Seagull & Frogy

 

A Seagull in one of its vagabond flights lands on the wall of a well. He wonders what is this and there is water deep inside within parched stone wall, never seen something like this before!!

Sees a Frog swimming in it and asks’ “Hey what is this place?” Frogy replies "it’s a Well, well! These bucket people call it so!"

Seagull “ Ooo! …do you like its here?”

Frogy, sitting its side walk the of the wall, “ Well!! I don’t know… there are predators here sometimes and a bucket which falls in unexpectedly to draw my water, dangerous for my kids and family and my friends!!”

Seagull “Friends! In here? Who are they….?”

Frogy “ My friends, Wormy, Snaky, Goldy Fish (my love interest, btw!, don’t tell my wife 😉) and many others…..”

Frogy “Btw where are you from!!”

Seagull “ Oo me!”

Frogy “Yep”.

Seagull “ I come from the blue sky and blue seas and wild breeze and winds and sunshine”

Frogy, Wow!! And tell me what you do there!!

Seagull, “I fly in blue sky, do acrobats with the wind, romance with myself and with your Goldy fish look alike Birdy of mine 😉”

Frogy “ Oooo!!”

Seagull “Ok buddy, time to go…”

Frogy “Hey wait, take me with you for a ride, I can see your places too…”

Seagull “Sure, Leap out of here to my wings”.

Frogy “ Yaaa!! Hmm!! Now you mean.  Let me think, …I don’t know!! What about tomorrow, 2 PM?”

Seagull “Nai…who has seen tomorrow! I am off buddy.....(flying off the wall, says) “btw watch out for the bucket dropping, and say Hi to your Goldy fish 😊”

Ravishankar - Feb 2023

Silent Unknowns

So many things happening at the same time….startup India, NEP, hackethons, online programmes, WFHs, Home deliveries, E-com Apps, Bit currency, Instagram reels, Research funds, incubators by the corner, AI, MI, DL and all, ….govt schemes, twitter habituals, SDGs, Metaverse, Yoga, Drone tech, ….you may add more.

Meanwhile, Krishna, 28, 8th std pass, a very bright, intelligent and diligent man, who is my help at home, during the day is a freelance dailywage. Rainy day is a bad day for him, misses his 400 rupees, sunny day is good if he is lucky to find work!! There are many many Krishnas and Kamalas in the urban diaspora, support rungs of the rotor, silent unknowns in the flux and fluff.

Can we please PAUSE and set priorities in order and say, Ok what are those things best for us all and that we are good at doing and do that for us all. Not be wannabe in Everything and work on settling Kamalas and Krishnas for a comfortable living !!

Ravishankar - Nov 2022

DESIGN MIND

 

What you decide in the beginning to be and what you do at the end is the same, is not a design mind.

What you imagine in the beginning and what you let it manifest to be in the end, is a design mind.

Ravishankar Dec 2020

MY NEW SILVER CARDS

My Hypothesis on new age design professions…

Artist Designers – Scenography designers, Character & Avatar artists & designers, Graphics, Furniture, Artifacts

Product Designers – Interactions & experience designers, Gesture & Movement designers, artifacts with personalised character and behaviour designers, CMFs and details designers, Form & Expression givers, Design strategists, Universal Designers

Clothing designers – Textiles, Fibres, Material Designers, Ensemblers, Indigenous Crafts, Lifestylers, Accessorisers, Stylists

Communication Designers - Conversation & Language designers, Inclusive Designers, Message & Content designers, Navigation designers, Information designers, Creative controllers, Brand designers, Media Strategists

Tech Designers – Experimenters, Makers, Prototypers, Detail & expression givers, AI Designers, IOT, Extended Reality creators

Concept Designers – Setters of new design & Innovation directions, Trend setters, Design Futurists, Story Tellers, Dreamers

Social Designers – Contextual Thinkers, Human, Environment, Sustainability centred, Digital Humanities

Service Designers – Service Blueprint designers, Inclusive designers, Self enterprise model designers, Experience designers

System Designers – Complex Problem Solvers, Strategists, Design Management, Policy makers, Design Lifecycle planners

Ravishankar April 2022

To Critic is easy !

Design as a profession is Persuasive, not authoritarian

It’s all pervasive all during the day while you walk up or switch to work, and if you imagine or claim to be a Designer, Appreciate the well done or resolve, participatorily if it needs correction. (Participative Design is an act/skill of being detached yet an empathetic approach if you have the mind for it and navigate it to its end elegance of what triggered you to engage in). Correction is about whether holistically the design is working in terms of functionality, meaningful usefulness at large, is elegantly done and is inclusive.

Ravishankar, Jan 2023

My notes on North East ...

Existential vs Sustainable/lity is the quintessential of the region NE…., so it needs to be taken ahead in the context of quote-unquote development in a way such that…Position it the way satisfying aspirations of the ethnic urban bred and inclusive of the local demography of ( sustenance and existential) through meta-laws and whatever to empower and Sustain its ‘existential commerce’. NE and so do many parts of this land on the globe people live on. On and on. 

Industry of the non environment polluting kind, that which is about: Self sustenance of products and services which are intrinsic to the region culturally, a Destination of Ayur for example, of Liberal Art, IT Resource industry, Tourism reimagined as a get away! with pace of life with nature…few directions…

Excerpt from my writing in progress...

- Ravishankar | Notepad | August 2022.

System Theory Paradox

We begin with abilities and then develop in capabilities and mediocrity to deal with the systems and procedures we have created around ourselves. 

Any system stabilises to mediocrity of status quo.

Disrupters come in once in a while, and nonconformists, many struggle in the system and die, the few left do whatever….. for a new familiar system which stabilises again to mediocrity… 

Present continuous Chaos is the order of the universe. 

A mindless continuity.

- August 2022 from my Notepad

Design Process in the Field

• Pick/work-given on area of Intervention 
• Data-Information-Knowledge 
• Go on into the field - validate, discover - Analyze | Synthesize | Intent
• Design 
• Give the design to the concerned and move to next.

Plain and Simplified for the designer to interpret. 

 Pics: NID Assam, ID 3rd year students, WIP, Bamboo Design Mini Project Guided by Dipanka & Akshay & Khan

In a D school, an explanation to each of these may be good by the mentor and the design head in a company.  Its about the fluid nature of the PROCESS which the designer is aware and comfortable with and in dealing with the stories and aspirations of many subjects she/he meets during the process. The assimilation of it leading to the INTENT conceived and the rational while scripting the draft of intent and way forward during the process go parallel in the  stages of the project. 

14 Nov 2022 from my Notepad

Kamala

Airports are like railway stations today, some are like bus terminals/stands. Airports you find, dressed up people, surrounded by brands of eateries, L/S products, etc and the smell of the eatery. They are all the same people, who once travelled by train or buses while their young ones I felt, some who never travelled on land! 

While I enjoy the comfort of air travel, I reminisce the time drawn train journeys and hopping in buses moving from district to districts with windows blowing wind on your face, the paradigm is similar maybe for the young today :) of my age then, of air travel today to them. 

Meanwhile we have the first time travelers from airports like Kamala, the whole sequence of entry to airport then to the platform of checks and to the plane and the aspect of flying 37k feet above and the instructions and the strange food and the stoic next seater and the feeling of not being part of fellow travelers who look like you btw and the amount spent for this new mode, I can just go on more about this new flying guest ! 

In this flow of writing I recalled another montage of memory. In Chennai once, I went to a big 5 floor super mall in T Nagar. I wanted to buy a white shirt, of a popular brand which was on the 5th floor. I walked in to the entry floor to the elevators. Waiting for the elevator, I noticed this young lady in her early 20s, in a synthetic printed saree, looking lost and in anxiety by the intimidating scale of the mall, she seemed a daily wage earner of her family. She didn’t know where to go, as in which floor. The lift attendant noticed her and in their conversation in Tamil, I heard her saying what she wanted to buy and the attendant said, go to the 1st floor. The mall had merchandise price vice on each floor.

I cannot forget her and her face even today. My heart sank forever, when she said, school uniforms for her two kids, and she I knew, is the daily earner at home and the whole world she is imagining ahead of her …., I went back to the hotel and cried that day. 

I still do when I think of her. 

Ravishankar, 11 Nov 2022 - Notepad

Attendance in Class!

 Is it a tick of an attendance in the stipulated time for the student to come in and be in the classroom or about ‘Being Present’ in the discourse.

…'How engaging is the discourse for me to be attentive/absorbed in it !’…'It’s so engaging that I drift away physically  from that stipulated space pursuing the thought provoked by the engager, working on it in spaces of my choice. I am Present in the class :)’ the tutor is so engaging … 

Now in the stipulated frameworks of academics and its standardised prescriptive structure where teaching, learning  are bound, the variant is the learner who is in transition of schooling oneself, while learnette, the teacher is constrained by the stipulation.

Institution of higher education (NEP) must address this paradigm of the quality of Engagement and Presence of the pupil in the engagement. And not worry about attendance, a term which may not play a role in the pupil’s performance.

This writing above fails maybe, when you have 100 like students and one teacher in the class.

So shouldn’t we then reinterpret by design, the learning means, the environment, the content structure and the channels of tutoring orchestrated by the tutor, with the sole intent of Engagement, Presence and Learning. The 3 entities for performance. 

⁃ this is inspired from Osho talk I heard once who has said to his teacher ‘I am always present…..'

5 FOCI OF DESIGN

Preoccupations & State of mind

Interfaces & Comprehension

Dignity & Independence

Self-worth & Pride

Experience Closure

 

Look at Potential, not the Product

Traditional Creative Industry | An Abstract which was written for a proposed paper.

The paper and the supporting case studies of work done in the ‘Indian handicraft sector’ (the term which will be re interpreted later by the author) envisions a way forward for the sector’s future sustenance.

To begin with it rewinds briefly to the pre and post Gandhian thought of an industrial containment of Indian maker of things (professional skill/wrutti) who supported the needs of customers indigenously, locally and traditionally. In the introduction it describes the present scenario of Govt. and corporate sector intervention to scale up the handicraft business through schemes, etc and its affects at a micro and macro level.

Hand-Craft in India in the past has been an industry which was indigenous and catered to localized needs. Today by calling it craft it is being placed in a glorified situation, thereby isolating it and non inclusive in the mainstream of manufacturing business.

The change with industrial and globalization, has been inevitable and will be in the future, therefore reinterpreting and repositioning of craft in India in the truly modern sense will set the course for its sustainability. When one says craft, it binds culture, livelihood, design and local people sustaining on it today. Craft in India has been wrutti  (trade) based: an acumen of the traditional, practiced typically by Vishwakarma families making essentials for rituals and utilitarian practiced by other trade communities for day to day use. Their artifacts and products had and still have a strong sense of aesthetics, manufacturing process and functionality.

It is essentially about, ‘craft’ reinterpreted as ‘Traditional Creative Industry’. The tacit and inherited knowledge and acumen of the young talented human resource belonging to this community, their future engagement with the new market can be shown by design, the possibilities of lateral connect between new markets, technologies and the inherited acumen.  To illustrate an example, the traditional painted dolls and furniture makers of Kinhal and Gokak in Karnataka and Nirmal in Telangana in India, a community called Chitragars  (artists) from the pre Vijayanagara  empire period have been practising artisans even today. Their inborn artistic sensibilities channeled to present creative technology industry like the animation industry media would be meaningful. In similar trail, sandal wood products and fashion industry, bamboo products which were traditionally livelihood utilities as your home based organizers with material alternatives.  Thus, the emphasis on the ‘potential’ of the practicing communities rather than the ‘product’ to cast its future sustenance through other market and technology centric feasible directions and connects. This would bring in quality and value to the products conceived in the future with the approach of ‘letting people who are good at it, make it’. And the attributes of their acumen for the making would be, passed on tacit and learnt knowledge, the craftness of interpreting material manipulation, and making and the inherent sensibilities of aesthetic. Its about taking the sector into its next paradigm through the Young Artisan of the present and future.

First draft written in Dec 2011.

What’s the Conscience of an Institution

It comes from the collective us.
What is it that we dream or think or feel of its being.
In its day to day fluidness
In its tomorrow to be, an orbit to sustain and the day after for its trajectory.
With its presence of the dreamt, action and felt conscience.

I phrased Conscience as an entity, rather than saying Vision and mission.

One must state and experience the Conscience of their Institution or it be an enterprise or government.
This aspect maybe the preferred state, next paradigm of future holistic humanistic sustenance, with all our choices of joy and freewill.

design is a creative exercise 

The Birth of Design as a professional and ‘modern’ domain of perusal (! ;)) has had many definitions by ‘virtue’ of the freedom and method with which professionals pursued it (few in isolation and others on the hard ground) 
 It’s about making it beautiful, while beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as said …… pre ‘modern design' (a historical shift) makers made things beautiful and functional with mind and heart, an intrinsic outcome. Often, logical process is confused as design (eg: UI, etc), ….romantic (some read as irrational) is where design thought germinates and fruits in the rational hard ground. 
In the process of designing, the time to take the creative leap is like the event horizon ‘slip’ ….which is personal and intuitive (outcome of what was incubating in the mind and a heart to go for it). 
Design teaching is not easy …. every student has a concept or idea which needs to be coursed through without your influence yet in a path of intent which is discovered as a “yes moment” by the ‘pupil’ and you have still to be informed enough yourself to direct considering if it’s the right course!! Every student has a pace of design learning and discovery; we need to give them the time….in design pedagogy.
Kumar Vyas, the design Guru at NID, would always react to your design as “maybe...I don't know”!! and smile. 

Take a walk around the Brand

On a different note discussions on his project with Abhishek of the future car dashboard design for a high end prestigious iconic brand which he is signing up for, I got trippy. Went about talking, “most often designers doing UX in a team dominant with techies tend to become incrementally different from engineers in the design process, they follow standard templates of styling, trends, navigation, UI and so on in arriving at the interface solutions. Take a detour, deal with the intangible in conceptualizing the UX, take a walk around the brand and ask. What would be the right interaction gesture for this iconic brand, what is the tone of audio feedback for this brand, how would this brand converse with me, what could be the visual gleam and texture of this brand, how will the material interaction of this brand behave and respond?”