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".
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