Friday, March 25, 2011
Cheers to Green
My favourite and the most impactful colour of all is Green! Green is the most positive colour of the spectrum as it is very soothing to the eye and thats the reason why God created most of the nature in shades of green:- be it raw young leaves,olive shaded branches of a tree, or even the emerald green waters of the sea. Green contains chlorophyll which is important for photosynthesis. Green is the colour we need to promote growth, renewal, health, and environment. Green is my vision and Go green is my mission.Cheers to Green.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
The irony of design in India
Someone asked me today why don't you prefer a creative job over a corporate one?After all, you are a design graduate! Why move to a boring role of operations or retail?
For one moment, I was like how should I answer this question. It is true that I am a designer. Infact, I chose this profession exactly coz this is what I wanted to do everyday all year round.
But within a moment, I had the answer ready.
Design is a passion. Its something you do to make your surroundings beautiful. Its something that solves a need or a purpose effectively.Design happens when you cut your denims to make a pair of shorts! Design is something that frees your mind.Design in liberting, its not something that binds you.
Or tells you that there is a defined way of doing something.
A design job, on the other hand, gives you fixed targets just like sales targets. You ought to meet those targets. A job tells you to design say 100 t-shirts in a month.
A creative process can't be forced out of a person. If the designer feels like it, he or she might design 200 t-shirts a month. Hence design cannot be a job. Its an emotional activity where you let your emotions run high and let yourself loose. It happens when you let your body and mind indulge in creativity.
Its more sensory than methodical.
A designer can exist only at a place where targets are not the concern. Where ideas are allowed to flow freely and the work environment not only supports but also facilitates continous exploration and experimentation. Where mistakes are also considered as output.
After all, if 10 wrongs lead to an exceptionally "wow" right, then those 10 wrongs were totally worth committing.
If such liberality is not possible , design as an institution will cease to exist.
There is no surprise then, that I wish to take up a job that puts me in a position wherein I am entrusted with the responsibility of managing creativity and finetuning the process to deliver profits, coz I know just how much to stretch the elastic.
For one moment, I was like how should I answer this question. It is true that I am a designer. Infact, I chose this profession exactly coz this is what I wanted to do everyday all year round.
But within a moment, I had the answer ready.
Design is a passion. Its something you do to make your surroundings beautiful. Its something that solves a need or a purpose effectively.Design happens when you cut your denims to make a pair of shorts! Design is something that frees your mind.Design in liberting, its not something that binds you.
Or tells you that there is a defined way of doing something.
A design job, on the other hand, gives you fixed targets just like sales targets. You ought to meet those targets. A job tells you to design say 100 t-shirts in a month.
A creative process can't be forced out of a person. If the designer feels like it, he or she might design 200 t-shirts a month. Hence design cannot be a job. Its an emotional activity where you let your emotions run high and let yourself loose. It happens when you let your body and mind indulge in creativity.
Its more sensory than methodical.
A designer can exist only at a place where targets are not the concern. Where ideas are allowed to flow freely and the work environment not only supports but also facilitates continous exploration and experimentation. Where mistakes are also considered as output.
After all, if 10 wrongs lead to an exceptionally "wow" right, then those 10 wrongs were totally worth committing.
If such liberality is not possible , design as an institution will cease to exist.
There is no surprise then, that I wish to take up a job that puts me in a position wherein I am entrusted with the responsibility of managing creativity and finetuning the process to deliver profits, coz I know just how much to stretch the elastic.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
The Face of Contemporaty Indian Design
It is and has always been true (with respect to art n design) that the "contemporary "has no form or face and will be "defined" only in the future.
True design really goes much beyond the visual parameters.So I am not going to be talking only about the visual aspects.
However, would like to say that its one thing to design for an Indian consumer(keeping in mind the cultural need gaps ), "Development of Indian design/style" another. From a consumer's point of view, we as designers need to fill the existing gaps, rather holes and thus are born utility - based products. In my opinion, these are hard core products, which have more utility and less emotion. Now this, is far removed from the Indian design ideology/language. At this point itself, I'd like to make a slight deviation and would go on to ask you all, which nation in your opinion, has managed to develop a strong, continual design language and would stick to it for atleast 50 more years?
In this era of globalization, its very difficult as well as nearly impossible to have a distinctively Indian design style. There are infinite influences from across the globe that are perpetually altering the way we think , the way we perceive. The world has never ever changed so hurriedly. We define things for ourselves today and our definitions are challenged tomorrow and we begin to think all of it, all over again. In this constant turmoil, its extremely difficult to pin point to one way of thinking and label it Indian or for that matter even French or Italian.The irony is that today an American understands the Indian culture more thoroughly than an Indian. I then, do not understand how design can be confined to borders.
Coming back to the fact about aping the west and the repackaging bit, this is only a reassertion of the fact that innovation and originality is almost missing from our work culture. Our profit centric approach and the unrelenting pressure to achieve targets has severely weeded out the urge to innovate among us designers. I cannot say about others, but I strongly feel this has happened. I was a more original person before NIFT and on a lighter note, as they say, "I was born intelligent, education ruined me".
Like the alternate design approach wherein the user becomes the designer so to speak, I am sure there could be many more approaches circling around. I am not an expert and I cannot say precisely how closely related or unrelated design is from profitability, but to achieve an original design language, somewhere the ropes need to be loosened. Many big firms are emphasizing Research & Design and incubating what are called Innovation cells, where the ideas shall be allowed to flow freely, many a grave mistakes would be overlooked ,interactions between manufacturer,consumer, designer,technologist etc shall be encouraged,short term profits and targets would be taboo and the outcome of this indefinitely long experiment may provide us the next best definition of "true design".
True design really goes much beyond the visual parameters.So I am not going to be talking only about the visual aspects.
However, would like to say that its one thing to design for an Indian consumer(keeping in mind the cultural need gaps ), "Development of Indian design/style" another. From a consumer's point of view, we as designers need to fill the existing gaps, rather holes and thus are born utility - based products. In my opinion, these are hard core products, which have more utility and less emotion. Now this, is far removed from the Indian design ideology/language. At this point itself, I'd like to make a slight deviation and would go on to ask you all, which nation in your opinion, has managed to develop a strong, continual design language and would stick to it for atleast 50 more years?
In this era of globalization, its very difficult as well as nearly impossible to have a distinctively Indian design style. There are infinite influences from across the globe that are perpetually altering the way we think , the way we perceive. The world has never ever changed so hurriedly. We define things for ourselves today and our definitions are challenged tomorrow and we begin to think all of it, all over again. In this constant turmoil, its extremely difficult to pin point to one way of thinking and label it Indian or for that matter even French or Italian.The irony is that today an American understands the Indian culture more thoroughly than an Indian. I then, do not understand how design can be confined to borders.
Coming back to the fact about aping the west and the repackaging bit, this is only a reassertion of the fact that innovation and originality is almost missing from our work culture. Our profit centric approach and the unrelenting pressure to achieve targets has severely weeded out the urge to innovate among us designers. I cannot say about others, but I strongly feel this has happened. I was a more original person before NIFT and on a lighter note, as they say, "I was born intelligent, education ruined me".
Like the alternate design approach wherein the user becomes the designer so to speak, I am sure there could be many more approaches circling around. I am not an expert and I cannot say precisely how closely related or unrelated design is from profitability, but to achieve an original design language, somewhere the ropes need to be loosened. Many big firms are emphasizing Research & Design and incubating what are called Innovation cells, where the ideas shall be allowed to flow freely, many a grave mistakes would be overlooked ,interactions between manufacturer,consumer, designer,technologist etc shall be encouraged,short term profits and targets would be taboo and the outcome of this indefinitely long experiment may provide us the next best definition of "true design".
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Cross Discipline
Collaboration of experts working on a project together, where ideas of each are valued and each person contributes to the bigger objective rather than being competitive with each other.
This is very important to achieve innovation and something worth trying!
This is very important to achieve innovation and something worth trying!
Monday, April 19, 2010
Show your true colours...in design
What we say,speak,write,create is mostly a reflection of who we are and what and how we think.We can never write or create that which we are not.If at all we make such a thing,it will show.it will start looking hollow.Incomplete.Unreal.
The only true design by a creative person is the one which exhibits, very proudly, what the person is all about and expresses his/her thoughts
clearly.
Then why be afraid to design or create?You would never be able to pull off a wrong misleading identity. So show your true colours coz thats the only way you can come up with a real thought, a real design.
The only true design by a creative person is the one which exhibits, very proudly, what the person is all about and expresses his/her thoughts
clearly.
Then why be afraid to design or create?You would never be able to pull off a wrong misleading identity. So show your true colours coz thats the only way you can come up with a real thought, a real design.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Design is my baby
I think we have all been, many a times, defensive about our designs.A design is like a baby, something we visualised and throughout the design process,kept adding features to it. After much time and effort, the design is born.
When someone criticizes a mother's child, she feels sad, hurt.Similarly, when someone points flaws in our designs, it feels awful.So much care and attention was put in formulating the design, that at the end, we cant bear to have someone criticising it.
When someone criticizes a mother's child, she feels sad, hurt.Similarly, when someone points flaws in our designs, it feels awful.So much care and attention was put in formulating the design, that at the end, we cant bear to have someone criticising it.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Art Vs Design
I cannot tell you how honoured I am to post the first blog entry on my website with such a fantastic, highly debatable topic.And this is all thanks to a friend of mine, for bringing this issue up today in the morning. The conversation started when he told me how jargons of each of our professions are best understood only by us and for the lay man, they are always misunderstood.
The same applies to art and design. People often ask what is art? To me, it is a medium to express oneself. (You must be wondering what a clear cut answer this author gives, people have written books and papers on a topic as delicate as art, and she finished defining the damn thing in a phrase) People also often ask what is design? To me, its a well-thought of way of filling a gap/fulfilling a requirement.
Now rich and well-to-do designers and artists speak (at seminars, conferences etc) about these two topics at length. For minutes they go on and on without being able to make their listeners understand the basic differences and in fact confuse and complicate their thoughts along with their listeners and quietly exit thereafter.
Thats the reason why I am penning down some knowledge regarding design that I have gained for the layman to grasp, in clear and easy words.
Art is a personal expression of your thoughts, your feelings, your viewpoints etc through any medium of one's own choice. Some people are water colour artists while some excel at oil paints. Some do the trick with just HB pencils. But the thing about artists is , they do not create art for someone else's pleasure but their own. They have nothing to do with how world reacts to their art(for which reason sometimes art gets into a lot of controversy too). But thats what is d core definition of art, to draw , paint, sculpt or even write down whatever comes to an artists imagination. But design is too different from this sort of free expression.
In India, during Diwali, girls(or even guys) make beautiful rangolis outside their house, to which the relatives react in this way:-" Arey beta, yeh to aapne bahut acha design banaya hai" or "Hum itne gharon main diwali milke aa rahey hain, par aisa design to humne kahin nahi dekha". What do we learn as a child, when our relatives and elders only are not sure of what they are preaching us.We learn that art and design mean the same thing.Or else, we learn art or design, who cares!!!
But yes, design is never an act of self expression. Design is always created keeping a certain "something" in mind. I specifically used the term something, as this word can be replaced only by a very specific design terminology which also varies from one design domain to other.A design maybe created keeping a customer in mind. For example, a beautiful engagement ring can be created keeping one's girlfriend and her choices in mind. That's design for you.Similarly, a design can be created keeping a cause in mine. For example, a poster can be designed, the issue being of spreading AIDS awareness.
Hope that explains to you the basic difference between art and design. Now although these two things are pretty different by definition, but often times they overlap when it comes to application.A very celebrated, rich designer may stitch any 2 fabrics of his choice together, embroider any motif on it and pair it up with any colour of dupatta to sell a "designer salwar kameez". But in essence, this is an artwork which is up for sale but not a design, as it didn't solve any purpose or fill any gap.Imagine that I am an artist, so effectively I paint and express myself. But if I were to "create" some paintings for a 7-star hotel gallery keeping in mind the kind of customers that come there and their religious, social, political, business, cultural interests etc. I would essentially be 'designing artwork' for the hotel gallery.
So an artist sometimes turns into a designer and a designer many a times behaves like an artist as clear cut demarcation in their nature of work is not possible. If you do make it possible, then somewhere you are actually blocking innovative thinking and creativity.You are not letting the ideas flow. I mean , C'mon, your end consumer, for whom you are designing, also wants some artistic beauty in the budgeted jewellery that you are creating for him.Or the end consumer, who walks past a painting in the gallery, also sometimes wishes that a painting was made on the subject of gays and lesbians.
The minute you read these last examples, you would have found your thoughts contradicting themselves and rapidly running in opposite directions causing chaos, isnt it?Now go back to the beginning, where deliberately, I had kept my definitions small and easy as I had predicted that this chaos will take birth in your head after the debate on this debatable topic ends.
The same applies to art and design. People often ask what is art? To me, it is a medium to express oneself. (You must be wondering what a clear cut answer this author gives, people have written books and papers on a topic as delicate as art, and she finished defining the damn thing in a phrase) People also often ask what is design? To me, its a well-thought of way of filling a gap/fulfilling a requirement.
Now rich and well-to-do designers and artists speak (at seminars, conferences etc) about these two topics at length. For minutes they go on and on without being able to make their listeners understand the basic differences and in fact confuse and complicate their thoughts along with their listeners and quietly exit thereafter.
Thats the reason why I am penning down some knowledge regarding design that I have gained for the layman to grasp, in clear and easy words.
Art is a personal expression of your thoughts, your feelings, your viewpoints etc through any medium of one's own choice. Some people are water colour artists while some excel at oil paints. Some do the trick with just HB pencils. But the thing about artists is , they do not create art for someone else's pleasure but their own. They have nothing to do with how world reacts to their art(for which reason sometimes art gets into a lot of controversy too). But thats what is d core definition of art, to draw , paint, sculpt or even write down whatever comes to an artists imagination. But design is too different from this sort of free expression.
In India, during Diwali, girls(or even guys) make beautiful rangolis outside their house, to which the relatives react in this way:-" Arey beta, yeh to aapne bahut acha design banaya hai" or "Hum itne gharon main diwali milke aa rahey hain, par aisa design to humne kahin nahi dekha". What do we learn as a child, when our relatives and elders only are not sure of what they are preaching us.We learn that art and design mean the same thing.Or else, we learn art or design, who cares!!!
But yes, design is never an act of self expression. Design is always created keeping a certain "something" in mind. I specifically used the term something, as this word can be replaced only by a very specific design terminology which also varies from one design domain to other.A design maybe created keeping a customer in mind. For example, a beautiful engagement ring can be created keeping one's girlfriend and her choices in mind. That's design for you.Similarly, a design can be created keeping a cause in mine. For example, a poster can be designed, the issue being of spreading AIDS awareness.
Hope that explains to you the basic difference between art and design. Now although these two things are pretty different by definition, but often times they overlap when it comes to application.A very celebrated, rich designer may stitch any 2 fabrics of his choice together, embroider any motif on it and pair it up with any colour of dupatta to sell a "designer salwar kameez". But in essence, this is an artwork which is up for sale but not a design, as it didn't solve any purpose or fill any gap.Imagine that I am an artist, so effectively I paint and express myself. But if I were to "create" some paintings for a 7-star hotel gallery keeping in mind the kind of customers that come there and their religious, social, political, business, cultural interests etc. I would essentially be 'designing artwork' for the hotel gallery.
So an artist sometimes turns into a designer and a designer many a times behaves like an artist as clear cut demarcation in their nature of work is not possible. If you do make it possible, then somewhere you are actually blocking innovative thinking and creativity.You are not letting the ideas flow. I mean , C'mon, your end consumer, for whom you are designing, also wants some artistic beauty in the budgeted jewellery that you are creating for him.Or the end consumer, who walks past a painting in the gallery, also sometimes wishes that a painting was made on the subject of gays and lesbians.
The minute you read these last examples, you would have found your thoughts contradicting themselves and rapidly running in opposite directions causing chaos, isnt it?Now go back to the beginning, where deliberately, I had kept my definitions small and easy as I had predicted that this chaos will take birth in your head after the debate on this debatable topic ends.
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