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.




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.

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.
http://www.ahmedabad.com/news/2k1/nov/29nid.htm

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 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: http://www.softopia.demon.co.uk/
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: < http://www.vitra.com/en-gb/collage/design/making-things-visible/page-1/>
Jasper and Naotao Dialogue < http://2021supernormal.wordpress.com/dialogue-defining-super-normal-jasper-and-naoto/>

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 < http://www.dyson.com/>
Dyson on Dexigner: < http://www.dexigner.com/product/news-g13869.html>
Dyson on RCA pages: < http://www.rca.ac.uk/pages/news/sir_james_dyson_and_4044.html>
James Dyson Foundation: < http://www.jamesdysonfoundation.com/>
Dyson School: < http://www.jamesdysonfoundation.com/>

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.

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.

Royal College of Art (RCA): Linkages with NID & Indian Design: Early Years (Part 1/3)

Royal College of Art, London and its significance to the world of design

Picture: Prof M P Ranjan in his office at NID. Pic by Darrag Murphy and Gisele Raulik

I have written about the strong linkages between the German design schools of the Bauhaus and the HfG Ulm with their education philosophy and teaching methods at the National Institute of Design earlier. I have outlined these influences in some detail in my paper that was presented at the DETM conference at NID in March 2005. The paper and presentation can be downloaded from here. (Paper pdf 69 kb) (Presentation Show pdf 2.5 mb)

While these two German schools have had a huge influence on world design, especially in the educational space, we will need to look at the influences of the Royal College of Art (RCA, London) in the shaping of world design as we know it today and in particular I will use this occasion to look at the influences of the RCA on Indian design education and research.

Picture: The great London Taxi (left) and The Royal College of Art on the web.

According to the RCA communication, I quote:

"The Royal College of Art is a very special kind of ideas factory.

It is the world's only wholly postgraduate university institution of art and design which specialises in teaching and research, offering MA, MPhil and PhD degrees across the disciplines of fine art, applied art, design, communications and humanities.

Over 850 masters and doctoral students drawn from all around the world interact with a teaching staff of over 100 professionals, all being leading art and design practitioners in their own right. It is therefore one of the most concentrated communities of artists and designers to be found anywhere on the planet.

Along with an impressive roll call of visiting professors, lecturers and advisors, students are given first-class opportunities for major collaborations with cultural and industrial partners. It all adds up to a creative environment that's unrivalled elsewhere."

UnQuote.

Historically, the events that led to the construction of the Crystal Palace in 1850 in London and the conduct of the Great Exhibition of 1951 launched the industrial revolution and also set the stage for the entry for design as a major partner with industry of the day. The British Government took cognizance of this influence and decided to invest in design and art education to help the process of assimilation of these new ideas into industry so that British industry continued to hold a leadership position in world trade with the use of these special skill sets.

The Royal College of Art was set up in 1837 as the Government School of Design with the charter of training designers for the industry as a national responsibility. The history of the great school has been captured and made accessible through the book “The Royal College of Art: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Art and Design”, by Christopher Frayling, Barry & Jenkins, London, 1987. I will not repeat what the book does admirably, that of documenting the illustrious students, Professors and administrators of the school but try and explore the connections between this great school and the NID, which was the first design school set up by the Government of India.

In the two following posts I will expand on the major influences during the formative years of Indian design movement and in another post deal with the contemporary influences with exchange and collaborative between the RCA and Indian design schools, particularly the NID. The second post deals with the formative years of Indian design while the third post with the contemporary exchanges and the creation of new generation of international designers from India.

CAD File Formats

Since there is a lot of confusion about CAD files, I thought some of this would be helpful.

Almost every CAD program has their own binary CAD format. And most CAD formats have many versions! For example, AutoCAD 12 cannot read AutoCAD 14 DWG any more than Word 97 can read Office XP docs.See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:CAD_file_formats

There are some "more or less generic formats" used for exchange. Here are some:
DXF (many versions over the years)
IGES (Current version 5.3 ?)
STEP (*.stp - be careful of this one - several versions called "application protocols)
STL (for polygon models)
XYZ (just coordinate data for "point cloud")
DWG (Autodesk proprietary made public by ODA see http://www.opendwg.com/)
ACIS *.sat 3D Solid ModelsParasolid x_t 3D Solid Models
HPGL - Hewlett Packard Plotting data files
SVG - A new XML vector data format, could be used in CAD

That's just the tip of the iceberg.Almost every CAD has their own format:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CAD_companies

It is possible to convert between CAD formats. Several things are required. Both formats must support the entities (CAD object types) that are being converted. A software program is also need that can provide the actual translation. CADDIT is a regional distributor for TransMagic CAD Translation Software, as well as providing CAD conversion services themselves.

Paddle For A Flea

The girls need a paddle to go along with their new kayak, so we started to build one. First, I drew a paper template based largely on what just looked right. I used mom's Grey Owl kayak paddle as a point of reference for blade size, and made the template about 2/3 of the adult paddle. Unlike the adult paddle, the kid's paddle is symmetrical so that there is no right or left side to it, simplifying it's use. The paper template was folded in half (to ensure symmetry) and cut out, then the shape drawn onto some 1/8" birch plywood I had left over from the cockpit coaming of the guillemot. The blades were then cut out using the band saw, and sanded to the line. Once the blades were ready, the girls took over, each putting her unique artistic style on one of the blades.




I used some leftover cedar from building the frame of the Sea Flea for the shaft of the paddle. The piece was 1.5" x 1.5" and I cut it down to 150 cm long (Grey Owl sells a kids paddle that is 150 cm long). Using a bandsaw, I cut a curve into the end 15" of the paddle shaft blank to give the blades a curved shape, and cut the shaft so that it is 1" in the height dimension and 1 1/8" in width dimension. The full 1.5" height of the shaft blank was maintained at the paddle blades but the thickness tapers to a point at the ends. I should have taken some pictures of the paddle blank as it was being shaped but I didn't.

Prior to attaching the blades I also rounded the shaft. First, I marked the shaft as described in Warren & Gidmark's paddle building book using an easily constructed spar gauge (also described in the book). I then, with help from my daughter, planed down the four corners to give an octagon in cross section. We then took down those eight corners to give a 16-sided shaft which was sanded smooth to oval. On Wednesday evening I glued the blades onto the paddle blank using colloidal silica-thickened epoxy and I have since begun to shape the part of the shaft that backs the blade. Ideally, there will be no corners, just smooth flowing lines. The paddle shaft will flow into a thickened backing of the blade. In reality, I'm not sure how achievable this is as the shaft backing the blade is only 1.5" wide, much narrower than the rest of the blade which is 1/8" thick.

After the shaping is completed, the blades will be glassed with 4-ounce cloth on the front, and possibly on the back as well. The glass on the front will strengthen the paddle as well as protect the artwork. I am considering adding some aluminum or copper wire to the edge in order to add a degree of protection since it's certain the paddle will see hard use and the blade edges will take the brunt of that. It's ironic that due to their lesser strength, the paddle must be as light as possible, yet due to their lesser coordination, the paddle must also be as tough as possible.

More pictures will follow soon.

A Hole In The Boat!, or The Red-Hot Screw!

Aaaarrrghhh!

Last week I cut off the ends of the too-long machine screws that attach the coaming. About 1/2" too long, the machine screws extended down into the coaming and the ends scratched my daughter's legs when she was trying out the kayak in the pool. I used my dremel with a cut-off wheel to cut about 3/8" off of the installed screws. The first one dropped a red-hot piece of machine screw onto the seat and I realised that I had better do something to catch the cut-offs lest they fall onto the PVC fabric. The second one did the same thing and I had the same thought. The third one fell between the seat pieces and, surprise, surprise, burned a hole tight through the hull. I'm sure it would have been funny seeing me run into the house to grab a coffee cup of water and dump it (way too late to be effective) into the kayak only to have all of the water flow out of the nice clean hole melted in the fabric.

After that learning experience, I was finally motivated to prevent more holes. I used a wet rag laid out in the cockpit to catch the smoking hot screw pieces (wet to quickly cool the cut-offs and prevent the rag from burning). I also spread my cutting around a little more, cutting the screws nearly through then coming back to them later for a short final cut preventing the pieces from getting quite so hot. Once cutoff, the sharp ends of the machine screws were covered with an acorn nut.

The picture below shows the full-length stainless steel machine screws, the locking nuts, the acorn nuts and the cut off pieces, as well as the dremel with cut-off wheel.

Below, a freshly trimmed machine screw. The tube to inflate the bow flotation bag can be seen.

Below, a machine screw with locking nut and acorn nut.
The nice clean hole, about 1/4" in diameter, created by a piece of red-hot screw.

The patch to fix the hole, perhaps the last item to complete the kayak, installed this evening. The patch is about 2" by 1", many times larger than the actual hole, and is adjacent to the keel line.
By the way, the Yost-designed Sea Flea I think is now officially done. I'll take some pictures and post them soon. In addition to adding the patch, this evening I finished the outriggers. The girls and I are now working on a paddle.

progeCAD CAD Free CD Give Away Offer

CADDIT Software is offering a free CD to those requesting one within Australia and New Zealand. The complimentary CD provides the same trial version of our most popular CAD products. The CDs are for those who have problems to download the applications for one reason or another. There are free trail CDs available for:

progeCAD Professional 2008
T-FLEX CAD CAM Software

Users can request the free CAD Software CD trials on the CADDIT website HERE.

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This is a limited offer to Australia and New Zealand customers only.

Autodesk denied Summary Judgement in USA Court Ruling

Autodesk was defeated in the first round of this battle in Seattle US District Court, May 21 2008:

Read Vernor versus Autodesk Judgement Announcement

Interestingly, Autodesk is also resorting to more and more desperate measures to attack the Open Design Alliance:

http://www.adskvoda.com/Docket/tabid/55/Default.aspx

The issues around this ruling are complex and a final district ruling is not due until June. But it could serve as an important benchmark for similarly licensed software sold by other companies. Such decisions can ultimately challenge the legal position that software EULA take, restricting the customer's use of software they have paid for. That being said, many modern software programs like AutoCAD still require an activation from the vendor for each new installation. I offer one guess as to whether Autodesk would nicely re-activate a used serial of AutoCAD 2006 that someone buys "arguably legally", but second-hand.

Update March 23 2009:
A federal district judge in Washington State handed down an important decision this week on shrink-wrap license agreements and the First Sale Doctrine. Read more HERE.

Update April 2009:
As reported on CADnauseam, new facts in this case are emerging. Apparently "Vernor was selling software that effectively didn’t exist. He was selling used copies of Release 14, when those copies had already been upgraded to AutoCAD 2000". If true, then certainly we will definitely have to look for better examples to rally around. CADDIT in NO WAY condones the sale by another of software already upgraded by the original buyer for that first party's own ongoing use unless expressly permitted by the copyright holder.

To swim or not to swim to safety in cold water

In Canada, 2007 people died from cold water immersion between the years 1991 and 2000.

Last summer researchers published a study which addressed the question of what the best approach should be for those who find themselves immersed in cold water after a boating accident. The Ducharme and Lounsbury (2007) article, from which the opening statement above was taken, reviews the available literature in order to verify or improve the advice offered to those of us who head out on water that is often cold.

A National Research Council press release summarizes some of the important points taken from the research article:

1. Stay calm. Unless you're wearing an immersion suit, you'll experience cold shock when you go into cold water due to rapid cooling of the skin. You won't be able to control your breathing, and you won't get far if you try to swim at this point. Your breathing will return to normal in two to three minutes.
2. Make a plan. While you're waiting for the cold shock to subside, consider your situation and decide whether to swim or stay.
3. If you decide to swim, look for the shore and decide if you can make it. Most people who participated in the researchers' studies could swim between 800 and 1500 metres in cold water, or for 45 minutes, before the muscles in their arms and legs cooled to the point that they could no longer swim.
4. If you decide to stay, try to get out of the water as much as possible. Complete any tasks that require the use of your hands, such as tying knots or turning on flares, as soon as possible. As your hands cool, they lose dexterity.
5. Stick to your decision-don't change your mind midway. After over 30 minutes in cold water, you may become hypothermic, and you won't make the best decisions.

I briefly experienced the cold shock described in point number one a few weeks ago after dumping in the Garden River. It was an interesting sensation for sure and I'm glad that I experienced it five feet from shore in four feet of water rather than 500 feet from shore in deep water. Regarding the cold shock response and the difficulty in breathing that ensues, Ducharme and Lounsbury point out that "people must remain almost vertical during the initial phase of immersion in an effort to avoid drowning." So, if you dump, don't panic and immediately swim for shore. Take a few moments to get your wits and your breath, then make a decision on how to save yourself. I wonder how many drowning deaths in cold water are related to that single factor.

Another interesting point from the research article, hypothermia does not set in as quickly as commonly believed. A swimmer in cold water may have 45 minutes before cooling of the muscles leads to incapacitation, not hypothermia. The authors also address swimming technique. Legs-only swimming is slow and uses a large amount of energy. Using the arms increases the rate of heat loss, but the pace of swimming is greatly increased and the authors conclude that "if one decides to swim for it in a cold water temperature (below 15 °C), the chosen pace should be as fast as possible."

The researchers also point out that due to the greater heat loss in the water, it is always best to get as much of the body out of the water as possible, even if your lower body remains in the water (such as lying on an overturned canoe). Another factor is clothing, and even though the clothes will slow down a swimmer, they will also slow the heat loss and are therefore valuable.

I would like to add one more point. If you find yourself immersed in water cold enough to result in experiencing a "cold shock response," you better have a pfd on or quite probably none of the above will matter!

Ducharme, M.B., and Lounsbury, S. 2007. Self-rescue swimming in cold water: the latest advice. Appl. Physiol. Nutr. Metab. 32(4): 799–807

For more on cold water immersion, check out the web site of University of Manitoba professor Dr. Geisbrecht. Watch the videos, they are worth the time.

South Saskatchewan River Ecocanoe Tour Map Guide

The Meewasin Valley Authority has recently made the South Saskatchewan River Ecocanoe Tour Map Guide available online in pdf form. This series of maps is an excellent resource for paddling the South Sask from Gardiner Dam to the Forks. Originally published in 1998, it has been out of print and unavailable for some years now.The guide breaks down the trip into sections or "reaches" each of which can be paddled in a day (usually a short day but that might depend on the section and on the wind). It provides information on access points, historical highlights of each region, and points of interest along the way. The original version was published on large paper sheets (11x17) with the map on the front, and the extra information on the back, with all of the sheets packaged in a folder so that you can take just the relevant sheets when paddling certain sections.
The maps can be found on the Meewasin Valley Authority web site.

12/6/08 Update: I just realised that the guide available online so far only covers Gardiner Dam to Saskatoon. I called the Meewasin Valley Authority this morning and they tell me that the second half of the guide (Saskatoon to the Forks) should be available online soon (two weeks?). Also, the MVA will be making black and white photocopies of the guide and will have them available at the MVA office for $10 to cover the cost of printing. I wonder how much it would cost to have a company like Mondrian print colour copies of the guide? (I have sent them a query by e-mail.)

Torch River 2008

My wife, our eldest daughter, & I went up to the Torch River again for the third year in a row, this time with a group from the Saskatoon Canoe Club. Last year we had snow the day before, highs of about 10C and muddy roads, impassable for our Honda Accord. This year things were looking better. The forecast for this weekend was excellent with highs of 22C and nothing but sunshine for the foreseeable future. With lots of hats and sun protection packed, we were prepared for a beautiful two days of paddling this small river. In the morning before leaving PA we woke to gray skies and an altered forecast.

The gravel and dirt roads in to the river were quite the contrast to last year's mud. Clouds of dust billowed behind the train of vehicles. As we neared the put-in just a few small drops were falling from the sky. We were on the water a few minutes after noon and within a couple of minutes the rain began. The rain was light but steady through the entire paddle and the temperatures dropped throughout the afternoon.
Nonetheless, the paddle was good. The "North Loop" of the Torch River is scenic, though we perhaps didn't revel in it the same way we might have had it been a bit warmer and drier. There are a few sections of riffles and class 1 rapids, and one good section of rapids right where a creek flows in from the north. It was at this section of rapids that I was unable to avoid one large wave. Knowing we were going to hit it, I decided to hit it straight and punch through. My wife, on the other hand, had her own ideas and did her best to counteract my efforts. Unfortunately, our daughter was sitting on the floor at the bow with an umbrella over her. The umbrella did not protect her from the wave as it poured over the bow, but it did compromise my wife's ability to paddle through the rapid. The added weight of having the girl in the bow would certainly have made matters worse, causing the bow to plunge deeper into the standing wave. She was not too happy about that particular bit of excitement. Once safely below the set of rapids we went to shore and our daughter donned a dry set of clothing (special thanks to Sheri for her help).

We finished the afternoon without further mishap, though the drizzle continued. Just as we arrived at the day's take-out, the drizzle tapered off to a mist, perhaps even stopping and the sun nearly peaked through the thinned clouds. However, this was just a tease and the drizzle returned. My wife & I decided to head back to PA that evening as we were running out of dry clothes for our daughter and the lining of her rain jacket was wet. If we had good weather for the next day, we would have been OK, but we didn't trust the forecast (which predicted better weather). We also had some concern about getting out on the muddy roads after any further rainfall, especially after Jay had already gotten his van stuck about 12 feet after leaving the take-out. As it turned out, our decision was good. Last night it rained all night in Prince Albert (about 100 km from the Torch River) and today was wet and cool (10-11C through most of the afternoon). I suspect that a couple of those that did stay might have had similar troubles on the road, though each of the vehicles that remained (a Toyota 4-Runner, a Dodge 3/4-ton 4x4, a full-size chev van) was much more capable than our small station wagon.

The participants in this year's excursion to the Torch River include Mark, Robin, Arlene, Jimmy, Ellen, Jay, Sheri, Larry and family, Steve, Martin, Heather, and a few others.

Check Mark's blog for a story and photos.

Some photos from the day, taken by my wife:

Our daughter takes a break from fishing and finds a spot to rest in the bow. Unfortunately, it proved to be a rather wet spot.

Jay & Sheri loving the rain.

Wet dog, wet Bryan.

Design and Media: Producing Meaning for Indian Society

Image: Illustrated frames from an animated film from Auryn, “In Winter Still” directed by Umesh Shukla in the Claude Monet style using specially designed software to tell a moral tale for children.

Design and Media: Producing Meaning for Society
Design as actively is entering every field of human endeavor, or it soon will and the media is discovering it in India as it explodes into our homes and work-places like never before. Simultaneously, all other fields are looking at design with an active interest through numerous new initiatives, and this includes the fields of production of illustration, still image photography, motion pictures & animation for the TV and live action cinema industry in India. Now an even broader arena of moving images that communicate is emerging through our cell phones and digi-pods that we carry around with us all the time, not to mention the browser based flash animations and quicktime productions that has brought the individual from the street, so to speak, to become a producer of these images, and not just a consumer, thanks to Youtube, Flickr, and a host of social networking sites and discussion platforms that dot the internet today..

The media is exploding all around us and the digital wave is aiding the convergence of many distinct media types on a borderless space, which I had talked about on my previous outing with the media moguls at NID. At the conference at NID on 10th December 1999, on the topic of Emerging Media, I had presented a paper titled “Niche Programming: Narrowcasting the Internet”. The TV celebrity, Vikram Chandra, then from Star Network News (now with the NDTV) and a speaker at the conference, whispered into my ears, “Professor, do you really think all this is going to happen soon?” my reply was in the affirmative, and now he is himself heading the web initiative for the NDTV, besides continuing to anchor many news and special interest programmes for broadcast TV in India.

The media is moving from analog to digital and in the process opening up many new opportunities for design interventions both at the professional as well as the level of the am-admi (the man in the street) as we say in India. News and stock market programmes use ticker tapes to provide dynamic data on call and the set top boxes and direct to home offer to blur the distinction between TV and internet, telephone and music videos, besides those new channels of delivery which we are yet to dream of just now. I now have all the options available at my home on the NID campus with telephone, and broadband internet competing for time with the cable network, direct to home satellite TV and radio and the daily newspaper and occasional magazine providing the icing on the media cake that I consume on a daily basis. My stock market investment and my staying in touch with my subject all require the use of these media sources in a selective manner to meet my professional and everyday need. My family too need these resources and in some cases we have simultaneous feeds from multiple sources necessitating multiple access points which are now the order of the day. Multiplicity of media and of demand has triggered a spiral of opportiunities for design interventions since those who wish to reach us are realizing that we have choices and that the remote button will be used unless

Design as a capability lies at the cusp of the manifestation of dreams and intentions in this powerful and lucrative media space, and it is beginning to take centre stage from both art and science, let me explain. While new media was technology driven and experimental cinema was propelled by art and science expressions and research, all these are taking a backseat to the commercial and intentional capabilities of design that can marry both art and science in commercially and socially desirable ways. Of course, our artists will continue to give us their critical perspectives on our life and our times and our scientists on the other hand will continue to search for new truths, while design will learn to use these to communicate and to tell stories in new and increasingly effective ways. In the final analysis it is the compelling presence of the message in a particular context that makes these offerings so effective and necessary.

Image: Media clips from the scrap book on Indian designer Rajiv Sethi

For instance, new opportunities for powerful expressions exist in the reconstructions of major news driven events, from bank heists to public executions, celebrity cavalcade routes to sports analysis tools (cricket – tennis – swimming….stop action, motion capture and display tools, to name just a few possibilities) to the capture of the spread of fire on the oil rig and the 9/11 type reconstructions for the evening news, all of which are designed offerings, across many competing media, all the time, OK 24x7….Illustration, live action, animation and storytelling, interviews providing facts and expressive fiction with hyper-reality in TV space, all use design capabilities. After an effective entry into the TV space we now see design literally invading Bollywood, Tollywood and our Southern bastions of cinema, the biggest in the world. Hollywood and the West, by the way, is already taken, witness Saul Bass, the famous Graphic Designer of the 70’s and the big budget design promos and trailers for all major offerings from the West, design is an integral part of that offering. This assault is not restricted to production design, costumes and pre-release advertising, but is extending to visual scripting, storyboarding and direction, and in other instances to special effects and animations for stunts, special equipment and props, the Bond cars and gadgets and Free Willie the whale, software for compositing and new business models for the delivery of media content through all available and competing channels, the opportunities are growing exponentially.

From my vantage as a design teacher at NID I see many of our alumni entering the moving picture space through a variety of opportunities that are opening up for trained designers. A quick online query on the “designindia” discussion list has shown very interesting convergences of many design specialists heading for these media opportunities, at a very high level of performance, located in Hyderabad and Mumbai, Dubai and Hong Kong. TV advertising and documentary production used to be the traditional spaces for design and designer action, but now it is being extended to feature films and animations, as the industry gets organized and broader at the base. Product, Furniture and Exhibition designers are working on production design in the TV and film industry. Textile and Apparel designers in costumes and Graphic designers in Art Direction and storyboarding and our Animators are expanding their reach from the short comics and single concept films to feature length stories and documentaries for global partners, special effects and a combination of live and animated offerings. There is a lot of creative trespassing going on here, since digital tools have lowered the entry barrier and the inherent core design skills of visualization and synthesis, capabilities of all designers can now be mobilized through the common sets of software skills that cut across many design disciplines today.

Image: Web site snapshot from Corcoise Films Pvt Ltd with showreel links from ace designer Prasoon Pandey

Design visualization skills are being sought after by both advertising and feature film makers to create expressive visual storyboards that can bring a whole creative and production team up to steam very quickly on the intentions of the producers and directors, and the cost saving and effectiveness of this tool is very convincing indeed. Converting a verbal script into a visual storyboard is not just an artistic interpretation of the record but it would include key decisions such as the selection of locations and frame angles that are viable and effective for the actors and stunt scenes, give cues for costumes, sets and trolley and camera movements, a right-hand support for the director-producer, who would take the final decision call in all cases. Surely this requires more designerly capabilities, both cognitive and effective capabilities, than just the skill of good drawing. Understanding structure and form as a composite whole in the production of meaning is central to the effectiveness of the exercise.

The design intention would be to tell a story in the most effective manner, which would suit the particular context and the occasion. Story telling in culture contributes to the expressions of that culture and Gilles Fauconnier’s, concepts of conceptual blends and fields, provides us tools for the creation of new structures for storytelling and games design. This is in a way similar to the masterful analysis by Levi Strauss when he de-coded the myths of many tribal communities and showed us the similarities and differences, the symmetries and dualities inherent in these myths. Today NID animators and game designers are exploring the use of these structural diagrams, models and scenarios, that can capture the core of a virtual landscape to help maintain continuity in the fictional characters in an equally fictional spaces that they inhabit. A formulae that is successful will be revisited by many with new forms of expression while the underlying structure is faithfully replicated, the Ram Lila being revisited in all our villages across that land, each in its own regional variant, as a case in point.

Raw & the Cooked, structuralist stories and myths from Claude Levi Straus, demonstrate that stories have structure and that stories have form. The great Bollywood imitations of the Hollywood movies, adopts the structure and customizes the form to suit the local context. The Bollywood movies that imitate its own success formulaes, all in new forms and with new players or actors, dubbed in language and with new songs …… many possibilities, hundreds of offerings each day, round the year. Many aspects that are copied are action sequences and interesting structural relationships and these can be easily managed in the digital form, by the use of templates, like in PowerPoint presentation made by managers, but effective in the hands of a master storyteller. The new digital form of entertainment can have mix and match (like fashion street) and offer many possibilities, using the same successful formulae each time in a new way. With the use of motion capture and digital models used for the generation of the story and using a range of optional actors, all digital models that perform to the script and motion capture sequences that are computer mediated, a new masala mix in cinema is possible. Jackie Chan being replaced by Amitabh Bachan, or Chun win Fat, whoever that may be, depending on the audience, a new form of visual translation for the 24x7 world of localized TV content, mix and match, direct to home? All new opportunities that is just now at the horizon but soon inside our homes, for sure. These can be designed and delivered with imagination and great power when it is handled well.

Very soon we can imagine and expect to see content of the great cultures being reinterpreted in the media by audience choice, as in text being converted to image in the comic books and moving image with action sequences and music videos, just as text is converted to voice with the now effective text to speech software programmes. As we understand structure better and figure out new forms of expression, we will or can have automated stories on call, with actors of our choice and with twists and turns as dictated by the viewer, a totally non-linear offering. These are already here with us in the form of the digital games that children and adults play all day, offline as well as offline in great multi-player environments that unfold as the game progresses, never to be repeated in the storytelling traditions of yore. This emergent form is like the video game and the child and playing adult are actually manipulating the course of the story with dynamic animations and with deep immersion in the game play all the time. These interactive games hold the seeds of a new genre of interactive cinema that will be upon us through our cell phones and our other media access devices, very soon indeed. The “Cell phone cinema” of low-resolution storytelling, and home movie editing, the Indian MMS craze. Wapp, rapp and zapp, Bluetooth dating and digital flirting, are all here to stay. Some of these will be used to sell us credit cards and insurance, or toothpaste and adhesives, or entertain us round the clock, online, offline, at home and elsewhere.

"Design and Moving Image: Let the Twain Meet", was the title of my “Cut Here” paper of 2005. Design as we know it today is unfolding to new levels of understanding from which it can help us communicate both the trivial and the profound, and our value systems will dictate how we will eventually use these capabilities for a sustainable future. When the world is shrinking and as Mike Davis tells us, it is becoming a global slum, we need to use the media to address these dimensions like never before, and in my view the effective communicator with leadership qualities is the challenge of the day. Design at this level is very political indeed. Designers need to learn about politics or our politicians will need to learn to use design a whole lot better. I wonder which one will come first.

Based on paper for “Cut Here” Journal of NID, August 2005 and revised in May 2008. Download pdf file 68 kb from here.

Download the copy of the journal "Cut Here" issue No 4 pdf file 2.94 mb

Almost There!

Here is a photo from a week ago, after the deck was fully skinned and before the coaming was installed. The deck was skinned in three pieces. small nails were poked through the fabric to help align it and to ensure the holes for the coaming could be located.
Since that time the coaming has been installed, mostly. I ran out of machine screws so had to buy two more.

In order to create tie down points for carrying handles, and the rest of the deck rigging, padeyes using 1" D-rings (bought at Fabricland, probably not the cheapest or the best selection but they had them) were installed. Pieces of PVC, 1" x 6" were cut, glued then folded over and trimmed (as per Tom Yost's instructions) to create 3" long padeye anchors to be glued to the sides of the kayak with the D-ring at the deck. The narrow strip of masking tape created a glue-free spot in the center where the D-ring sits and

These were then glued to the kayak, one pair at the bow, one pair at the stern, two pair for bow deck bungees and two pair for the stern deck rigging (which will use cords and a pair of sliders to tighten them).

The Orca-style decoration was also glued on today. The whole thing was cut from blue PVC then the yellow patches were glued on afterwards.
I have to remember to draw the eyeball on the Orca yet with black marker.

With the kayak very nearly complete (I still need to make the outriggers, cut off the coaming bolts, and fit out the cockpit with foam) the girls were trying it out on the lawn this evening. My older daughter loves to pose, so we indulged her by taking a few more pictures of the girls with the kayak.

progeCAD 8.0.18.18 software patch released

A new free upgrade for progeCAD Professional 2008 has been released:

Two bugs are fixed:
ALE: Fixed a general problem that could cause an error in the ALE library
DRAW: Fixed "Snap-From" command

Pool Test

We had the opportunity to test the kid's nearly completed kayak out in a pool on Sunday.


The girls & I were pretty happy with it. Quarters in the hotel pool were somewhat cramped and there were a couple of other people there so we couldn't let the kids really go more than a few feet in any direction, lest someone get hit with the too-large paddle (she borrowed Mom's). My older daughter had no problems keeping the kayak upright, nor did she seem bothered by the stability or the kayak rocking back and forth, even with a fair bit of water on board. I did find that the bolts around the caoming will need to be cut shorter and the ends covered with something to protect her thighs from them.

Still on the To Do List for the Sea Flea is:

1. Buy D-rings, add tie-downs & deck bungees
2. Add the decoration to the deck.
3. Cut off the bolts below the coaming.
4. Add some foam to the cockpit to pad it out, create a pad to sit on, and a bit of a backrest.
5. Build or buy a paddle.
6. Build a set of outriggers.

Chattooga Overnighter

Beaz and I preparing for the expedition

Yes another Chattooga Overnighter. One of our long time team paddlers, mother of two boys and a grown man was having a birthday and she wanted to celebrate on the river with a group of friends, so we loaded up the long boats and headed to the river. It was not looking like the best weather with predictions of drizzle, cool temps, and wind that would threaten our very lives, but Maria said, "we're going for it". Typical New Zealand attitude.

The Birthday Girl, Maria

Packing up the essentials

There are many different types of overnight paddling trips. You have the full on hardcore freeze dried beans and rice, kind of trip. There is also the Clay Wright special McD burgers all smashed together in a dry bag trip. The dream trip is on the Canyon where you take pretty much anything you want and let someone else row it down, but on the Chattooga we do a modified car camping, bring everything you got sort of trip. We take as much as we can on or in our boats and then get the car within walking distance of the river and unload more stuff for the evening. We knew we had the essentials. Tiki Torches, Habachis, 2 Coolers, Beverages of all types, Gigantic kmart special $49.95 tent, strange sunglasses and yes and incredible Dahl Bat dinner.


Beaz with Bow and Stern Habachis

Our team was comprised of committed top notch river professionals, which more often than not, we have found, is a disaster waiting to happen. It has been scientifically proven that the more "river professionals" you have on a trip the more chaos will result. Take for example a trip Beaz and I took on the Bio where we spent the night at a large rapid because we professionals couldn't line a boat properly and pinned it worse than we could have if we were paddling it. Or another example our Grand Canyon trip where we managed to flip 3 times, break 3 oars and demolish a couple oar locks. The list goes on but you get the idea. We have become wary when we gather too many years of paddling experience.

Nick Williams (long time T-Canyon paddler who wore Oggs well after they were cool)


The Williams Noakes Family

This trip is a very mellow fun time. We have now done it several times and I love it. We get to take along folks who maybe just learning, or we can take along kids, and goof around in big boats. Its really a blast. If you haven't done an overnighter I highly recommend it. There is nothing like waking up next to the river and just putting on and going downstream. Plan it on an easy stretch take some non paddling friends. This Chattooga trip we do from the 28 bridge down the 76 bridge. So we cover Section 2 and Section 3 of the Chattooga. I think thats around 20 miles +/- a couple.

Birthday cake on the beach at Sandy Ford.
Hmmmm seems a little crunchy.

This evening we celebrated Maria's birthday. Nick had cooked up an amazing Dahl Bat dinner and we had birthday cake. Plenty of libations if you are into that sort of thing. But after that things started to go a little crazy. We of course had to do those beach paddle games. Try this one the next time you are in a padded area. Take a paddle hold it up vertically in front of you with the top blade above your head so you can see the tip of it if you look pretty much straight up. Then while looking at the end of the paddle spin 10 times as fast or slow as you would like while looking up at the tip of the paddle. Then lay the paddle down and step across it. Simple Right? But before you do this make sure one of your friends has a video camera on and others are spotting you. This usually starts an evening off right. Then the wind picked up and blew tents everywhere including out in the middle of the river. There was a grilled marshmallow war, and in the middle of the night when limbs started to fall off the trees there was some scrambling for better cover.

Beaz by the light of the Tiki Torch

The Expedition Team by the fire.

Beaz ripping class 2+


Whit boofing Bull's sluice.

Anna cleaning the bull as well.


Beaz dropping in without bow and stern habachis

Good decision on the habachis.

All in all we didn't do too much damage to ourselves or equipment.
Maybe we are getting smarter with age. However I need another weekend to recover
from the weekend.

Here is the video.
Click Here

Take it easy out there.

Shane