Handmade in India: The team and the mission

Image: Book Launch function at the Rajiv Gandhi Handicrafts Bhavan, New Delhi presided on by Shri Shankarsinh Vaghela, the Honourable Minister of Textiles, Government of India.

This project was handled at the National Institute of Design from early 2002 when the proposal was drafted by the NID team and it went through many phases of research and design till the book was finally in print by the end of August 2007. However the book release was delayed for various reasons but we now hope that the sale and distribution copies will be available widely in India and overseas through the Mapin Publishing network as well as the Office of the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, Government of India. The list of people involved in the various stages of work and on various aspects of its creation are listed on pages 562 and 563 of the book and this list is reproduced below for the blog post here.

Besides these contributors listed in the Credits pages we have listed a full set of implicit contributors in the form of an Annotated Bibliography from pages 551 to 556 covering the numerous crafts documentations studies done at NID over the past 40 years that have been a foundation on which this particular structure has been built for the production of this publication. Further, pages 558 to 560 has a list of all field contributors with whom our teams had interacted and drawn support from during the elaborate field work phase that was done over the four years when the content was being compiled and verified through forays in the field. Page 561 has a list of all Museums and private collections from which images or samples were referred for filling in some of the material that has appeared in the book. The bibliography and list of useful websites are listed in pages 556 and 557. We do hope that much of the material in the book will appear as part of the proposed web portal that is planned as phase four of this very interesting project in the days ahead. This would be modeled after the emerging web 2.0 paradigm and be an interactive platform that can assist our vast crafts community to connect with the world in new and exciting ways. This would be the foundation for the growth of the creative economy of the future that is based on the enormous crafts skills of India that we hope will be strengthened as we move forward from here.

Image: Screen Capture of the Credits page from Handmade in India. The full text is listed below.

Credits

Concept and Structure :
Aditi Ranjan, M P Ranjan & Jogi Panghaal

Editors: Aditi Ranjan, M P Ranjan

Preliminary Research: M P Ranjan, Jogi Panghaal, Kuntal De, Jonak Das, Mushtak Khan, Aditi Ranjan, Navrang Panchal

Library and Archival Research: Bhavneet Kaur, Archana Vidwans, Anuradha Nambiar, Vellachi Ramanathan, Deepa Varia, Nikita Mehta, Priyanka Bhattacharya, Vinutha Mallya, Sushma Shetty Sreenath, Aratrik Devvarman, Pooja Jha, Arghya Sinha Roy, M P Ranjan, Aditi Ranjan, Sangita Shroff, Zenobia Zamindar, Poorvi Das, Shankar Natarajan, Tush Singh

Technical Glossary: P Ramakrishna Rao, M P Ranjan, Gunjan Singh, Kuntal De, Aditi Ranjan

Index & Resource Mapping: M P Ranjan, Aditi Ranjan, Pooja Jha, Arghya Sinha Roy, Sonam Tashi Gyaltsen

Annotated Bibliography: Swadha Majumdar, Mann Singh, Aditi Ranjan, Nirmala Khadpekar

Copy Editing: Anuradha Nambiar, Sushma S Shetty, Paulomi Das, Priyanka Bhattacharya, Vinutha Mallya, Archana Vidwans, Diana Romany, Sushmita De

Proof Reading: Diana Romany, Vinutha Mallya

Book Design — Zenobia Zamindar, Girish Arora
Book Design Feedback: Subrato Bhowmick, Siddhartha Ghosh, Mookesh Patel, Mahendra Patel, S M Shah, Vikas Satwalekar, Anand Naorem, Uzma Mohsin, Devashish Bhattacharya, Bipin Shah, Paulomi Shah, Rajesh Dahiya

Photography Management: Deepak John Matthew, NID Photography Department, Girish Arora, Zenobia Zamindar, Navrang Panchal, Kinjal Popat, M P Ranjan

Assistance for Book Cover: Mona Gonsai, Neelakash Singh, Aparna Ranjan

Design Assistance: Krupa Kapadia, Kinjal Popat, Navrang Panchal, Keyur Payghode, Umesh Patel, Kajal Savalia, Rajorshi Ghosh, Jhumur Roy, Mehul Ruparel, Kapil Agarwal, Aparna Ranjan, Parinita Purohit, M R Patel, Shirish Shah, Suresh Modia

Proofing Assistance: Pragathi Offset Pvt Ltd., Hyderabad, Patel Printing Press, Ahmdedabad, Repro Scan, Mumbai

Field Research
NORTH:
Chandigarh: Divya Lahoria, Bhavneet Kaur
Delhi: Anuradha Nambiar, Shaurya Kumar, Amit Jain, Jonak Das, Kuntal De, Bhavneet Kaur, P. Alexander
Haryana: Sumit Saini, Ravinder Sirohiya, Bhavneet Kaur
Himachal Pradesh: Sandeep Trichal, Malhar Dhruv,
Shaswaty Nair, Paromita Banerjee
Jammu and Kashmir: Minali Singh, Sucharita Beniwal, Sharon Vellane, V Bhaskar, Mustafa Merchant, Chinar Farooqui, Farah Deba, Sandeep Trichal, Anuradha Nambiar
Punjab: Bhavneet Kaur, Divya Lahoria
Rajasthan: Anuradha Nambiar, Swasti Singh Ghai, Amit Jain, Poorvi Das, Chinar Farooqui, Errol Pires

CENTRE:
Uttar Pradesh: Bhavneet Kaur, Biswajit Hazra, Anupama Srivastava, Shantanu Jena
Uttaranchal: Praveen Nahar, Dhriti Dhoundiyal, Manish Pillewar, Sandeep Paul, Ashish Chaudhary, Bishakha Shome

EAST:
Bihar: Amit Jain, Sandeep Trichal
Jharkhand: Shaurya Kumar, Amit Jain
Orissa: Shaurya Kumar, Kadambari Misra, Amit Jain
Sikkim: Sonam Tashi Gyaltsen, Shweta Jain,
West Bengal: Jonak Das, Anirban Dutta Gupta, Dhrujoti Prasad Bhattacharya, Vydianathan R, Ramu Aravindan

SOUTH:
Andhra Pradesh: Vellachi Ramanathan, Sandeep Sangaru, Munir Vahanvati, Satish Nagendra, Kurma Rao
Karnataka: Hema Mathew, Jogi Panghaal, Mayura Ingle, Shashikala, Accessory Design, NIFT Bangalore: Tanveer Ratti, Vivek Saurabh, Lalan Parikh, Sanskruti Thorat, Sandeep Pradhan, Sanil Dhadwal, Shwetnisha Bansal Swagata Sarkar, Bibin Phillips, Abul Quasim, Saurav Kumar, Kadhambini Majhee, Divya Sanwaiya, Shika Agarwal, Vinay Kumar
Kerala: Anuradha Nambiar, Nikita Mehta, Kritika Malhotra, Ashokan Poduval
Pondicherry: Shankar Natarajan, Vellachi Ramanathan, Subhashree Karthik
Tamil Nadu: Shankar Natarajan, Shriya Sridharan, Hema Mathew, Vellachi Ramanathan, Ambika Sambasivan, Subhashree Karthik, Akhila Krishnan

WEST:
Chhattisgarh: Nityan Unnikrishnan, Rukmini Guha Thakurta
Dadra & Nagar Haveli: Nikita Mehta, Shehzad Irani
Daman & Diu: Nikita Mehta, Shehzad Irani, Vaishnavi Murthy
Goa: Aratrik Devvarman, Minali Singh
Gujarat: Nikita Mehta, Virsingh Kawar Chhatri, Purvi Mehta, Shehzad Irani, Malhar Dhruv, Deepa Varia, Yasoda Ramesh, Jyoti Sharma, Sumita Chaudhary, Rekha Meena, Jigisha Patel, Aratrik Devvarman
Madhya Pradesh: R Umamaheshwaran, Abhinav Baluni, Yasoda Ramesh, Jyoti Sharma, Shruti Phagre
Maharashtra: Nikita Mehta, Nirmal Jain, Milind Risaldar, Komal Khankhoje, Ketna Contractor, Chandrashekhar Bhadve

NORTHEAST:
Arunachal Pradesh: Ramu Aravindan, Mriganka Madhukaillya
Assam: Ramu Aravindan, Mriganka Madhukaillya, Sukanya Sanyal
Manipur: Mriganka Madhukaillya, Sukumar Haobam,
Ramu Aravindan
Meghalaya: Mehul Vadher, Shalini Sahoo
Mizoram: Deborah Zama, Priya Dhar, Rupali Rudra
Nagaland: Ramu Aravindan, Mriganka Madhukaillya
Tripura: M P Ranjan, Sandeep Sangaru, Dimple Soni, Shimolee Nahar, Nibha Jain, Aratrik Devvarman

Photography Credits
NORTH:
Delhi: Shailen Parker, Sudeep Chaudhury, Amit Jain, M F Jadliwala
Haryana: Ravinder Sirohiya
Himachal Pradesh: Malhar Dhruv, Shaswaty Nair, Paromita Banerjee
Jammu and Kashmir: Malhar Dhruv, Chinar Farooqui, Farah Deba, Minali Singh, V Bhaskar, Sharon Vellane, Sucharita Beniwal, Sundeep Sangaru
Punjab: Divya Lahoria
Rajasthan: Amit Jain, Bhagawan Das, Ashok Kumar Suthar, Sohan Lal, Rani Dan Joshi, Sunil Rakecha, Errol Pires, M F Jadliwala, Poorvi Das, Girish Arora, Sandeep Sangaru

CENTRE:
Uttar Pradesh: Biswajit Hajra
Uttranchal: Praveen Nahar, Manish Pillewar, Dhriti Dhaundiyal, Sandeep Paul, Ashish Chaudhary

EAST:
Bihar: Amit Jain, Anil Sinha
Jharkhand: Amit Jain
Orissa: Amit Jain, Kadmabari Misra, Ramu Aravindan
Sikkim: Sonam Tashi Gyaltsen, Shweta Jain, Karma Sonam
West Bengal: Ramu Aravindan, Anirban Dutta Gupta, Jonak Das, Jitendra Arora

SOUTH:
Andhra Pradesh: Ramu Aravindan, Munir Vahanvati, Sandeep Sangaru, Satish Nagendra
Karnataka: Ramu Aravindan, Hema Mathew, Mayura Ingle, M P Ranjan, Jogi Panghaal, Divya Sanwaya, Vinay Kumar, Lalan Parikh, Sandeep Pradhan, Shwetnisha Bansal, Bibin Philips, Saurav Kumar
Kerala: Kritika Malhotra, Ramu Aravindan, Ashokan Poduval, Sushanth C S
Pondicherry: Shankar Natarajan, Subhashree Karthik, Krishna Priya
Tamil Nadu: Ramu Aravindan, Shankar Natarajan, Hema Mathew, S Jayachandran, N Prassana Kumar, Krishna Priya, Akhila Krishnan, Subhashree Karthik, Ambika Sambasivan

WEST:
Chhattisgarh: Rukmini Guja Thakurta, Mushtak Khan, Jogi Panghaal, Rajni Srivastava, Shaila Kunhu
Dadra & Nagar Haveli: Shehzad Irani
Daman & Diu: Shehzad Irani, Vaishnavi Murthy
Goa: Minali Singh
Gujarat: Deepak John Matthew, Shehzad Irani, Malhar Dhruv, Munir Vahanvati, Purvi Mehta, Jigisha Patel, Rekha Meena, Aratrik Devvarman, Shankar Natarajan, Zenobia Zamindar
Madhya Pradesh: Abhinav Baluni, Jyoti Sharma, Yasoda
Ramesh, Mushtak Khan, Pooja Jha
Maharashtra: Chandrashekhar Bhadve, Ketna Contractor, Nirmal Jain, Poorvi Das, Navleen Singh

NORTHEAST:
Arunachal Pradesh: Ramu Aravindan
Assam: Ramu Aravindan, M P Ranjan, Saleem Bhatri, Amogh Chaugule, Deven Jamsandhekar, Kiran Katbamna
Manipur: Ramu Aravindan, Rupali Rudra, Aratrik Dev Varman
Meghalaya: Mehul Vadher, Shalini Sahoo, M P Ranjan
Mizoram: Deborah Zama
Nagaland: Ramu Aravindan
Tripura: M P Ranjan, Sandeep Sangaru, Dimple Soni, Aratrik Devvarman, Shimolee Nahar, Nibha Jain

NID Archives

Photographers
Deepak John Mathew: Architecture, Landscape
Jogi Panghaal: Kantha Textiles
Suranjana Satwalekar: Crafts, Textiles, Varanasi, Arunachal, Cherrapunji, Pithora Painting
Subrato Bhowmick: Prayer Rugs, Nirmal Toys
Nilam Iyer, M P Ranjan, Ghanshyam Pandya: Bamboo and Cane Crafts of Northeast India
P M Dalwadi: Manipur Pavilion
Rajesh Vora: Stucco Work, Madurai
S Balaram and Anuj Sharma: Palm Leaf Craft, Chennai
Padmini Balaram: Kalamkari
Swasti Singh: Meghwal Embroidery

Photographs from student Craft Documentations
Scanning
Bharat Suthar, Rajendra Patel, Umesh Patel, Dhawal Gajjar
Assistance
T S Rajendran, Chirantan Raval, Himanshu Mistry, Jayesh Leuva, Praveen Varia, Jayesh Parmar, Suresh Modia, Cromwel Parmar, Reena Narendran, Gopalan Nambiar, Divya Nair
Knowledge Management Centre:
S D Bodiwala, Swadha Majumdar, Himmat Singh, Anil Patel, Sangeeta Vyas and Staff

NID Project Administration and Financial Management
Darlie O Koshy, Executive Director, NID
Akhil Succena, Chairman Outreach (Former)
Shashank Mehta, Chairman Outreach
Aditi Ranjan, Project Head
Brahmanand Pani, Controller of Accounts
K K Bhaskaran, Project Manager
NID Delhi Centre: N V K Murthy, P Alexander, V A Anthony
NID Bangalore Centre: Shashikala Satyamoorthy, T S Nagarajan and Shaktivel, Hyderabad

Client Project Administration and Financial Management
S B Mohapatra, IAS, Secretary, Ministry of Textiles
Tinoo Joshi, IAS, Development Commissioner (Handicrafts)
V P Thakur, Executive Director, Council of Handicrafts Development Corporation (COHANDS)
Susheel Kumar, IAS, Additional Development Commissioner (Handicrafts)
Sandeep Srivastava, IAS, Additional Development Commissioner (Handicrafts)
Mushtak Khan, Deputy Director, Crafts Museum, Delhi
Durgesh Shankar, Chairman and Managing Director, CCIC, New Delhi

Credit acknowledgement is also due to the unnamed students and faculty members at the National Institute of Design who have helped in putting this book together through their lively interactions and occasional contributions.

We would like to acknowledge the offices of DC(H) across India, who supported and facilitated the field research. Further Regional Directors and Assistant Directors of Marketing & Extension Centres (named below) and their respective colleagues (too numerous to be listed here) helped put together a comprehensive check list of resources in and around their respective centers in a collective effort called Panorama Series, 2002, which was used as a base document for field work.

Regional Directors & Assistant Directors of Marketing & Extension Centres:
S Bhattacharya, Kolkata
B C Mohapatra, Gangtok, Siliguri
P Sasany, Sambalpur & Bhubaneshwar
R S Yadav, Deogarh
A K Saran, Madhubani
S P Moitra, Ranchi
A K Handoo, Lucknow
S C Bhardwaj, Agra
Amar Chand, Saharanpur
C B Singh, Barabanki
Mangala Singh, Varanasi
S S Gwal, Almora
S K Sinha, Mumbai
S V Deshpande, Indore
V Baskaran, Surat
A T Meshram, Nagpur
I G Kawre, Jagdalpur
T R Gajbhai, Kolhapur
S Z Hussain, Aurangabad
Kali Ram, Gwalior
A C Gangal, Panaji
P Sundramurty, Chennai
S C Deveramani, Mangalore, Mysore
Abdul Kader, Port Blair
G R Thampi, Nagercoil
R Chandran, Salem
S Gurumurty, Pondicherry
I H P Rao, Tirupati, Vijaywada
V Bhaskaran, Trichur
G George, Thiruvananthapuram
S A Razzack, Hyderabad
A K Handoo, New Delhi
V K Mahajan, Hoshiarpur
S L Dangayach, Jaipur
B L Meena, Jodhpur
Jagdish Prasad, Rewari
S K Tikoo, Kullu
Tajumal Hussain, Srinagar & Baramulla
M K Kaw, Leh
T K Kaul, Udhampur & Jammu
A R Chaudhary, Guwahati
S R Masram, Agartala
P C Dutta, Aizawl & Gauripur
S B Singh, Jorhat
S Z Hussain, Imphal
S B Singh, Kohima
S Dkhar, Shillong

Handmade in India: Book Launch in New Delhi

Handmade in India
Edited by Aditi Ranjan and M.P. Ranjan
Book design by Ms. Zenobia Zamindar and Girish Arora.
576 pages, 3500 colour photographs and 140 maps, 9.5 x 13.5” (240 x 340 mm)
End matter includes a Technical Glossary, Annotated Bibliography, Craft Categories, an Index and also a detailed Acknowledgement and Credits.
Co-published in association with COHANDS and Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, Government of India, the book is produced by Mapin.

Image: Front and back cover of the new book and one sample page from the Rajasthan section dealing with the Ajmer metacluster. The book is to be released for the public on the 21st of July 2008 at a brief function at the Rajiv Gandhi Handicrafts Bhavan on Baba Kharakh Singh Marg, New Delhi by , Shri Shankarsinh Vaghela, Honorable Minister of Textiles, Government of India. The book is distributed by Mapin and will be widely available in bookstores in India and overseas.

Handmade in India, An encyclopedia of the crafts of India is a tribute to the Indian craftsperson and is organized by the geographical distribution of the crafts across all states and regions of the country. The Indian craftsperson has demonstrated an uncanny understanding of materials which is combined with a mastery of the tools, techniques and processes that have evolved over the centuries through social and cultural interactions, a tribute to the creative design abilities of the village society. The Eames India Report talks about a search for the values that is uniquely Indian and it is here that the study of Indian crafts will help inform current and future actions in the continuous evolution of the economy and the form that it takes in shaping the culture of the land. Today this craft continuum constitutes an enormous resource that can be harnessed for the future development of our society, particularly as the backbone of a creative economy that is enabled by the embedded knowledge in the traditional wisdom of the sector as well as the digital technologies that help connect this ancient skill to new and future opportunities for the craftspersons across India. We will need to make this enormous knowledge base accessible to planners, business and the rural and urban craftsmen as well as connect these to new local and global opportunities for these skills and resources to be reinterpreted in imaginative ways.

Image: Sample pages from the Rajasthan section. Each section has a master State page which is followed by the Meta-cluster pages and in each of these are the Crafts pages. Shown above are the State double page spread (top left), the Jaipur meta-cluster spread and the Blue Pottery craft (top right), the Ajmer metacluster spread with the crafts of Phad painting and Miniature painting on wood (bottom left) and finally the double spread that includes the crafts of Mojari making, handmade paper, felt products and the Bahi – the clothbound book crafts of Rajasthan.

These examples, we believe are some of the foundations of the creative economy of the future in a web enabled world and easy access in both directions which promises to link the craftsmen to new markets across the world. For this scenario to happen there are several steps involved and the book will be the first in offering insights and data on this vast resource as well as be a vehicle that can provide a platform and a structure to enhance this knowledge. Using the new digital networks and tools of access and interaction that it provides, this knowledge can be put to good use provided the required investments are made in infrastructure and training to realize this inherent potential. It is our intention that the information as well as the framework of situated keywords provided in this book will help all concerned with the promotion, development and use of the crafts of India and that they would be empowered to build a sustainable network of live information. This we believe will help our craftsmen re-connect with world markets, just as they had been doing for centuries in their own village and in their trade route networks of the past, and now the world can be their new village economy, if they are enabled and empowered to change, to meet these new circumstances with access to information that is both live and relevant.

Image: Two models that were prepared in the early 90’s to capture the scope and intentions for the promotion of the crafts sector in Rajasthan and across the rest of India which led to the setting up of the IICD, Jaipur. We were asked to imagine and envision the format and scope of the new Institute for Crafts in Jaipur and today this is an active centre for the creation of change agents hwo are capable of working in the transformation of the crafts sector in India. We will need more such initiatives in the future in India.

“Handmade in India”, is the first of three books, in the series Crafts of India, that are planned. It provides a geographic organization of craft distributed across the length and breadth of the country and shows how craft permeates even the remotest corner of India. It is a confirmation of more that 40 years of effort by faculty and students of the National Institute of Design who have sustained their interest in the crafts of India as a design and development resource for the country when few other organizations showed real interest in what was seen as a glory of the past. That it is a living resource as well as a resource for the future is something that we would strongly advocate and call for sustained investments from both government and industry to ensure its continuity. The realization that it can steer the creative economy for the benefit of an estimated six million crafts persons is a real possibility. These craftspersons have kept this knowledge alive in a tacit living form through their actions and traditional methods of transmission which we are now trying to capture in an explicit format between the covers of a book.

Image: A small collection of colourful toys from a variety of materials by Indian craftsmen from many locations that are featured in the book.

We have had thinkers from the past comparing the crafts of India with the oceans of the world, vast and impossible to put into a bottle of any kind. We are very aware that it is only the whole earth and its gravity that can act as an adequate container for the oceans and water bodies of our planet’s ecology. Our crafts traditions and practices can be compared to this vast ocean and it is only the tips of the ice-berg that are visible in the book and we hope that the web and the digital networks that are built in the subsequent phases can support and play the role of making the rest of the hidden volume visible and accessible in the days ahead. It is a pleasure to see the realization of a dream and the fructification of the efforts of several generations of NID designers as well as a large team of contributors who have made this book possible. With sustained support from our sponsors The Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, Government of India, the COHANDS, and the expertise of Mapin Publishers as well the members of our Institute, the National Institute of Design this product is a reality today. They have provided us the opportunity of producing this work and we look forward to an active period of cooperation in taking this forward to the next stages through books two, three and beyond on the web as a major portal for the Handicrafts of India.

Aditi Ranjan & M P Ranjan
Editors: Handmade in India
National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India
19 July 2008

For further information contact:

The Council of Handicraft Development Corporations (COHANDS), New Delhi.
Email: cohands4 (at) vsnl.net

The Office of the Development Commissioner (Handicrafts), Government of India, Ministry of Textiles, R K Puram, New Delhi
Email: dchejs (at) nic.in

National Institute of Design, Paldi, Ahmedabad 380007, Gujarat
Email: outreach (at) nid.edu

Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd, Usmanpura, Ahmedabad 380014
Email: mapin (at) mapinpub.com

Food and AnthroDesign: Approaches and Attitudes for India

Image: The Indian “Thali”, a platter with a mixed set of offerings that are balanced and cooked to suit the occasion and the season, each region has its own varient and the exquisite food can be served on a leaf plate or all the way up the ladder in a silver one. Pictures sourced from Google image search for Indian thali.

This year the theme for the Design Concepts and Concerns course at NID Gandhinagar, Paldi and Bangalore deals with food. With rampant food inflation that has hit the economy over the past nine months and the looming threat of a runaway price of oil which has slowed down the world economy is a context in which we felt it would be prudent to see if a bit of applied imagination could help find new ways out of these pressing dilemmas. Indian food comes in a huge variety across many regional and climatic zones as well as cultural and social categories that has a long tradition behind the form and pattern of consumption by the people of these places. While there are many similarities across zones, the differences are palpable and give a sense of distinction through both form and flavours. These are influenced by a huge variety of factors both local as well as global, and the change in both tastes and habits are rapid as they are deeply protected by the same people across all age barriers. Can we understand these dynamics and apply this understanding to discovering new ways forward that can help the economy, the health of the population and solve many associated problems such as poverty, malnutrition and hunger in our society? We do believe that design and innovation can not just solve some of these problems but also address the larger threats of climate change and political inequity through a better understanding of food surplus economy and access to healthy food to all humans across the planet.

Image: Fruits and vegetables on the streets of Bangalore captured by an avid photo documenter, Rajesh Dangi, who shares his pictures on flickr rajesh-dangi’s photostream and on his blog called Bangalore Daily Photo.

Having said that, we can now look at the micro details of food production, distribution and consumption in our own locations and juxtapose these with global trends and changing aspirations of people. The tools that are used by designers are many and one of the significant new tools is called anthro-design or design-ethnography which helps us understand the finer aspects of human aspirations and behavior which determines to a large extant the choices that will be made by people to satisfy their needs. These can also help us understand the facts and fiction, myths and realities that we have to confront in the process of shaping alternatives that can be then decided through the group processes of politics and social and economic negotiation. The texture of reality is very important in design thinking and action and that is why designers need to go out and look at the reality even if a whole lot of information is available in the form of socio-economic study reports and market statistics. Imagine if someone told you that a street vendor made a living selling a few kilos of guava, mangos, or cucumber by offering a service of slicing the fruit with a knife and a sprinkling of salt and masala, a subsistence living that is. Where does the value come from which he can make a living? A service offered where it is needed and appreciated and that which is informed by the local knowledge of seasonality and local preferences for taste and nutrition and of course the economic reality that fruit is expensive in India and not affordable to most but desired by all. You will not find many market survey reports on these guys but they are all over our streets if we care to look. Rajesh Dangi,s pictures give us an honest view of this reality on the streets of Bangalore.

Image: Series of images from the Time Magazine story about What the World Eats. This is based on the research in the book titled “Hungry Planet: What the World Eats” by Peter Menzel, Faith D'Aluisio

The champions of anthro-design are growing in India and around the world and many new design companies and institutes are offering real research services to help understand the mind of the diverse user of services and products that is the foundation for any design and innovation programme. The discussion list called anthrodesign at yahoogroups.com is an active list that debates and shares insights about the skills and tools of the emerging discipline. Dori – Elizabeth Tunstall teaches the subject called Design Anthropology as an Associate Professor of Design Anthropology at University of Illinois at Chicago . Her blog Dori’s Moblog, is full of insights and very informative podcasts about the subject. Our own graduates have been offering this kind of research as a service to their corporate clients both in India and overseas. Uday Dandavate, an NID alumni, had set up the company called SonicRim along with his teacher, Liz Sanders from Ohio State University. Manoj Kotari, founder of Onio Design, Pune offers trend research to their clients as does Locus Design, Pune handled by three NID graduates, Chandrashekar Badve, Milind Risaildar & Siddharth Kabra and in the South, in Bangalore the IDIOM, which is the biggest design office in India, offers these services with a focus on retail business services. IDIOM is founded by NID graduates Sonia Manchanda, Jacob Mathew and Anand Aurora working in concert with Kishore Biyani, the retail mega star in India, the founder of the Big Baazar and Pantaloon and the Future Group in India.

Image: Nokia Mobile Development Report prepared by Centre for Knowledge Societies in Bangalore. The digital version of the report can be downloaded from this link here as a 15 mb pdf file.

In Bangalore there is another compelling presence in this business which is the Centre for Knowledge Societies which was founded by Dr Aditiya Dev Sood. CKS offers such design research insights into local markets and populations by mapping their aspirations and visually capturing the fine texture of the local along with statistical parameters that can inform innovation and design action in a variety of industries. The CKS report for NOKIA on the Mobile Telephones in India and more recently their “Emerging Economy Report: Societal Intelligence for Business Innovation” that offers insights on populations in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Egypt and Keneya. This report is however a professional offering that can only be afforded by the multinational corporates however some information is available on the website. CKS has been in partnership with the Doors of Perception in assisting John Thackara in managing the DOORS events in India and this puts them in very good company indeed. John has been a impassioned advocate for design use at the local level and in his path breaking project DOTT07 with the Design Council, London took up Food as one of the thrust areas and his Doors of Perception too continues to promote the idea of local food and sensible consumption. Jogi Panghaal, an NID graduate and member of Doors, was the first design guru who sensitised us to the finer sensibilities of food in human society with his course offering called "Ways of Eating, way back in the early 90's.

Well, we now know that anthro-design both meaningful and also draws big money, and it is a way forward to sense and find attitudes and aspirations that lie below the surface and something that can provide us with design insights that no amount of hard facts and knowledge that science can provide. AnthroDesign is also something that designers do all the time to make sense of the world around them and to get an insight into the minds and emotions of the users that they wish to serve.

DCC2008 Theme Food: Design with participation and discourse

Food, Inflation and innovation in India

Image: A macro view of the Food constituency as a system of related influences and opportunity areas, which is by no means a complete picture. Students from many parts of India will work together and fill in the gaps and unfold hidden possibilities with their experience and their imagination

The Design Concepts and Concerns course which is taught at NID helps our students take the macro-micro design exploration route in their study and journey through the various pressing design problems and opportunities that we find in the Indian economy and that which is affecting the people most at the time when the course is being conducted are chosen each year. Design is always to be understood in context with a particular setting if we are to derive any meaning from the activity otherwise the meaning will be provided by the observer and this may not be the intended approach of the designers, in which case it is usually back to the drawing board. This year we have chosen to focus on “Food and Inflation”, two major issues that threaten the continuance of the Government of India if it is these concerns are not managed well enough and the global cues are not very helpful either, what with oil hitting the 145 USD mark over the weekend and with experts talking of a 200 USD level by the year end before things may start to cool off a bit, if at all.

The Indian Government at the Centre, is led by the Congress Party, which is a historic cousin of the Indian National Congress that brought Independence to the country, and in this avatar it is having its own set of problems with its coalition partners, particularly on the contentious issue of signing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty with the USA and the international partner members which will give India some degree of energy security in the age of exploding oil prices. Energy is one of the key drivers of the Indian economy as it is the worlds and with rising oil prices all nations will have to address their energy security, especially if they are as dependent on imports as India is in its efforts to keep growth of the economy at a healthy 9 percent plus for the next few years. Here again it is not clear if going nuclear is the only way forward with a country that is endowed with plenty of sunshine and wind along its coastline, many possibilities could emerge if only we tried. Inflation kicking in at over 11 percent in the last week puts paid to all claims of sustained growth and in a democracy heading towards an impending election across the country the Government is pulling out all stops to help stem the inflation tide, particularly in the very sensitive food price front, which hits the common man in the street the most, and therefore would be a sore issue at the hustings. The search for stability is hard to find in a shaky coalition when the partners are unwilling to budge from the nuclear stand. During the last budget the Indian food situation came into sharp focus this year with many instances of farmer suicides in many parts of the country, especially in the Vidharbha region, and the Government made a magnanimous gesture of waiving all farm loans of small and marginal farmers and promised to support the banks through fiscal supports to provide them the safety net needed. This gesture ran into several tens of thousands of crores, and according to The Hindu, about Indian Rupees 60,000 crores (one crore is equal to ten million Rupees) when it was first announced in the budget speech by the Indian Finance Minister and later modified to a much higher sum, very generous indeed, but the problem that lies at the heart of this dilemma still remains unchanged.
“Loan waivers are at best temporary palliatives to the problems facing rural India. Regrettably, the powers that be and the powers that want to be have rarely been willing to confront the difficult and complex problems.”
A. Vaidyanathan

Image: A Vaidyanathan in The Hindu, Thursday, Mar 06, 2008. (Read on here)

I wonder what would be the impact if even a small portion of this humungous sum of money were invested in the area of innovation in the food and agriculture sectors with a slightly longer term view, rather than by just looking down the barrel of the next General Elections a few months away? The use of subsidies when there is a political and economic crisis is quite commonplace but making investments in basic innovations that can provide long term answers to wicked problems is not seen as a practical move in our land of five year terms of public office and short term politics. Can we continue in this strain for long with all the negative cues coming from the global warming front and the economic downturn that is raising its head from the rising oil prices and to top it all the social unrest unleashed due to pressures of change and transformation like the opposition to the SEZ’s at Nandigram and Singur where the local farmers are up in arms against the TATA Nano project?
The Hindu Business Line, Monday, Jan 21, 2008: Bengal verdict on Singur
The Hindu Business Line, Friday, Jan 11, 2008: Inclusive innovation

Image: University of Industrial Arts, Helsinki’s historic building, the tram that is a sustainable tradition of the city and the Rector, Yrjö Sotamaa speaks out in favour of innovation of a softer kind. (Read more here)

These are not simple problems but we do believe that the boundaries of these problems can be explored through the use of design rather than on the streets through negotiations between adversaries from opposite parties. Design can if given a chance can indeed find and show alternate models that could then be presented to all stake-holders for a negotiated settlement of the conflicts. This form of innovation and change is at the heart of the future of politics and many countries are now beginning to recognize this power of design visualization and a recent example is the Helsinki event that merged three major Universities to form the new Innovation University which has been christened the Aalto University after the great Finnish architect and designer, more about this in my previous post on this subject.

We will not wait for the Government of India to change its policies about education and innovations in India but forge ahead instead with some basic explorations that can be done on our own in the classrooms at NID with the creative human capital that is available in the motivated students who have come to learn design at our school. In my paper titled “Creating the Unknowable: Designing the Future in Education” that I had presented at a peer reviewed design conference, EAD06 in Bremen, Germany in 2005, I have given an outline of the course called “Design Concepts and Concerns” that has been offered to NID students of all programmes over the past fifteen years. The blog that was set up last year to document this course in a contemporaneous manner can be seen at this link below and last year the theme was Water, which happens to be the most contentious issue across India and the world, which is getting worse by the day. Here we looked at the macro-micro design analysis of the context to understand the situation at a personal level of each student participant and then went on to build alternate models to address these issues through design imagination and innovative offerings. The course ended with a long list of design opportunities and some of these were selected by the groups of students to be visualized as scenarios that could make the imagined outcomes more visible and tangible for decision making processes that would be political and participatory, both people and the Government could be stake holders along a long chain of interest groups, al of whom could have an informed say in the matter that would affect all of us. Take a look at what they had to offer and give your comments and feedback for this year’s theme, FOOD & Inflation.

More at the Design Concepts and Concerns blog here.

Innovation University Helsinki: Lessons for India

Innovation University Helsinki: The Aalto University takes shape

Image: Alvar Aalto, the old Arabia factory that houses the University of Industrial Arts, Helsinki and the current Rector Yrjö Sotamaa, TaiK

In a pathbreaking move the Ministry of Education in Finland has decided to merge three existing Universities under a common banner of The Innovation University that is now renamed as the Aalto University after the great Finnish architect and Furniture designer, Alvar Aaalto.

The legislation and the system of funding the three Universities are being reworked and it is planned to launch the new University by August 2009. I met the Rector of the University of Art and Design Helsinki (TAIK) at the just concluded Helsinki Design Lab that brought together 80 design thinkers and professionals from around the world to explore the emerging boundaries of innovation in a very interesting workshop format.

The three Universities that are to be merged are as follows:
University of Art and Design Helsinki (TAIK)
Helsinki University of Technology (TKK)
Helsinki School of Economics (HSE)

The initiatives are backed by both the Government of Finland as well as the local industry that has found it useful to support education and research since they have been looking for global leadership rather than just following the lead of other players in their field.

Image: Classic products by Alvar Aalto, a Tea Table in bent laminated wood and a glass vase

Design is to play a central role and from being focused on Art and individual expression the move is to bring in collaborative creativity and innovation by locating the emphasis on the bringing together of design , technology and business within education at the University level.

While there are many skeptics to this move it was perhaps the most open and transparent process possible with over 8000-contributions and arguments made on a year long exchange platform that offered access to all stakeholders along with a multi-stakeholder process of committees and task groups. The participants were drawn from all three Universities and included Administrators, Teachers and Students.

Image: Prof M P Ranjan at Hotel Katajanokka which is an old jailhouse that has been repurposed for use as a hotel

I do think that we need to re-examine our University structure and objectives in the light of these experiments taking place in Finland and with NID being considered for a Deemed to be University status can we think forward and see how the technology and business areas can be brought to focus on innovation in the days ahead. We are all in our own mental jails till we get liberated by an imaginative thought that can change our belief. I came here to participate in the Helsinki Design Lab and found that the organisers were thinking far ahead with the Innovation University and new education paradigms.

Designers can build innovative companies: Emerging options in India

Image: Projects from Korjan Design Studio: Set up by Dinesh and Rashmi Korjan, who have been role models for many young product designers in India since they stayed focused on their core area of product design when everyone else did a bit of interiors and graphics when the going was tough in the early days of establishing the profession in India.

A number of young designers are on the lookout for exciting and challenging work that is both cutting edge as well as adequately remunerative. Existing and established companies in the manufacturing and service sectors would usually make them work their way up the organization as this is seen as the most productive route for learning on the job for most professions. However, in design, the most value is added usually at the strategic level (see levels of design model, Ranjan 1998) while young recruits are kept at the bottom of the value chain – at the tactical level or even the elaborative level – in some back office operation which does not challenge their imagination and conceptual skill sets that they have developed as a part of their education and training exposures in school as well as outside. Several designers turn to entrepreneurial ventures that offer design services to a variety of businesses and industries and this has been a well tested path for a large number of young designers since the entry barriers in the profession are indeed quite low as far as capital and infrastructure investments are concerned. These young designers would no doubt have to acquire new skill sets in management and people skills to be able to succeed to scale from small beginnings to support a large team and this is something that they learn on the job as they go forward in setting up their ventures and making a go of the whole effort. A number of our designer graduates have indeed taken this route with a good deal of success. Both the Government as well as several leading national institutions of technology, management and design is now encouraging entrepreneurship and incubation of new initiatives in India. The IIT’s, IIM’s and NID have all set up incubators to encourage both students and faculty in realizing their innovative dreams through these nascent incubation initiatives. Besides the Government initiated schools of higher education in India several private sector schools and universities have their active incubation initiatives such as the one in Nirma Institute of Technology in Ahmedabad and the Welingkar Institute of Management in Mumbai and now at a new campus in Bangalore.

Image: Daily Dump: A new venture incubated at Srishti, Bangalore by Poonam Bir Kasturi and now it has grown to be a social design movement with clones in many parts of India and across the world. This particular model offers huge potential of using design to address pressing needs in the social space for quality products, services and attitude change that is critical if we are to offset the effects of global warming in the days ahead.

Links to the Daily Dump are here below:
Daily Dump Home page.
Global warming and concerns in India
Daily Dump on Helsinki Design Lab post
Daily Dump on the Index Award site

Globalisation has brought other international formats of innovation and incubation support to Indian shores and many new finance and venture capital support systems have been created to encourage and support real passion and expertise particularly when the proof of concept is established by early stage prototypes or even market trials carried out by the designers and their colleagues in the case of new products and services offered by the incumbents own initiatives. This kind of build, operate and deliver model is fairly common in the software industry where small teams build exciting new products but vest part of their holding to the market or to a financier or venture capital support team after a period of development of the technical aspects of the product in order to rapidly scale up and compete with the existing players in the marketplace. Market launch and competition with existing large players is avoided in some cases and the field left to established players through a buy–in by the larger partner if the promoters are not able to scale the offering or able to garner the financial supports needed to make the shift. In some cases the company is brought to market through an Initial Public Offering (IPO) when the company is taken public and the promoters liquidate or reduce their holding at an appropriate value through a regulated process for such offerings. In India we have seen this kind of public issues based on product and service innovations in the areas of software, pharmaceuticals and in retail in recent years. Many of our design graduates who had established their own initiatives over the past ten years or more are finding new opportunities to bring in much needed capital to expand and scale up their business offering that has been proven in the market over time and by demonstration in the marketplace.

Image: Prof M P Ranjan at the CNBC TV 18 studio in Mumbai

This raises the big question of what is innovation and how can we unfold the value of the innovative process in the emerging era of the creative economy that is being discussed by many forward looking business thinkers. I had the opportunity to interact with the CNBC TV 18 team in analyzing several innovations that have emerged in the country through a broadcast programme called “Innovations at Work” that is anchored by Menaka Doshi and Cyrus and myself acted as expert guests on the panel. The CNBC TV18 team did all the background work on the seven selected innovations that are discussed in the programme while the expert guests brought their experience to bear on commenting on these from their own perspectives, mine from that of a design teacher at NID and Cyrus Driver spoke from the perspective of a venture capital expert with direct experience in building start-up companies. I have commented in an earlier post on the variety of businesses that had been started by NID graduates in the past and these I believe are the role models available today for young design students who are currently enrolled in our design schools across India. The facilities to spawn a vast network of such start-ups in India is still very limited but if we recognize the potential and provide the framework to nurture these initiatives as well as use the educational support networks and curriculum design that can enable such ventures we will be able to create the mind-sets that are required to make such ventures happen, and grow to become great value creators of our times. While most education programmes in design are aimed at creating employees for industry, I do believe there is scope for special institutions that can aim their programmes at seeding entrepreneurs across many areas of opportunity and such schools and programmes are the need of the day. I will explore the shape and contours of such a possibility in some future posts and such a format would need to be multi-disciplinary and bring together players and abilities that can enhance the process of incubation at the end of a period of nurture and capacity building. The KaosPilot in Scandinavia has shown that young individuals can be empowered and enabled to learn and build the necessary skills and confidence to set up new ventures in unconventional areas on business opportunity. If we were to explore the areas of need in India we can see enormous untapped possibilities in as many as 230 sectors of our economy for the use of design and design related services. Our design schools will need to strengthen their business process skills if the young designers are to be empowered to take on these real opportunities as well as be able to participate directly in such transformation processes at hand. Design schools also have the opportunity to attract a variety of skilled professionals into their fold so that domain expertise can be honed with a layer of design thinking and action skills that would be at the heart of any new enterprise building experiment.

Tonight I have just returned from the inaugural session of the Helsinki Design Lab 2008 at the Wanha Satma in Helsinki and here we witnessed the formation of a major new Innovation University, which will merge together three existing Universities of Art & Design, Management and Technology to form a powerful new entity that is looking far into the future.

Innovation at Work: New serial on CNBC TV 18

Image: Suresh Venkat, Satyashree Gandham, Charulata Menon and Prof M P Ranjan at the CNBC TV 18 studio in Mumbai after the shoot.

A five part serial titled Innovation at Work is being aired by CNBC TV 18 from next week on the following schedules. The programe is anchored by Menaka Doshi, Associate Corporate Editor of Network 18
and the guest experts are Prof. M P Ranjan, NID and Mr Cyrus Driver, CEO, Helix Investments which is a global venture capital fund looking at India.

The programme has been announced yesterday on the channel immediately after the shoot was completed at their studio in Mumbai. The show will go on air on Wednesday, 25th June at 7:30 pm with a repeat on Saturday and Sunday at 6:30pm. The modules will then be aired each week over the next five weeks.

Do take time of your busy schedules to look at this offering about exciting innovation of products, services and businesses in India today. Unfortunately I will miss the first screening since I am off to Helsinki to attend the Helsinki Design Lab organised by the SITRA, Finland Fund for Innovation. More at this link below:
Helsinki Design Lab Blog
SITRA - Helsinki Design Lab: Home

More from Finland and I propose to visit UIAH after the SITRA event and meet friends in Helsinki.

Communication Design: 50 years of Contribution to the Indian visual landscape

Communication Design: The Early Years at NID

Image: Wall of tiles at the end of the Design Street at NID with a sampling of symbols and logos designed for various public and private Indian organizations.

Visual Identity is the visible face of an organization and its services through which we recall and recognize the products and essence of the various offerings from a particular organization. This extends to both public service organizations such as the air, rail and road transport services as well as corporate organizations in manufacturing, finance and other services. At NID, the Communications Design faculty and students have been offering the services of designing such identities to corporate and government bodies almost from the very inception of the Institute and the setting up of its graphic design education programmes in the early 60’s. However very little is written about this work and therefore little is known about the contributions made by the NID designers to the Indian economy and its brand portfolio which most Indians are familiar with. The wall of tiles can be seen at the far end of the Design Street as a visitor passes through the NID building past the Fountain Plaza, the Gautam Gira Square and the Big Tree, all familiar landmarks to NID students and faculty. I do wish that some committed graphic design research is done to first document this legacy and then assess the worth of these contributions to the Indian people. The Communications Design activities have been at the centre of the NID education and professional offerings over the past 50 years and it is high time to look back at these offerings and explore the various dimensions and disciplines through which these have journeyed across the decades of sustained contribution. Over 800 public and private sector identities have been designed by the NID community and numerous other areas of design exploration include advertising, social communication, film making, animation, text book designing, typography, photography and illustration, to name only a few of the areas that form the body of communication design work from the Institute.

If I step back in time, the first programme in Graphic Design and the other Communication Design disciplines was offered at NID in 1963 when a number of fine and applied artists were inducted into the first programme at NID under the stewardship of Dashrat G. Patel, Design Director, Visual Communication and several international design teachers who came to NID as consultants in the discipline. In those days the dominant disciplines were Graphic Design, Typography, Photography, Exhibition, Illustration, Animation, Sound and Film Making. Many of these were offered as specializations to the joining students after a period of basic design education at NID. The first programme in Communication Design commenced in 1963 with the induction of eight post graduate students.

Image: Some examples of graphic design work done in the classroom in the early sixties from the NID Documentation 1964-69 (download pdf 25 MB here)

This programme was preceded and overlapped by a six month course in Basic Design that started in March 1963 with six students from a variety of backgrounds. While I do have a list of these six students we do not have any information about them after they left NID in September 1963. The Basic Design course was prepared and conducted by Prof. Jesse Reichek and Richard Berteaux from UCLA, Berkeley, California. These six students are listed below:
1. Arvind Desai
2. S Patel
3. N Chauhan
4. Gothankar
5. B K Ralput
6. B Das

This batch was followed soon thereafter by the first batch in Communication Design with the entry of the eight students from varied backgrounds in fine and applied arts, cinematography and literature. This first batch joined NID at various dates from June 1963 to December 1964 and many of them went on to join NID as full time faculty before or after a period of training in their area of specialization at a school or office of a chosen design consultant of international repute. The major consultants who provided the expertise and teaching inputs over varying periods of time were as follows, but this is not a complete list however:
Graphics: Armin Hofmann, Allgemeine Gewerbeschule, Basel
Communication: Bob Gill, Royal College of Art, London
Typography: Adrian Frutiger, Ecole Estienne, Paris
Documentation: Eberhert Fischer, Musee Ethnographique, Basel
Exhibition: Charles & Ray Eames, Consultants, California
Photography: Christian Staub, Hochschule fur Gestaltung, Ulm
Photography: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris & New York
Animation: Leo Leoni, Consultant, Italy
Sound: David Tudor, Music Composition, USA
Printing: Manfred Merz, Switzerland
Block Making: Eduard Schmid, Switzerland
…….and there were many more, all listed in the NID Documentation 1964-69 (download pdf 25 MB here)

Image: Looking at the Design Street from the Fountain Plaza (right) and from the top of the Big Tree (left)

The first batch of students in Communication Design at NID are listed below;
1. Ishu B. Patel
2. Rohit Modi
3. P M Dalwadi
4. A P Gajjar
5. Manu Gajjar
6. Vikas Satwalekar
7. I S Mathur
8. Mahendra C Patel

The second batch that joined the NID Communication Design in May and June of 1965 included four students, all of whom left the institute after varying periods of study from three months to 15 months duration. The four students are listed below:
1. H K Patel
2. V M Patel
3. M M Patel
4. H A Vora

Image: Some garphic design assignments from the early sixties at NID.

The third batch of nine students joined NID between May and September 1967 and four of them went on to join the institute as full time faculty after a period of study at Basel and two others were appointed as faculty immediately after they completed their programme of study at NID. These students are listed below:
1. N N Patel
2. R L Mistry
3. C N Shah
4. P M Choksi
5. S M Shah
6. Girish R Patel
7. M O Vaghela
8. N A Patel
9. V H Varia

Image: The NID Main Gate and Prof M P Ranjan in his office at NID.

The first programme for school leavers commenced in 1970 and the faculty here was drawn from the first three batches of Post Graduate students in Communications Design and Industrial Design, an all Indian faculty. Of the 24 students who joined the programme in the Foundation, 10 chose to join the Communications Design discipline. Eight students went to Industrial Design and six joined the Textile Design area. The Communications Design programme has grown from strength to strength over the years and some of the most respected design professionals in India in the fields of Graphics, Advertising, Animation, Film Making, Photography, Packaging, Branding, Social Communication, Book Design, and several other areas of specialization have come from these programmes at NID. While the numbers have always been rather small, I believe the impact has been quite significant and I am sure that time and the ongoing public reflections will show this to be so.

I hope that the Golden Jubilee of the Eames Report will be an occasion to reflect on these contributions and to take stock of what has been done so far and to set the tone for the way forward. I also hope that some of these young designers will share their work in the days ahead in a substantial manner and from this we will be able to garner the shape of Indian communication design as a composite whole.

Royal College of Art (RCA): Linkages with NID & Indian Design: Contemporary Influences (Part 3/3)

Royal College of Art and the contemporary Indian designers

Picture: Singanapalli Balaram and his Rural Bicycle designed at the RCA as a student project.

Just as NID had trained the first generation of design teachers for India in the 60’s and 70’s some of these leading teachers and some from the second generation were further trained at the RCA in the 70’s. The first to head to London was Prof Singanapalli Balaram who was deputed from the NID for a year long training at the RCA in 1971. He returned to India and worked at NID till he retired from the Institute after which he has moved to Coimbatore to set up a new school of design there called the DJ Academy.

Singanapalli Balaram, RCA, Industrial Design Engineering, 1971.
Home at DJAD, Coimbatore:
Balaram at DJAD:

The IDC was set up in 1969 by Prof Sudha Nadkarni who himself was a student of Hfg Ulm but his students from IDC went to the RCA in the early 70’s to come back to teach at IDC, IIT Mumbai and at the IIT Delhi where another school of design took root.

Lalit Das, IIT, Delhi (RCA, School of Industrial Design Engineering from 1972 to 1974)
Biography:

Kirti Trivedi, IDC, IIT Mumbai (RCA, School of Industrial Design Engineering from 1972 to 1974)
IDC, IIT Mumbai:
Hindu Architecture:
IDC Publications:

K Munshi, IDC, IIT, Mumbai (RCA, School of Industrial Design Engineering in 1974)
Workshop on Product Innovation:

Dhruv Mistry, MA Sculpture RCA 1983
Biography link:

Shilpa Ranade, IDC, IIT, Mumbai Head of Animation at the IDC also stuidied at the RCA.
Interview in Animation Express:

This early round of RCA scholars from India was followed by a stream of very talented designers from NID, most of whom were from the NID’s undergraduate programme and they are listed below with discipline, year and some web links appended below each person.

Picture: Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien at their studio in London

Nipa Doshi, MA (RCA) Furniture, 1997.
British Museum:
John Lobb: Apprentice Shoes:
I.D. Magazine:
Moroso:
Norsk Form:

Nagraj Seshadri, MA (RCA) Industrial Design, 1998.
Core77 1999 Heavyweight Design Champion:
LinkedIn Profile:

Priya Prakash, MA (RCA) Computer Related Design, 2001.
O’Reilly Conference:
Priyascape blog:
Nesta Award:

Diana Irani, MPhil (RCA) Constructed Textiles, 2002.
Constructed Textiles:
Nesta Award:

Pratap Bose, MA Vehicle Design, 2003
RCA Degree Show 2003:
Box Car comment:

Bikram Mittra, MA Design Products, 2007
Bikram Mittra profile:

Animation has been a dominent area of collaboration in recent years. Nina Sabnani participated in the Helen Hamlyn conference for Design for our Future Selves in 2005 and several RCA faculty and students from RCA Animation Department traveled to India and interacted with NID faculty and student teams under an ongoing relationship under an MOU between the two schools.
Helen Hamlyn conference :

Picture: Anab Jain at RCA in 2004

According to Professor Sandra Kemp, Director of Research at the RCA, I quote from her email communication “Our strongest link with NID is through our Animation Department: - the RCA MA Animation course has had a working teaching exchange going for some years now. Over the years several Animation 2nd year students have been in Ahmedabad for 2 week teaching experiences at the NID Animation undergraduate course. All students enjoyed their stay in India a lot and they all came back with valuable experience. In return the MA Animation course had several exchange students on the course, such as Lucky Vakharia in 2007. The Head of Department, Professor Joan Ashworth and the AHRC Research Fellow Deborah Levy have both visited NID to run workshops, along with one of our Visiting Lecturers, Christine Roche. UnQuote

The following NID graduates have done their animation or media related courses from the RCA in recent years.
Sandeep Channarayapatna, MA Animation, 2004
Teheran Film Festival:

Anab Jain, MA Computer Related Design, 2005
Anab Jain website:
Anab Jain RCA portfolio:
Anab Jain's new website

Meghana Bisineer, MA Animation, 2006
Meghana Bisineer resume:
At RCA summer show:

Pooja Pottenkulam, MA Animation, 2006
Pooja Pottenkulam RCA showcase:

Anitha Balachandran, MA Animation, due to graduate 2008

The previous two posts about the linkages with RCA London can be seen here. The Early Years: Linkages with NID & Indian Design and next the Linkages with NID & Indian Design: Major Influences

Royal College of Art (RCA): Linkages with NID & Indian Design: Major Influences (Part 2/3)

Influences in the formative years at NID and in India

Picture: NID Lawns and Building

The design world has been a rather small place with a lot of exchange of ideas and with a considerable movement of people and ideas across boundaries, even during and after the wars. We now know that Charles Eames visited Ulm and interacted with Max Bill at about the same time as Raynor Banham and Bruce Archer traveled from London to teach at the great German school. Archer was a researcher and teacher at the RCA at that time in the early fifties before the setting up of the NID in Ahmedabad. Eames wrote the India Report in 1958, exactly 50 years ago, and his contacts with teachers at Ulm and the RCA must have shaped his ideas about design for a country like India when he worked on the report that proposed the National Institute of Design as a way forward for India in a period of rapid transition. That Charles Eames may have been influenced by the Ulm and RCA teachers is not documented but from the sequence of events that led to the India Report we can conjecture that Eames connected with both these great institutions before he finalized the concept of a National Design Institute for India in 1958.

NID Documentation 1964-69 (download pdf 25 mb) lists two people from the RCA of having contributed to the programmes at NID in the formative years. P P Hancock, wood working expert from the RCA was involved in the setting up workshops and furniture traditions at NID who contributed to training NID staff alongside George Nakashima whose furniture was batch produced by the NID workshops and Arno Vottler who was assigned the task of formulating the Furniture Design education at NID of which I was a student in the first batch, joining in 1969.

Bob Gill, Lecturer in Advertising & Public Communication, RCA and a professional designer of repute was involved Family Planning workshop and contributed to graphic design thinking dealing with substance and meaning rather than just form. Social communication was already at the top of the NID agenda in the early 60’s but most of the projects that came from professional contracts dealt with symbols and logos for Indian corporate entities, and a great many of such projects were carried out by the NID graphic design teachers and students.

Maxwell Fry & Jane Drew, visited NID in the early years of my study at NID and I remember attending their lecture at NID auditorium. According to Christopher Frayling in his book, Professor Fry and Jack Pritchard were responsible for bringing Walter Gropuis to London in 1934 to explore the possibility of his contributing to RCA education in art and design which did not however fructify due to the politics of the times.
Jane Drew Wiki:
Maxwell Fry Wiki:

For me the other reminder of the RCA influence on NID was the Ark magazine, a student journal from the RCA, copies of which were available at NID library, and a wonderful influence on some of us who were eager to know more about the nature of design in our formative years at NID. I was then involved in editing the first student magazine at NID, called SNID (Students National Institute of Design) in 1969 and 1970 along with a few colleagues, and I believe the effort was directly motivated by the presence of the Ark in our library and through our discussions of the contributions through our “bakwas committee”, or informal chat group as it was fondly called, which sat for hours on end at the Old Madras Café just outside the NID main gate in Paldi, to discuss all matters NID and design in those heady days of learning and exchange. The other influence was the Design Methods course conducted by Prof Kumar Vyas which was modeled after the structure proposed by Bruce Archer in his papers titled “Systematic Method for Designers”, 1964, a rare copy of which is in the NID library.

Bruce Archer, one of the pioneers of Design Research and the Design Methods movement as a faculty at the RCA visited NID with a mission to deliver in person the Sir Misha Black Award to Mr. Ashoke Chatterjee for excellence in design education that was recognized at the National Institute of Design. Ashoke Chatterjee joined a long list of awardees and he has been active in his interactions with the RCA ever since and this has contributed to the strengthening of the relationship between the NID and the RCA.
Prof Bruce Archer Wiki:
Sir Misha Black Wiki:

Christopher Conford, Head of General Studies at RCA formulated a programme which was called Science & Liberal Arts programme at NID and the formulation was carried in an incisive report left behind after his brief visit to the Institute.

The other person of significance mentioned to me by Askoke Chatterjee in his recent communication was Frank Height who according to AC is “the most important remaining link with the great years of Misha Black and design education at RCA”. AC attended the Misha Black memorial Dinner in London in March 2008 for the award ceremony for this year.

Sir Christopher Freyling visited India in 2001 and participated in the CII NID Design Summit at Bangalore and followed it with a visit to NID, Ahmednabad to sign an MOU on an era of cooperation between NID and the RCA.

Picture: Prof John Chris Jones at the British Library in 2004

I was happy to meet John Chris Jones in London during my visit there in 2004. We met in the British Library which was the location suggested by him for a meeting that was set up over a round of email communications prior to my visit. I had written to John Chris many years earlier when a former student of mine who was studying at the RCA told me that he was the best person who could help us formulate new directions for the use of digital resources at the IICD Jaipur where I was officiating as the Director. Nagraj Seshadri had told me that JCJ was perhaps the only person in the late 90’s who had a deep understanding of the internet and could help us develop strategies for its use in the crafts sector in India. I wrote to him and shared our IICD reports with him but due to his involvement with the book, Internet and Everyone, at that time he was not able to participate with that effort. However he had been a strong influence as part of the Design Methods movement and his book on the subject and hid other books were much sought after at NID in the 70’s till date. Now many NID students regularly catch up with his writings on the web at his website called Softopia.
JCJ Softopia:
JCJ on wiki:
JCJ conversation on NextD:
JCJ Design Methods on wiki:

Jasper Morrison – Furniture Designer visited NID very briefly and I spent one evening with him at Ahmedabad over dinner at a friends home. He is one of the influential young minds that RCA has produced and his influence is very strong through his work as well as his exhibitions such as “Super Normal” which was curated with Naoto Fukasawa.
Super Normal at Vitra 2008:
Jasper and Naoto Dialogue:

The other contemporary influence from the RCA was that of James Dyson – Product Designer, particularly through his book “Against the Odds” which is widely read at NID and all the design schools around the world
Dyson.com:
Dyson on Dexigner:
Dyson on RCA pages:
James Dyson Foundation:
Dyson School:

The other significant alumni of the RCA from India include Uday Shankar – Choreographer and Dance and Dhruv Mistry – Sculpture.

This post is the second of three such posts where the first deals with the early years of RCA and the influences on world design and the third with contemporary influences and the creation of a new generation of international designers from India.