like George Nakashima and our own present day master, Gajanan Upadhayay, and this production continued till recent times as a live reminder of high quality of workmanship as a living tradition inside the NID workshops. It is not surprising that the students and faculty from that era had a deep understanding of materials and process and a very refined range of furniture did get designed and made at NID till the end of the 90’s. The turn of the century was a bit of a disaster since after the bamboo boards & beyond workshop of 2000 the wood workshop was rudely dismantled to make way for the digital Design Vision Centre (DVC), which all but destroyed the hands-on tradition that had taken deep roots at NID. Somewhere we seemed to loose our way and slogans of “Mind to Market” took on the place of real “Hands-on” action that was the true NID way in the spirit of Eames.

Image 5: Anuya Naik with NID students setting up the Eames Photo Exhibit and the 100 images poster that captures the whole exhibit at a glance.

I am indeed happy to see the return of faculty and student involvement in hands-on activities of exhibition design and fabrication and I do hope that this will be continued to other such opportunities in the days ahead. The students who pass through these experiences develop a deep sense of collaborative spirit and are less prone to ego trips when deciding the form and quality of their design offerings. Design is indeed changing but we do not need to throw the baby out with the bathwater and we will need to deeply examine the role of the digital in our design processes and preserve those values that are durable from the hands-on tradition which may indeed turn out to be the very heart of design thinking and action in the days ahead. The furniture design activity at NID has retained the deep respect for prototype building and learning by doing is alive and well in this discipline while a body of theory has also been introduced into the programme along with a considerable amount of exposure to digital tools and processes in information processing, drawing, image management and presentation documentation etc.

Image 6: An article in an Interiors magazine featuring great Indian product designers. It is gratifying to see that all six designers were NID graduates and all of them have been my students at different times. Sandeep Mukherjee, Reboni Saha, Vibhor Sogani, Neil Foley, Mukul Goyel, and Alex Davis: clockwise from top left.

Last year, in late November, as the Eames Exhibit was being assembled at NID we came across this article in a national Interior Design magazine that celebrated the work of some of the finest product designers of India. It is not surprising that all the designers featured here were products of the NID workshops “hands-on” tradition and these were the same people who found value in pottering in our workshops with materials and concepts that has now been recognized as valuable contributions by that design media in India. There is value in the hands-on approach and we must cherish this as a way forward even in the digital era. There are many other design groups who have set up entrepreneurial ventures across India in the areas of textiles, furniture and ceramic design and these enterprises have grown over the years to be recognized as a design led industry from India. However the designers in India have failed to organize themselves into associations at a professional level and due to this their influence on National policy is still rather limited. The SIDI (Society of Industrial Designers of India) that flourished during the 70’s to 90’s became defunct due to apathy from members and the self-interest of the office bearers. Some recent initiatives in the form of the AIDI (Association of Industrial Designers of India) started by the Bangalore designers and the informal online efforts of the DesignIndia group are some fledgling initiatives in the making. The Pune Design Foundation is yet another recent initiative and we hope these shape up and take root to lead the design movement in India in the days ahead.

Image 07: Exhibition of Furniture made from Bamboo Boards at the UNDP Lawns on 17 February 2001, which made a huge impact in New Delhi, and on National Policy that led to the creation of the National Bamboo Mission, which is still in progress. I got my 5 minutes of fame since I was invited to the NDTV studio that night to be interviewed live on the 9 o’clock news just after Dr Anil Agarwal of Down to Earth fame had completed his interview on the subject of environment. Awareness about global warming was still a long way off in the minds of people at large.

In the late 90’s and early years of this century we have had a growing interest in bamboo as a furniture design material and NID and its Centre for Bamboo Initiatives has been at the heart of this development. As many a 40 students from furniture and product design and over a dozen faculty colleagues were involved with me to explore this material and as a result we have a well documented body of work that is perhaps a significant contribution to world knowledge of building with bamboo and this is well acknowledged as a result of the publication of our, books, CD ROMs and web based publications that can be seen at these links here on this blog as well as on my website at this link below. (web link to Bamboo Initiatives) (links to other blog posts).

Image 08: Sandeep Mukherjee and Sarita Fernandez set up Quetzel in Bangalore, which makes fine furniture in the Eames tradition of design and build.

In my presentation last month at the Design Cities Debate at the Design Museum in London I shared several case studies from design groups in Bangalore. Quetzel and Dovetail are two such cases of innovative companies set up by NID graduates who set out to make furniture of their own design and these have now grown into substantial business groups in their own right.

Image 09: S Sunder and John Mathews have set up Dovetail which also designs and produces fine furniture which is made available through their retail as well as direct supply to large clients.

In the Bangalore presentation at the Design Cities Debate it was clear to me that design would need to scale from being a play of materials and aesthetics to be able to move up the growing vortex of design concerns to include social, ecological and ethical levels of exchange and contribute at that level. Dovetail. IDIOM, Trapeeze, Ray + Kesavan and all the other design initiatives including the IT sector that is growing to cope with the higher offerings of knowledge economy and raising to the level of offering products would all be part of the next design revolution in the making, I hope.

Bangalore had all the ingredients in place to move up the political ladder and to try and influence decision makers about the role of design in our evolving society and through this find a place for it which was I believe envisaged in the Eames India Report of 50 years ago. We need to re-read the Eames Report as well as his 100 Quotes and find our own way forward in this complex milieu if the next 50 years is to bring design closer to the hearts and minds of people who need to be served by this wonderful resource but they may not yet know that they do. The Jaanagraha’s feeble attempt to influence the participation of people (see my blog post below) in the local and national democracy is a good sign and designers need to back these initiatives and join them to make them work for all of us in the days ahead.

Prof M P Ranjan’s papers

Design for Politics & Good Governance: Electoral process and Design for India

Use of Design for Good national and Regional Democracy

Prof M P Ranjan’s Papers

Image 1: Jaagore.com website with an aim to register one billion new voters as part of the Indian democracy.

A new campaign has hit the regular TV programmes calling for an awakening of our youth towards the need to vote and be involved in the political process of the Local region, State and the Nation. The advertisment campaign is quite effective and I was curious to check what it held out as a promise for the youth to participate in individually and as a group. I have had my own problems with the electoral process since in the last General Elections I was unable to vote since my name was messed up in the electoral rolls and my ID card too had defects and worst of all my polling booth just could not be located all through the day in spite of trying several locations in our voting area.

Image 2: Jaago re TV Commercial from the YouTube offer.

I had tried to get my name corrected in a subsequent round of verification and I had visited a couple of schools to get my voter identity card reissued with a hope that the data would come out correctly but this too seems to have failed due to the clumsy manner in which the data collection was organized and I was on the lookout for another opportunity to correct this mistake.

Image 3: Map interface that is offered to locate ones house and from it ones constituency for the registration process.

This gave me the incentive to respond to the advertisment that appreaded on TV calling for new voter registrations which was launched in the public interest by Tata Tea Ltd and an NGO based in Bengaluru called Jaanagraha, and we were directed to a website called Jaagore.com, where the word Jaago means to wake up, a wake up call for all voters. The website proclaims a lofty ambition of registering one billion voters across 35 cities in India and so far at last look they had succeeded in getting all of 220839 people registered when I last checked the site. What I saw was encouraging. Someone had taken the initiative to use the web to reach out and build a system that could be of public good. However as I went further into the site I realized that while it was a technical success at the design level much still needed to be done if they were to reach their stated objective.

Image 4: FAQ about the voting process at the Jaago Re website.

I had talked about Jaanagraha, the Bengaluru based NGO in my London debate about the next Design City and they were here involved in another venture for public good but I missed the use of design that I had advocated which could make this effort both effective as well as be a great experience for the user. What I miss the most is the language tools that could enable non English speaking citizens to participate in this initiative and the site itself could use many layers of design engagement which could make it an offering that could stand the test of variety and complexity which this current offering fails to provide. Not that this cannot be done. The web is very forgiving and flexible and at any stage the organizers can give their audience an improved interface and a much better feel and performance if they used design along the way. However I still give this a thumbs up for the initiative and wish it all the very best in the days ahead and hope that design finds a way into this initiative somewhere along the way of success.

Image 5: Electronic Voting Machine – story of its design in 1988 at NID for the Election Commission of India.

This reminded me of the Electronic Voting Machine that was designed by the National Institute of Design for the National Election Commission way back in 1988. It was the preliminary user testing that helped embed many intangible features into the interface at that time when perhaps for the first time cardboard models of the voting machine were taken into the field by the design team to conduct semiotic tests of issues of usability, particularly with illiterate users, and this is what I believe has made this particular design survive the test of time and it is still functional and effective It took ten long years to introduce it into 10 percent of the elections and another long period to reach the 100 percent mark and be used in all assembly and parliamentary elections across India. Design is a sensitive process and not just an object that emerges at the end of that process nor is it the effect of technology alone since there are so many human and other factors that need to be taken into consideration which makes it a truly wicked problem, but one that can be tamed with imagination and sustained design action.

I do wish that the Jaagore web effort would follow this process through a number of iterations and reach the success that it deserves through the use of sensitive design thought and action in India. The people of India deserve this kind of attention and care. Design is indeed politics. Unlike the politics of opposition and negotiation that is practiced through the party politics of our times it is the the politics of proposition, consensus and conviction building that can be adopted by the leadership of the community. This is the message that I had conveyed in my London presentation at the Design Cities debate where Bengaluru was voted as the most likely candidate for the future title, if we get it right in the days ahead.

Prof M P Ranjan’s Papers