Look Back Look Forward: The Bengaluru event

Look Back Look Forward: HfG Ulm and design education in India, a brief report on the one day event at the Taj West End in Bengaluru on 6th March 2010.

Prof M P Ranjan
The one day conference at Bengaluru will be remembered for a long time by the participants, all teachers and design professionals interested in design education coming from several leading design schools in India. So much passion was released in the 24 round table discussions, only a small fraction of which can be captured here in the links and resources that we have been able to collect and create. Two workshop sessions, each of two hours duration across the twelve round tables each with eight participants and some observers kept all of us deeply involved on the subject of design education for India. This meeting will have an impact on the shape of design education in India since tere is the promise of a follow up meeting later in the year and with the sharing of the Ulm Journal as a digital resource as part of the conference kit the schools in India have for the first time access to the rich reflections that the Ulm masters had assembled in the 21 issues that were published between 1955 and 1968 when the HfG Ulm was finally closed down.

Image01: Thumbnail images of the HfG Ulm Exhibit at Chitra Kala Parishath and the registration session at Taj West End on the next day.

Image02: Thumbnail images of the conference participants during breaks as well as at the round tables during the keynote sessions.

We now invite all the participants to join us in our analysis of the event and the proceedings for which we shall make available and share below the links to all the lectures and presentations made during the day as well as a host of other resources that can aid the proposed analysis of the discussions and events of the day. The first set of links are for the eight voice files arranged in the order in which the events happened at the conference. The opening session had Dr Evelyn Hust of the Goethe Institute, Bengaluru make her opening remarks with Prof M P Ranjan making remarks on behalf of Director NID who could not attend and then on to introduce the format of the conference, keynotes and workshop sessions, as planned. The morning session that followed had three events – the first keynote lecture by Marcela Quijano, Curator, HfG Ulm Archive, and the second keynote by Prof Sudha Nadkarni, Dean, Welingkar Institute of Management where he shared his experience as a full time student at HfG Ulm in the early 60’s. (for voice recordings see the links below). Marcela Quijano gave us an overview of the pedagogy of the Ulm masters and the historical setting in which the design education experiments were conducted at the HfG Ulm.

Image 03: Thumbnails of the Table Cards, each with one HfG Ulm Master as listed: 01: Max Bill, 02: Otl Aicher, 03: Inge Aicher-Scholl, 04: Tomas Maldonado, 05: Hans Gugelot, 06: Walter Zeischegg, 07: Herbert Ohl, 08: Gui Bonsiepe, 09: Herbert Lindinger, 10: Horst Rittel, 11: William S. Huff, 12: Konrad Wachsmann.

These two keynote presentations of the morning set the tone for Looking Back at the legacy of Ulmer Model in terms of their design pedagogy and this was followed by the first Workshop session – Look Back – that lasted two hours, at the end of which each of the twelve tables made brief presentations on their findings about the salient aspects of HfG Ulm pedagogy. Each table was named after one of twelve selected Ulm teachers in the order listed below:

Table 10 : Horst Rittel
Table 09 : Herbert Lindinger
Table 04 : Tomas Maldonado
Table 03 : Inge Aicher-Scholl
Table 02 : Otl Aicher
Table 05 : Hans Gugelot
Table 08 : Gui Bonsiepe
Table 11 : William S. Huff
Table 12 : Konrad Wachsmann
Table 07 : Herbert Ohl
Table 06 : Walter Zeischegg
Table 01 : Max Bill

Each table had a set of provocation cards that carried quotes from the Ulm masters while these cards were also shown on the large projection screen as an automated slide show. Each quotation raised one issue that would be critical for the Ulm pedagogy and these provided the point of departure for the table discussions that were carried on in real earnest by all the participants. Each table also had table think sheets on which the participants were asked to make their doodles and notes as the discussions and devbates progressed at each table. These “Table Think Sheets” were collected at the end of the session and these too are made available here at the link below.

List of 8 voice files and resources for download
01_Opening Session_MPR Hust.mov – 12 mb
02_Keynote_Marcelo Quijano.mov – 27 mb
03_Keynote_Sudha Nadkarni.mov – 35 mb
04_Intro to_Look Back WS.mov – 9 mb
05_Round Table_Look Back.mov – 47 mb
06_Keynote_Kumar Vyas.mov – 54 mb
07_Keynote_Wolfang Jonas.mov – 61 mb
08_Round Table_Look Fward.mov – 49 mb

Image 04: Navigation screens from the Look Back Look Forward conference resource interactive DVD. These nine screens are from the root level pdf file and each item or image on the pages takes one to the respective file or page. The Index page is level zero, while the other pages are numbered from 1 to 8.

The conference resource DVD is packed with design education resources from HfG Ulm as well as from NID, Ahmedabad. Page two provides links to the numbered Journals from the HfG Ulm from 1 to 21 issue of the Journal, all scanned and made available as digital pdf files thanks to the kind permission from Prof Gui Bonsiepe who edited these volumes at Ulm. These Journals were published from 1955 till the last issue in 1968 when the school closed down under dramatic circumstances. These were available in India only in the NID library and for the first time these are made available to Indian design educators and researchers to understand the Ulm school’s unique pedagogy since these hold a rich resource of reflections from the Ulm teachers. Volume 3 was missing from the set all these years and we now have a copy thanks to the Ulm Archive Curator, Marcela Qujano, who gave us a copy for the Library which is now made available here as a digital pdf file at the link below, and this completes the set.

Download the “Look Back Look Forward” conference resource interactive DVD here:
Look Back_Look Forward_DVD.zip – 968 mb
Ulm 3.pdf – 3.2 mb (This issue was not included in the DVD since it did not exist in the NID Library and a copy was given to us by Marcelq Quijano when she arrived in Bengaluru for the conferfence.)

Page zero, or the opening page, is the Index with hyper-links to the other eight pages. Page two contains links to selected documents from the NID history and includes the Eames India Report of 1958, The MOMA catalogue of 1957 of classic design from USA and Europe whose prototypes are in the NID archives, NID Documentation 1964-69, The Ahmedabad Declaration of 1979, Design & Environment (1982), select faculty papers (1991) and the Proceedings of the DETM Conference (2005) and so on. Page four contains 16 papers and presentation files that record the progress of the Design Concepts and Concerns Course at NID where design thinking and design theory have been introduced to NID students from 1988 till date, evolving over the years to give NID education its distinctive identity. Page three has reports prepared by NID for the setting up of three sector specific institutes for design education in India. Other pages contain all the artworks for the conference graphics and table resources as well as the photographs from the Ulm Archive exhibit when it opened at the NID Gallery.

The visual slide shows or text resources for the keynote presentation are available for download here below and these can be viewed along with the voice files of the proceedings located above.
Keynote 01: India_Look back_Marcela Quijano.pdf – 5 mb
Keynote 02: NID Banglore Keynote at Ulm conference_Nadkarni.pdf – 36 mb

Keynote 03: Learning at NID- Then and Now, H Kumar Vyas (final).pdf – 1 mb
Keynote 04: Wolfgang Jonas_Ulm Conference_Keynote.pdf – 14 mb

Pictures of Bangalore event – Folders in .zip format each containing many selected pictiures in jpg format are available here for download (see list below)
Picture sets of Bangalore event in jpeg format
01_Ulm_Blore_PreConference.zip – 98 mb
02_Ulm_Blore_LookBack.zip – 79 mb
03_Ulm_LookForward01.zip – 75 mb
04_Ulm_Look Forward02 2.zip – 74 mb
05_Ulm_PostConference.zip – 11 mb

Picture albums of the sets in pdf format can be downloaded from these links here:
01_Ulm_Blore_PreConference.pdf – 9 mb
02_Ulm_Blore_LookBack_h3.pdf – 6 mb
03_Ulm_LookForward01_h3.pdf – 6 mb
04_Ulm_Look Forward02_h3.pdf – 7 mb
05_Ulm_PostConference_h3.pdf – 2 mb
Chakradar mid Blore Pics_h2.pdf – 6 mb

Conference kit resources in pdf format.
While the conference resource DVD that was distributed to all the participants contains the digital art works version of the table materials we provide separate links here for some of these resources so that they may be used directly if needed.

01_Conference Table_Ulm Masters.pdf : 58.9 mb
02a_look back cards_prn.pdf : 3.2 mb
02b_look forward cards_prn.pdf : 2.4 mb
02c_Model card Front_oranisation vs. free + political structure.pdf_4.pdf : 5 mb
05_Ulm Biography Bookmarks.pdf : 1.9 mb
06_keynote speaker bio+Workshops_s.pdf : 20.5 mb

Other HfG Ulm Conference Resources
Conference Participant List_xx.pdf – 3 mb
Table_Think Sheets_175page.pdf – 11 mb

Participants will now have access to all the resources that they may use to make their own analysis of the one day event at Bengaluru and from these we do hope that Indian design teachers will take back a lesson from the Ulm masters, that of documentation of their teaching resources and of their class outcomes in a contemporaneous manner in the days ahead. This alone will ensure that Indian design education retains a quality benchmark that can be shared and discussed as we refine our teaching methods and find value that is unique to our context, environment and culture. If teachers from our Indian design schools start publishing their work and through this an active dialogue is set in place we would have succeeded in our mission of sensitizing our teachers to the need for such documentation in managing and manintaining a high quality of education in our schools across India. I hope that we did succeed and that the future will show us the positive results of these tall intentions.

Prof M P Ranjan

Conference on Geovisualisation at NID: Concluding Remarks by Prof. M P Ranjan

Image: Detail of a map of the Heritage Walk through the Walled City of Ahmedabad designed by NID student Sujay Swadi Sanan in the classroom. He used hand drawn facades of each building along the route showing a unique and creative expression of Geospatial Data that can be used by tourists and heritage enthusiasts.

Concluding Remarks to the 1st National Conference on GeoVisualisation held at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad on 28th to 30th November 2007. This was co-sponsored by The NRDMS (DST) Government of India, New Delhi and the NID, Ahmedbad.

M P Ranjan
Chairman, Geovisualisation Task Group
and
Faculty of Design, National Institute of Design

As the Chairman of the Task Group on Geovisualisation it is my task to use this occasion to make my concluding remarks that would help delineate the agenda of the task Group as well as list the areas of focus the we would need to focus on in the days ahead particularly in the context of the deliberations and recommendations that have come out of this wonderful conference. On behalf of the Task Group on Geovisualisation I would list the core areas of emphasis that would help us set priorities and directions for the work in the field of Geovisualisation in the Indian context in the days ahead.

1. The first Conference on Geovisualisation has helped us bring together a large number of expert groups at a design institute who have a great deal of cumulative experience in the subject and we are grateful to the speakers and participants for sharing their insights that have culminated in the drafting of the recommendations that would be reviewed by the NRDMS DST, Government of India to take this initiative forward.

2. We have a good list of proposed Demonstration Projects and domain specific initiatives that is an outcome of this conference as well as the ongoing activities of the Task Group in identifying and initiating these through the expert groups who can carry out the research required to deliver these demo projects and then help realize in on the ground where it is needed.

3. The proposed Centre for Geovisualisation at NID has taken a step forward with the NID team putting together the first Conference on Geovisualisation and this event has given us the opportunity to review the scope and dimensions of the field and this will help set the plans for the research and education activities of this Centre in the days ahead. The infrastructure and skill sets that would be brought to this Centre too would be informed by the ongoing discussions with the various expert groups that the NID has been able to bring together under a common platform of this Conference and in the days ahead I am sure that these small steps will be supplemented by a sustained programme of research and design action that will give a strong impetus for the field as a whole particularly since one of the key roles will be the challenges that come with the field being multi-disciplinary and therefore having many implications of the integration of a diverse set of skills and knowledge into usable and high quality offerings in the field of GeoVisualisation.

4. Promotion of the concepts of Geovisualisation and the need for the use of Geo-Spatial data bases in a effective manner with the help of Geovisualisation tools and procedures needs to be embedded in many sectors of our stakeholder groups and in this initiative it is recognized that we will need to make a sustained effort to reach out to all the stakeholders be they young students who need to understand the concepts or to decision makers who would need to use these tools and concepts for the various fields of application that have been discussed in this Conference.

5. The promotion activity would need to extend to the Policy makers at the National as well as the Regional levels and to a large number of our administrators who would be sensitized to the future possibilities and critical features of the Geovisualisation activity space. We would also be working on the area of Policy guidelines that can enhance and extend the use of this knowledge and skill through the drafting and processing of supportive policy frameworks so that much of the data that is held in the Government sector can be mobilized for development initiatives in the local Panchayati Raj Institutions across the country in a decentralized manner.

6. We need a good Communication Platform in order to achieve the reach and impact of a rapidly growing field as well as the locate India at the leadership position that it had in the field of Cartography and public data use for good governance. We propose to set up an Web Portal that uses Web 2.0 standards to empower rapid and sustained participation of a large number of players as well as support cooperation across domains and institutional boundaries in an open source framework to make the whole initiative cost effective and accessible to all sections of our society.

7. The whole area of Training, Content Generation and Demonstration through the identification and creation of suitable exemplars has assumed a major significance in the task of the Geovisualisation Task Group. The expert groups are requested to address this urgent requirement and create fertile experiments and elective based offerings in existing institutes and university departments to fast track the development of these critical resources which can then be offered through a mass contact programme as e-learning initiatives to the numerous stakeholders that would need to be reached by these training initiatives in the days ahead.

8. The Task Group on Geovisualisation would also flag the Key Policy Issues that would need the attention of Government and try and articulate the areas of priority and the desirable directions that would need to be taken in this composite field that is now called by the broad term of Geovisualisation. One of the key recommendations that have been stressed by a number of speakers is the use of Government funding and policy and legislative supports to make these inputs an Avenue for the Open Source movement to grow in India in such a manner as to ensure easy access to such resources at the grassroots level all over the country.

9. The Task Group on Geovisualisation is also determined to Expand the Base of Experts and Partners who can contribute to the Geovisualisation movement taking root in India and here in addition to technology, science and design we will need to bring on board management and administration at many levels so that a seamless transfer of research to the land can take place through the creation of useable products and strategies in all fields of application.

I compliment the NID and NRDMS-DST teams for the excellent conduct and planning of this Conference on Geovisualisation and we do look forward to a sustained programme of activities in the days ahead. I would like to thank the National Institute of Design and its Director, Dean of Gandhinagar Campus and the Anchor Faculty from NID for being excellent hosts and for the three days of stimulating discussions and presentations that have brought a good number of insights that can be taken forward by the Task Group on Geovisualisation with the active support of the NRDMS-DST Government of India.

Contact Information for Proceedings and Resources
For obtaining copies of the proceedings and any additional information the contact person is Dr Bibhu Dutta Baral, Chief Coordinator & Anchor Faculty: Geovisualisation Research Initiatives at NID
email contact:

New Education Strategies and Institutional Needs in the Context of the National Design Policy

New Education Strategies in the Context of the National Design Policy
Image: Design Opportunities and Sectors of the economy. (click to enlarge)
There is a pressing need for the “Design-enabling” of our economy through a rapidly expanded and ingrained use of design action and design thinking in almost 230 sectors of the Indian economy. The means to achieve this is quite limited today by the existing framework of Institutions that can provide the human resources, the research initiatives and the sustained knowledge resources that are needed to support this massive but achievable task. Most business and cultural activities in India are sorely in need to mobilise the use of design in imaginative ways for the development of these sectors which are in crying need of design action and design thinking at their very core. The current levels of investments in design and design research are at appallingly low levels when compared to the investments made in science, technology and management in the past sixty years and as a continuing activity even today. The National Design Policy, which was announced in February 2007, has not changed these lacunae but we would certainly need to leverage this policy in order to set in motion the much-needed change across the sectors of use. It is argued that investments made in the past have failed to solve the critical need of creating the required innovations and deliver these to the marketplace so that they could touch the lives of the people in everyday situations across the country. While a number of new materials and technological innovations have resulted from these massive scientific and technological investments, very little of this has been translated into useable products and services primarily because in my view there has been a corresponding lack of investments in design.

The traditions of Indian culture are beautiful and full of evidence of design use and we do constantly bring these up in debates about how advanced India is in design use as a way of life. While this is true at one level their modern urban and rural interpretations and manifestations in everyday life leaves much to be desired. As Romesh Thappar had declared in his 1979 keynote speech to the UNIDO-ICSID conference on Design for Development at NID Ahmedabad, he said – as modern Indians we are indeed a study in mediocrity. These modern and everyday expressions that he was referring to are somehow devoid of the exquisite qualities that the Eames’s saw in the “Lota” that symbolised for them the elegance of Indian design as it had evolved over the ages. This serious absence of this continued use of “Design” as a quality producing critical discipline that supports the development agenda of a nation, which has been struggling to find a foothold in a global marketplace, is truly appalling. I propose that Design be returned to our society for it to be used again as a necessary counterpoint to get our bearings back. This call for a serious use of design as a tool and a strategy for the development inside all sectors of the Indian economy, all 230 of them, is particularly important since it is so sorely missing from the nations policy frameworks in almost all of these sectors, quite unlike the prominent position given to the fields of Science, Technology, Management and to some limited extent, the field of Art. How then do we bring design to the centre-stage in all our activities in India? The National Design Policy does not address these needs in any great measure today and we will need to therefore broaden the mandate quite considerably if we are to achieve the desired results. Design will need to inform change and innovation in the primary, secondary as well as the tertiary sectors and play a role in shaping the culture of the land in a rapidly changing milieu.

Defining Design for Development
I must fall back on some of my previous writings to create a framework of definitions and ideas that can put in context the views that I have expressed above and to build the foundation for the strategies that I propose in this paper for the development of a design initiative for the country as a whole. I used the opportunity of addressing the first National Design Summit in Bangalore in 2001 to touch upon some of these issues and to take a long look at the last forty years or so of design education and practise in India in a paper titled “Cactus Flowers Bloom in a Dessert” (Ranjan 2001) (download paper pdf 123kb and visual presentation part 1 pdf 3.6MB and part 2 pdf 4.6MB here) that tried to capture the struggle that the design community in India have put up over the years in the face of extreme deprivation of resources and support from Industry and Government alike. The paper built upon some of the arguments that I had proposed in previous papers on the role of design in the Indian economy with specific reference to the lopsided manner in which investments had been made in India with reference to design and technology education and research. In my paper titled “Design Before Technology” (Ranjan 1999) (download paper pdf 45kb and visual presentation pdf 1.7MB here). I had argued here that India was losing out in its search for sustainable development by ignoring the investment needs of the design sector and although massive investments had been made in the science and technology sectors we were acutely short of innovative products and services that could delivered to our marketplace and these could only be achieved through the use of design as a layer over the other investments made so far.

Image: Levels of Design Intervention (click to enlarge)
In my paper titled “Levels of Design Interventions” (Ranjan 1998) (download paper pdf 200kb here) I have described four levels at which design action and research could be perceived in the context of a complex global scenario that was beginning to impact our economy and promised to accelerate as we moved forward along the path of economic liberalisation in India. While design at the ‘Tactical level’ used the fairly well recognised skills and sensitivities of a designer the other levels were ignored to a large extent in India that in fact needed these levels more than the first which usually resulted in aesthetic and functional solutions. The three other levels that I had proposed in my model were the ‘Elaborative’, the ‘Creative’ and the ‘Strategic’ levels. Each one addressed the needs of market complexity, innovation and intellectual property issues. At the level of vision and anticipatory strategies, design uses scenarios and maps opportunities to create new industries. These approaches need the collaboration of teams drawn from many disciplines. They can build solutions and frameworks, which may bring transformation. The transformation may take place from a resource poor to a resource abundant perspective. Mobilising integrated resources that work in synergetic ways due to the efforts of such multi-disciplinary design teams can achieve it. Design at the strategic level also sets the agenda for many forms of research to be done by a large number of disciplines based on a shared vision of the future that is desirable and can find administrative, political and entrepreneurial supports.

Image: Systems model for Design Education at NIFT and NID (click to enlarge)
The systems model of design that some of teachers adopted at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, for building courses and to conduct our research and client interventions had over the years given us the conviction that design in India is quite different from that which is practised in the West. Design for development has been discussed at many platforms; many a time leading to utter confusion with the discourse offering as many definitions of design as the number of participants. Notwithstanding this difficulty with the subject as complex as design, the power of design should be used to meet the real needs of a huge population desperately seeking solutions to many vexing problems in a tough economic climate. Design at the strategic level can be used as a catalytic to mobilise innovations and policies that can indeed transform the country in more ways than one. Design can create a kind of ‘Avalanche Effect’ since a relatively small investment in design can indeed produce incredible change in different sectors of the national economy. We have seen glimpses of this effect wherever policy and action have embraced design in even small ways in the past. The results have been dramatic. The two areas that I have personal experience in are the Crafts and the Bamboo sector. Both have created Institutions and investments to use design along with an integrated mobilisation of investments in related projects and research at our initiative. In the area of design education I have worked with NID as well as NIFT in shaping their curriculum and teaching approaches through a number of faculty seminars and curriculum committees. We need to go much further and develop approaches to reach design education into our schooling system as well as into the university system across the vast geography that is India.

Design Education: Perspectives in India
In 1991 as part of a committee set up to prepare a curriculum for the proposed Accessory Design programme in Delhi, I had the opportunity to create a structure for perhaps the first of the sector specific programmes in Design offered outside the NID at Ahmedabad. The Garment and Accessory Sectors were growing rapidly in India driven by massive exports and the low wage regime that prevailed at that time. The Ministry of Textiles had developed a substantial cash reserve from the cess on these export earnings that it was obliged to use for the development initiatives in that sector. The National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), New Delhi, had been set up using this initiative as an integrated institution for the creation of human resources to provide quality service to this booming industry. The structure of the curriculum that was conceived for the NIFT programme followed inputs and assignments in four broad domains. Each with its own special knowledge and set of skills, were offered to students as lectures, assignments, practical projects and field exposure modules respectively. While the domain of design covered core design sensibilities through courses in basic design, and action capabilities being strengthened with design management and design methodologies, the domain of the subject introduced knowledge specific to the areas of products such as jewellery, footwear, bags, travel artefacts, belts, items of clothing, toys, gifts etc. The domain of Industry was identified to provide the students the tools and concepts of the trade since each industry segment had its own norms and practises. Lastly, the aspect of the user or the consumer was introduced to understand needs and processes in the marketplace.

Image: Curriculum Model for NIFT and NID (click to enlarge)
This four-pronged structure was developed further during my tenure as part of the curriculum review exercise at the NID in 1992 ‘94. All the courses offered at that time, our committee reviewed over 250 of them across almost nine disciplines, with very detailed presentations from the teachers who were responsible to conduct each one of these. The four-pronged structure of the domains of Design, the Subject, the Industry and the User/Consumer were used to locate each of the courses and to determine the methodology to be followed by way of assignments and theory. This brought a lot of clarity to the exercise and helped the committee make a number of corrective recommendations that shaped the texture of these courses, their content and delivery structure. After following borrowed curricula from the west for many years, we were examining our teaching resources and methods in a great detail with reference to the complex context that were being perceived in India. However the course information structure improved considerably with the introduction of the course abstract paper that was made mandatory for each course. The review process saw the articulation and assembly of all the course abstracts into a multi-volume set that was placed in the NID Resource Centre as the Master Abstracts Set.

The fact that NID had only published its Syllabus and detailed course descriptions only twice in the past thirty years (1970 and 1982) made these course abstracts all the more valuable. The information about the relationship between courses was contained in a tabular flow chart that shows the sequence of the courses and the time duration. The timetable that was prepared and released each semester showed the timings, dates and the names of teachers responsible for each course. The need for publications about the fields of application of design from NID (and other design schools in India) was often discussed at NID Faculty Forum. It was felt because despite many odds, Institute and its designers had made many successful forays into the difficult and complex domains of design service. However, the students and faculty who were in the midst of the great happenings, explorations and debates did benefit from this significant exposure of client service, both in terms of quality and content. The NID products, comprising its students and alumni, form the spearhead of the design initiative in India, albeit in small numbers but still sufficient to make an impact in some sectors through a sustained endeavour. Other design schools in the country have their share too of successes achieved in various fields. Their success was facilitated by their location or by their affiliation to a different Ministry from which they drew their funds. The Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) started programmes in design at Mumbai, Delhi and Guwahati in the year 1970, 1985 and 1996 respectively while NIFT (National Institute of Fashion Technology) expanded its reach by setting up centres in Mumbai, Kolkata, Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai in quick succession in the late nineties. In the private sector two new schools were set up in Delhi and Bangalore as the pressure for admissions to the existing schools and the demand for the design professionals was rising in the country. Most of these schools used NID trained designers as their teaching resource either as full time teachers or as a visiting faculty resource.

Design Initiatives: New Institutions
Image: IICD Model of “Craft as an Industry in India” (click to enlarge)
In 1991 I was also involved in an assignment aimed at the articulation of a feasibility report for a school of crafts studies in Jaipur. The result was the setting up of the Indian Institute of Crafts and Design (IICD), Jaipur, by the State Government of Rajasthan. (download feasibility report pdf 386kb here) It had been set up on the premise that design as defined by us in that report was a critical tool for the development of the crafts sector as a whole. A national mandate was given to the new Institute. The model that was proposed in that report projected the crafts in India as an economic and social activity that could liberate a very large number of decentralised and self-sustaining activities that required a very low capital base to initiate and to grow. Craft was taught in most design institutes in India by then as a means of sensitising Indian designers to the complexities of rural industries. It also explored the need for alternate frameworks for action in India outside the organised industrial sector. The designers often ignored the unorganised sector. However, this was the first time that a dedicated institution was set up to address the needs of the crafts sector. This sector was already contributing considerable employment and earning substantial amount of foreign exchange through export. The need for design to take initiatives of this sector was by now established by numerous success stories of design interventions. NID was at the forefront of these interventions through its craft documentation exercises that mapped the cultural resources of the country in very detailed studies conducted over the years. NID Resource Centre made these documents available to students and faculty members.

Image: BCDI Model of Institutional Philosophy (click to enlarge)
Another major demand for building up an institution for design education and research came from the Bamboo sector. Of late, the Bamboo and Cane Development Institute (BCDI) was restructured by NID at the request of the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts (DC-H), Government of India as part of their National Bamboo development initiative. (download BCDI feasibility report pdf 366kb here) The United Nations Development Programmes (UNDP) in India was supporting this initiative. BCDI, Agartala earlier functioned as a mere training centre for young craftsmen of the North-east. NID’s extensive study of the Bamboo Crafts of the Northeast India and the numerous papers and design projects projected the use of bamboo as a sustainable resource for India and these brought us into a strategic relationship with the Government of India and UNDP. The initiatives gave us the opportunity to demonstrate the power design action at a strategic level.

Image: UNDP supported product innovations in bamboo (click to enlarge)
At the request of the UNDP I was involved in articulating the vision report for the National Bamboo Initiative that resulted in a report titled “From the Land to the People: Bamboo as a sustainable Human Development Resource” (Ranjan 1999). (download pdf 1.5MB here) This report was built around six scenarios that were design visualisations that placed a sequence of inputs, events and innovations that could spearhead a veritable bamboo revolution if implemented in form and spirit. In the months that followed, a number of intensive design explorations have created a climate of sustained investments into this sector from as many as ten State Governments and numerous national and non-governmental agencies. The DC-H increased its allocation to the bamboo initiatives and asked for an improved infrastructure for training and design development. Once again the feasibility report that we developed called for an integrated approach with design at the core of the Institution and the activities covering four clear subject domains. The revamped Institution was proposed to focus on plantation studies since bamboo is a natural material suitable for agricultural development, Product Innovation, Technology Innovation and Market Research studies to sustain a creative design climate that would inform all the activities and set the agenda for research and action in all areas of bamboo related knowledge.

Image: BCDI: An approach to sector specific design education. (click to enlarge)
While the major national Institutes for design that were set up over the years continue to perform their tasks of design education and research, the massive need anticipated from all 230 sectors of our economy. These sectors, which are in need of design resources and sector specific knowledge, are still largely un-addressed. The two new sector specific Institutes that we helped set up, namely the IICD and the BCDI were relatively easier to fund and create since the message to the stake holders was more focussed and the funding agencies saw value in each offering since the results. It is also easier for industries from within the sector to see direct benefits and to align themselves to such Institutes. Although design is a general discipline, nevertheless, a great deal of domain specific competence is also needed by the industries and promotional agencies alike. It was this premise that I brought to my class last year. A group of Foundation students at NID were asked to look at the Indian economy and to try and build macro-economic models for design action in India. The development of this course at NID is also a very significant aspect of this discourse. Over the years the definition of design has shifted in many directions, each pulled along a different vector by a vocal advocate of an inherent quality of design. Leaders of design thinking that influenced NID education were many early international visitors to the Institute such as Charles and Ray Eames, Armin Hofman, Louis Khan, Frei Otto and others. Its Resource Centre also made some critical books available to the faculty and students of the Institute. In the context of design theory, which influenced our minds the works of Christopher Alexander, John Chris Jones and Bruce Archer and publications from the Bauhaus, the hfg Ulm, and the Basel school of graphic design come to the top of my mind. Many of these books were subjects of great debate on the campus and they provided the intellectual stimulus to some of us who were interested in such discussions.

The future of design lies somewhere along this path and we must find new roles for design in the production of images that can influence decision processes. Some of the processes are so complex that they need many iterations and political mediations to resolve these in an amicable manner. Most importantly, design processes need the involvement and partnership of a multitude of stakeholders. Visualisations of these explorations would make the concepts, the decisions and issues available for visual review in a transparent and understandable manner and foster long-term partnership needed to achieve the lofty results. Many models need to be built and discussed before we know how to proceed and this would be planning being done in a transparent manner with stakeholder participation, which is desirable. Design at this level has the ingredients to create the Avalanche Effect, a great positive mobilisation, and an overwhelming quality of something hopefully new and beneficial, with a small design effort. (download paper on the DCC course at NID pdf 55kb here). India now has a number of design schools and new ones are in the offing going by the enquiries that we have been getting from industry and the education sector in recent times. How these should be envisioned and regulated is a major question that the design community, the educators as well as government should give some serious thought in the context of the National Design Policy. With the proliferation of schools and programmes there is a great deal of confusion about what is offered and what can be expected from each institution or department in a relatively new field that is design education. The objective of the National Institute of Design as stated in the Eames India Report of 1958 (download report pdf 359kbhere)

References: (M P Ranjan's papers can be downloaded from this link here)
1. Charles and Ray Eames, The India Report, Government of India, New Delhi, 1958, reprint, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, 1997
2. Richard Buckminister Fuller, Ideas and Integrities: A spontaneous autobiographical disclosure, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1963
3. Thomas Maldonado, Gui Bonsiepe, Renate Kietzmann et al., eds, “Ulm (1 to 21): Journal of the Hoschule fur Gestaltung”, Hoschule fur Gestaltung, Ulm, 1958 to 1968
4. Hans M. Wingler, The Bauhaus: Weimer, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1969
5. Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World, Thames & Hudson Ltd., London, 1972
6. Stafford Beer, Platform for Change, John Wiley & Sons, London, 1975
7. M P Ranjan, Nilam Iyer & Ghanshyam Pandya, Bamboo and Cane Crafts of Northeast India, Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, New Delhi, 1986
8. Herbert Lindinger, Hoschule fur Gestaltung - Ulm, Die Moral der Gegenstande, Berlin, 1987
9. Kirti Trivedi ed., Readings from Ulm, Industrial Design Centre, Bombay, 1989
10. J A Panchal and M P Ranjan, “Institute of Crafts: Feasibility Report and Proposal for the Rajasthan Small Industries Corporation”, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad 1994
11. M P Ranjan, “Design Education at the Turn of the Century: Its Futures and Options”, a paper presented at ‘Design Odyssey 2010’ design symposium, Industrial Design Centre, Bombay 1994
12. National Institute of Design, “35 years of Design Service: Highlights – A greeting card cum poster”, NID, Ahmedabad, 1998
13. M P Ranjan, “The Levels of Design Intervention in a Complex Global Scenario”, Paper prepared for presentation at the Graphica 98 - II International Congress of Graphics Engineering in Arts and Design and the 13th National Symposium on Descriptive Geometry and Technical Design, Feira de Santana, Bahia, Brazil, September 1998.
14. S Balaram, Thinking Design, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, 1998
15. Gui Bonsiepe, Interface: An approach to Design, Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht, 1999
16. M P Ranjan, “Design Before Technology: The Emerging Imperative”, Paper presented at the Asia Pacific Design Conference ‘99 in Osaka, Japan Design Foundation and Japan External Trade Organisation, Osaka, 1999
17. M P Ranjan, “From the Land to the People: Bamboo as a sustainable human development resource”, A development initiative of the UNDP and Government of India, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, 1999
18. M P Ranjan, “Rethinking Bamboo in 2000 AD”, a GTZ-INBAR conference paper reprint, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, 2000
19. M P Ranjan, “Cactus Flowers Bloom in the Desert”, paper presented at the National Design Summit, Bangalore, 2001
20. John Chris Jones, “The Internet and Everyone”, Ellipses, London, 2000 and website http://www.softopia.demon.co.uk
21. M P Ranjan, Yrjo Weiherheimo, Yanta H Lam, Haruhiko Ito & G Upadhayaya, “Bamboo Boards and Beyond: Bamboo as the sustainable, eco-friendly industrial material of the future”, (CD-ROM) UNDP-APCTT, New Delhi and National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, 2001
22. M P Ranjan, Bamboo and Cane Development Institute, Feasibility report for the proposed National Institute to be set up by the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, Government of India, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, 2001
23. M P Ranjan, “Beyond Grassroots: Bamboo as Seedlings of Wealth”, (CD ROM) BCDI, Agartala and NID, Ahmedabad, 2003

Design Thinking: What is it and how do we introduce it into India schools?

Design Thinking: What is it and how do we introduce it into India schools?
Image: The Design Journey and Thinking StylesClick image to enlarge.

Design thinking and action are carried out under a variety of thinking styles and modes, each used at an appropriate stage or in dealing with a particular nature of task that is associated with that stage. In the design process these are not necessarily sequential and these modes of thought may flow from one to another quite freely as the mind and the corresponding actions in the design space wander along the design journey while switching from one mode to another and often returning to a particular mode that is best suited to handle the mental and affective action that would be required at that particular stage. Let us examine each one in a little more detail. Each of these can be developed by the creation of appropriate assignments and some of the classic basic design assignments deal with the focused development of several of these abilities in a manner in which these can be applied to real life situations once the processes are internalized and assimilated in a sensitive manner.

1. Intentional thoughts & actions
2. Categorical thoughts & actions
3. Analytic thoughts & actions
4. Explorative thoughts & actions
5. Abductive thoughts & actions
6. Synthetic thoughts & actions
7. Reflective thoughts & actions

1. Intentional Thoughts & Actions: Intentional thinking is used to set goals and directions and these are driven by insights and convictions that could have been formed over a lifetime of exposure and experience or in some cases through a flash of insight. These thoughts are layered by a sense of motivation and could be informed by a particular ideology or philosophy and in some cases these motivations could be latent and not available at the conscious level unless the individual or group probes them with the use of reflective thoughts and makes visible the sources of these motivations. The perception of a need which is usually layered by an associated imagination gives rise to a fuzzy notion of a design opportunity which is “seen or sensed” in the form of “something can be done” or “something needs to be done” feeling which is sensed only by the individual having these thoughts and it would remain so until it is articulated in some form of expression which is either verbal as in an exclamation or statement, visual as in a doodle or a sketch or even a three dimensional model or it could be affective as in a gesture or bodily expression of hand-waving or a more choreographed expression of a dance movement or theatre performance which could be symbolic, metaphoric or iconic in nature. From this fuzzy beginning the sense of the design opportunity grows like a seed to become a more mature expression that is associated with a better understanding of the domain in which the particular expression would be located. A variety of models could be used to explore the boundaries of the design opportunity and these boundaries are not immediately apparent but are discovered in the process of the journey as an outcome of the insights and explorations.

2. Categorical Thoughts & Actions: Categorical thinking is used to explore and organize the various attributes and features of the design opportunity as well as the context in which the opportunity exists. Brainstorming and classification are key processes that are employed to bring structure to the design situation and this too is developed over a number of iterations and clarity would emerge only when the structure is discovered and made coherent. The classification process can reveal what is known as well as indicate what is still unknown about the particular design opportunity since the organized structure can be subjected to critique and analysis by the individual designer as well as others who are consulted as part of the design process. This discovery of the known and familiar and the gleaning of the regions of ignorance is an important part of finding a direction for further research as the design explorations move forward. These explorations take place in the real world context and are therefore open to a number of constraints such as access to resources and knowledge, availability of financial resources as well as material and infrastructural resources that may be essential to carry out any direct experiments and trials which may help throw light on the number of questions that would pop up in the designers mind from time to time as serious research questions that would need to be answered. In this stage of the journey the design research may throw several serious research questions, which would set the agenda for research in a number of fields of human knowledge and across a number of disciplines, which may be pertinent to the task on hand. Many new explorations may be initiated in a search for a direction or an answer to a particular question. Some explorations are playfully executed and the insights would be saved in the memory bank for future use in an application or an exploration situation.

3. Analytic Thoughts & Actions: A huge amount of data is usually generated through the design journey and these would need to be organized by categorization as well as mapped into models that would help reveal new and useful relationships through a process of juxtaposition and analysis. Numerous tools of analysis may be adopted to deal with a variety of kinds of information types. Material data would be analysed from point of view of suitability and from their structural or functional viability, cost and price data would be examined from a point of economic viability, formal and semantic data would be examined from the point of view of cultural and social acceptability and other attributes would all need to be examined across all the pertinent parameters using tools and processes that would be appropriate for each data type and by using one that is suitable in each context. Designers borrow heavily from all branches of human knowledge and they learn to use these borrowed tools to carry out several systematic explorations and analysis. They also learn to use experts from the respective fields if time and budgets permit the involvement of such experts. However they do find great difficulty in defining the analytic tasks with a degree of clarity required to be able to outsource these tasks since the process of analysis is also used to bring clarity to the boundaries of the task itself and it is therefore very difficult to define what kind of analysis would be required before-hand in most cases when the task is new or the field has not been explored earlier. Due to this difficulty we would many times see designers struggling with difficult tasks outside their areas of competence since they just cannot be delegated in an easy manner due to the complexity of such a delegation. Designers are now learning to work in teams and to build teams that could include the requisite variety, which in turn would be able to cope with the particular complexity of the task at hand.

4. Explorative Thoughts & Actions: Many design stages take on the form of an expedition into the unknown and would therefore need to be nurtured in a similar manner in an open ended approach by way of supportive administrative and benevolent patronage. This spirit of experimentation that is broadly defined needs to be nurtured and is often open to serendipitous discoveries, which are at the heart of such design exploration. To some this may seem like meaningless play but it is a very critical and productive part of a design journey. This kind of search is quite focused but it is just as unpredictable in many of its facets. However the experienced designer is usually quite adept at breaking away from the known paths and is usually open to look out for the unusual and the surprising outcomes of these explorations and develops a kind of sensitivity that helps isolate very useful attributes and insights that are both subtle as well as critical for the resolution of the task at hand. Such explorations may be repetitive and across many scales of action, both at the macro level as well as the micro level of detailing when a number of alternatives are examined and each of the discovered directions contribute to the building of conviction in strategic as well as tactical levels which are much needed in making the numerous decisions that cascade through a typical design journey, some are revisited a number of times from a slightly different angle each time. These can recur at a number of stages of a design journey but at each stage we can see a forward movement from very abstract expressions to more and more tangible and realistic expressions, from doodles to more explicit articulations and back to doodles again but at another level of exploration or dealing with another aspect of the design situation.

5. Abductive Thoughts & Actions: The design journey is characterized by a kind of projective approach where the designer has a favorite hypothesis and the explorations are aimed at validating or giving shape to these hopeful or wishful dreams. This is quite characteristic of the design journey since besides inductive and deductive reasoning the designer is adept at projecting desirable attributes and exploring forms and structural alternatives that can meet these projected situations. This kind of abductive thinking is again repeatedly adopted to resolve several different parts of a system as well as the numerous details that may form part of the whole design situation. Finding the most plausible explanation from amongst a set of options is a constant requirement in a design situation. The need to be open and flexible in thought and action as well as an ability to cope with a great deal of ambiguity is therefoe a desirable attribute in a design thinker. This form of reasoning draws on both the propositional mode of thought 9left brain thinking) as well as on the appositional modes of thought (right brain thinking). While one deals with language , logic and argument the other deals with images, comparisons and pattern. Since these two modes operate from essentially from different hemispheres of the brain which do not communicate well with each other we find the strong need for the use of external models of a variety of kinds to act as an aid from inducing an intermodal dialogue that is critical fro design thought and action. It is these external models which start as vague doodles and jottings at the initial stages and get refined and enriched with detail as the work progresses and a deeper understanding of the possibilities emerge as a result of the ongoing explorations.

6. Synthetic Thoughts & Actions: Dealing with parts and wholes are an integral part of the design journey just as it is necessary to be able to journey from the general to the particular and back again a number of times while the particular design offering is being explored and articulated. The research and explorations bring into focus a very large number of explorations and alternatives but the designer is open to keep some of these as insights that would fall in place in one swift move which could resolve a huge number of variables when the design situation is seen from a birds eye view in a flash of inspiration that resolves all the variables and produces a wholesome offering that can be called a design concept. The design concept has a huge number of attributes but these are all captured in one single expression or model and this particular model would then influence the further decision-making moves which would be adopted as the design journey progresses. This is a process of synthesis and is usually achieved through an act of visualization, which produces an external model that captures the particular set of attributes that make the character of that specific concept. Parts are no longer seen as appendages of the whole but the design offering is seen in its totality and this would include the tangible, visible as well as the invisible attributes that get embedded in a particular concept to satisfy the original intensions of the designer and the other stake-holders as well. This synthesis could take place in a number of stages and in each a number of alternate concepts would emerge and these would need to be critically appreciated and evaluated through individual as well as collective process adopted by the extended team, the society and the culture in which the particular design offering is being made.

7. Reflective Thoughts & Actions: The evaluative processes and tools are usually both subjective as well as objective in nature. Numerous attributes are accepted or dismissed by subjective criteria of likes and dislikes while there are other criteria that would have measurable attributes such as desirable cost, strength and performance attributes, and functional boundaries where specific tools and evaluative processes would be used. In some cases law and statutory regulations that are applicable may require this and the design team would be compelled to adopt these as well as maintain a systematic documentation of these actions for future review on demand or as stipulated by the law. However some of the choices cannot be explained but these could be justified by the feelings and sense of judgment of the designer and in many cases the clients would defer judgment of such nature to the designer. These could be aesthetic attributes, strategic attributes that are decided on the basis on vision and only time will tell if the decision that was taken is one that would lead to success or failure in the context in which the design is launched. The designer has little on no control of the context within which the design action is carried out and the success or failure of the design would depend on the vision of the design team and the stakeholders associated in the decision making process. Once a design is manifested in a society or a culture it has a life of its own and all the reflexive qualities of any action in an intelligent space come into play and competition and responses from other thinking and acting players can cause the further success or failure of the particular design action. Thoughts and the convictions carried by the designer and the team get manifested in a particular set of offerings and these in turn would create ripples in the pond of the context by the other players responding in a reflexive manner, each driven with their own thoughts, beliefs and competition induced actions.

Systems theory and the Fire Metaphor: Design effect is therefore compared to the system of the Fire Metaphor where the result over time could be either benevolent or disastrous. A full description of the Fire Metaphor can be seen at this link. These thought processes are a natural ability of us humans having used it ever since the actual use of fire in an intentional manner way back over two million years ago. Long before humans understood fire or even explained it in any explicit manner it was used as evidence suggests creating campfires to ward of other animals. The phylogenetic history of the design journey would show us the stages of the evolution of the human species along with the creation of its artifacts and social and cultural infrastructure. However this design driven journey is yet to be written and when it is we will surely have a new view of human evolution as well as a clearer vision of how we can go forward from here into the future by the use of design. Much work needs to be done to get this kind of thinking back into our schools which seem to have lost these in the huge variety of disciplines which are fiercely protected by each of the expert practitioners and their communities in the belief that this kind of general ability to create is not a valid form of education and I do believe that this will have to change. Where do we begin!

Key resources and thought leaders:

• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi,
• Howard Gardner, howardgardner.com/books
• Gilles Fauconnier & Mark Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Minds Hidden Complexities, Basic Books, New York, 2003
• Morton Hunt, The Universe Within, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1982
• Peter Gardenfors, Conceptual Spaces: The Geometry of Thought, MIT Press, Massachusetts, 2004
•Charles Brunette, idesignthinking.com, 1993 - 2005
• Bryan Lawson, What Designers Know, Architectural Press – Elsevier, Oxford, 2004 and How Designers Think: The Design Process Demystified, Architectural Press, London, 1997
• Nigel Cross, Designerly Ways of Knowing, Springer-Verlag, London 2006
• Peter g. Rowe, Design Thinking, MIT Press, Massachusetts, 1991

Podcasts as a Strategy for expanding the reach of Design Education in India

Image: Prof Ranjan's office, with books and thought leaders Photo: Praveen Nahar, NID.

As design teachers we are constantly preparing visual presentations to share our understanding of our subjects and the tools for design education have been going through a sea change in recent years with the use of computers and some truly amazing software. We have perhaps reached a stage when we can bypass the publishing barrier which is usually the availability of financial rerources as well as the controls of a traditional publisher and reach out directly to all those who need to understand the use of design as a tool for development.

One of these emerging tools is the creation of educational podcasts. Design teachers as well as design schools can use that approach and can cover many of the critical subjects that form part of a school design curriculum. These podcasts need to be designed and if school teachers decided to use these tools on a regular basis we would end up with an enormous wealth of resources for spreading the idea of design across the country with a little support from the lathargic establishment which has all but ignored design for the past fifty years.


Sample Podcast of a lecture on Design: One of many to come. "Giving Design back to Society", a presentation based on the IDSA 2006 lecture. Music clip: from South Africa, the seat of human civilisation.

I have made a sample podcast today using an existing lecture presentation as a base from which to explore our options. The 812 kb pdf file of the IDSA 2006 lecture, "Giving Design back to Society", has now been converted into a podcast which I have uploaded on YouTube and then linked to this blog post. I propose that design schools and design teachers acrooss India collaborate as part of the National Design Policy initiative to build a substantial body of teaching resources which can be used to change mindsets across India and help grow the use of design in all the sectors of our economy, all 230 of them.

While we can wait till eternity for NCERT to introduce Design in the high school curriculum and then try and raise the resources to make the books and knowledge resources ready through Government funding, I believe we can move forward very quickly, if only we were to adopt a strategy of "make-and-share-directly", we can reach our audience across India in an affordable manner. Each participating school and teacher can make a list of subjects and courses and specific concepts that they can cover and we can then have a space where all these can be rated and shared in a dynamic manner. We need to reach our youth with the message of design and try and develop a broader understanding of the subject than that which is being portrayed in the traditional media, of glamour and style, and move it to one of substance and value creation for society and our culture. This, combined with an entrepreneurial spirit, can be truly transforming and it may be one way to beat the entrenched system in a win-win combination for all concerned. Any takers?

Intellectual History of Design: Lecture at IDC, IIT Bombay

Image: The "Big Tree" in the courtyard on the "Design Street" at the "Gautam-Gira Square" outside my office at NID – as it was when I joined as a student in 1969 and on 7 September 2007 before my departure to Mumbai for the lecture at IDC.

The invitation to speak to the students at the IDC Mumbai gave me the opportunity to reflect on the various influences that have shaped design in the last century. Reading the very limited published resources that are available on design history and particularly on the development of the peragogies and inetllectual positions I see a few threads that have had a strong influence on design thinking, especially from the Indian perspective and from our vantage at NID, Ahmedabad. This is a personal view and included a reflection of my own personal experiences since the early 1969 when I joined NID as a student in the Post Graduate programme in Furniture Design. The early years of NID were those of excitement and learning for me and having had the opportunity to meet and work with some of the key players in the history of modern design this personal view may provide some fresh insights into the establishment of design in India and the flow of ideas and influences that shaped NID and the other schools of design in India and other parts of the world in the past century.

In my paper “Lessons from Bauhaus, Ulm and NID: Role of Basic Design in PG Education”, (download pdf 69kb)that was presented at the DETM Conference held at NID in March 2005, I had explored the threads of influences and now I have been able to revisit the space and further expand on the developments. I the meantime I have had access to some new books on the Bauhaus as well as the HfG Ulm and the benefit of visits to HfG Ulm in 2005 and the ID IIT Chicago in 2006 which gave further links to the chain of information and insights that I was actively seeking to further my understanding of design in India. In 2005 I also visited Bremen, Germany for the EAD06 conference and my paper (download 255kb .doc file) presented there too looked at design education at NID and for the first time I made a public international presentation of the Design Concepts and Concerns course that I had developed at NID since I started teaching Design Methods in 1986. My visit in 2004 to the UK and my brief but stimulating meeting with John Chris Jones at The British Library and later a visit to the Royal College of Art in London gave me another occation to reflect on the developments of design thinking and action in the West. I will reflect on some of these occasions and what I learned from these journeys in the days ahead as lecture and talking opportunities come up that call for such sharing.

John Chris Jones and Bruce Archer had both been asociated with the RCA in the 60’s and through to the late 90’s as active researchers and teachers in various capacities during this period. In 2004 they were both honoured by the Design Research Society, London for their Lifetime Achievements in the field. Bruce Archer had also lectured at the HfG Ulm and so had Charles and Ray Eames and R Buckminister Fuller just as the same teachers had been visiting faculty at NID, Ahmedabad and the parallels are interesting and need to be explored fuirther to glean the kind of influences that they have left behind. Frei Otto, Hans Gugelot, Christian Staub, Herbert Lindinger, Herbert Ohl, Gui Bonsiepe, Kohei Sugiura and others who will be identified as my research progresses.

Image: Last slide in my IDC presentation

This post was drafted at the IIT Guest House this morning and uploaded in the presence of Kirti Trivedi and Raja Mohanty who had invited me to IDC this time. Kirti Trivedi had conducted a conference at IDC in 1989, "Design Education: Ulm and After" when he had released an edited volume titled "Readings from Ulm" which were based on a xerox copy of the originial set of the Ulm Journal 1 to 21 which has been a great source of inspiration and is still in the NID Library. I had helped prepare the copy for the IDC Library a few years earlier. This informal Sunday morning meeting was a good occasion to reflect on the experiences at the school and on areas of mutual interest, which is design and design philosophy with an Indian flavour.