Design?

The first question that my great uncle asked me was "what are you doing exactly, what is design?" when I told him I got selected to attend the National Institute of Design, in Ahmedabad. I did not have a clear answer to give him, but before I entered college, my perception of design was "aesthetics". When I told people I was a designer, they asked me if I did "Fashion". People up north were a little broader, they asked me if I did "Fashion or Interiors".  I do neither. It did leave me wondering as to how to define design.

I have tried to answer that question here. Please note that this is not an authoritative article, merely an informal attempt to define what design is all about.

So what is design? Design is often confused with Art. They speak of expression and communication, They elicit a response. It might be visual, like a logo, or a poster, or a film or an installation that puts a message across.It might be a well designed product, like an Ipad screen "asking" you to touch and feel its surface. It may be clothes that the wearer chooses to express himself with. It may be a space that encompasses you, a texture that you enjoy touching. The difference in Art and Design is this: Art is the expression of the artist, for the sake of the art. 

Whereas, design is for the people. It comes from the needs of the people, or the opportunity to make something better. Designs ultimately have to respond to needs in society, and their survival and success rate is dependent on how well they answer to the people's needs. A good example is the humble "Lotah" . Its form and function have been thoroughly refined over hundreds of years in India, and with the simplest of geometry, absolute economy of material , be it metal or earth, or plastic, and its fantastic ergonomics, it has the most beautiful design language native to India. There are lots of iconic pieces of Indian design, but a lotah is a much more fundamental one. 

So Design is not merely aesthetics. Aesthetics are a part of the design process, and help put the solution together, and the solution again forms and informs the aesthetic of the design. 

A cycle of "Form follows function and function follows form". 

Design is a process, also a  problem solving  way where an area is chosen, the appropriate research is conducted, especially into the context, the users, their habits and the culture they're a part of, and see how all these things come together to present a broad framework within which the solution has to come out. 

The next stage is the actual design phase. Concepts, metaphors and ideas are bounced around, put together, jumped on, squashed, mixed, made a khichdi out of, to see how they all come together and answer the problem. The solution is sometimes, a product, sometimes, a graphic or a communication , sometimes, a textile, sometimes an exhibition, sometimes a public space, sometimes, a system of things . This is eventually refined, and field tested to see how appropriate it is and how workable it is in the real world. If it is a success, then the design has a good chance of  working well when implemented for real. That marks a good design. 

Design worldwide has faced major changes, with time and the age influencing the design that is produced and consumed worldwide. There are several important phases historically. Since a large part of contemporary design approach is based on the west, the changes that have taken place there have influenced design heavily. 

A variety of eras, from Baroque, to impressionism, surrealism, to Dadaism, to Pop art, Modernism and Post modernism came about. Discussing them in detail will be an exercise for later ,  but they all came together to shape how design is done today. 

Design in the west is a lot about the person who designs as well. Buildings are remembered due to the designer involved. The brand is the designer. This is a strong reflection of the sense of promoting individual achievement, that the west tends to focus upon. 

Design in India has always been around. It has been and still is a grassroot cultural expression. The Architect plans the Taj Mahal, the local stone cutters from different communities come in and put their own motifs on it. So we see an intermingling of cultural symbols.
When you hurt your hand, you got o the local bone setter who is also a carpenter. Then you go to the blacksmith in your village and ask him to make you a series of vessels that can be customized so that you only need one hand to cook. He works the design out in front of you and promises to deliver next week. You then remember that the harvest festival is approaching, so you need new clothes made. Your neighbour shows you her new saree. You get an idea, go to the local weaver, and get your customized saree made, to be dyed , and delivered to your taste. This goes on. Villages in India attempt to be self sufficient usually, and due to the mix of communities present, this has been achieved, and design has a grass root status here. However, design also has the trademark of the community that is involved in its making. The weaver, the goldsmith, the carpenter, the potter, the toy maker, the local bard, the artist, the temple dancer, they all fall  into the category of "the Craftsman, the artisan". Here, the community, the culture, and the aesthetic tradition is important, not the person who made it. A reflection is in the act that though we have so many cultural and historical marvels in the country, we do not know the people involved in the actual making of the piece. Till today, due to the nature of current IP and copyright laws, and the community-owned design idea that Indian mentality has, we are still struggling to create a functional system and legal framework to accommodate and respond to these aspects.

In India, soon, after the dusk of the British Raj, the Nehruvian vision of an Industrialized India set in. The middle class consumed the affordable mass produced things available to them and  the craftsmen were unable to tackle the same needs, with the same pace and rigor of industry, causing a wide gap in contemporary urban Indian lifestyle (which looked at the west for want of a precedent), and the dying presence of typical Indian design.

Around this time, Nehru invited two highly well known American designers, Charles and Ray Eames, to invite proposals to see what could be done design wise in the growing Indian industry. The husband and wife pair traveled across India for six months,  and produced a landmark document, called the India Report that recommended that establishment of a professional education institute for design, and that students in India be trained to serve the needs of local tradition and industry in the country. This led to the establishment of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, in the 1960s.

NID, and its students were taught in their time, by some of the greatest designers in their fields, such as Charles and Ray Eames, Adrian Frutiger, Helena Perheentupa, Mr H Kumar Vyas, Gajanan Upadhyay, Dashrat Patel, Ishu Patel,   and many such , establishing departments such as Product design, Furniture design, Graphic Design, Textile design, and over time, some disciplines also evolved, such as Ceramic and Glass design, Exhibition Design, Animation film design, Film and video communication etc, evolved. 

These disciplines have continued till today, and have also branched out to include other disciplines, in post graduation, in two campuses set up in Gandhinagar and Bangalore, including Apparel, Retail, Design management, Transportation , Digital and New Media, and so on. Through our respective disciplines, we learn to tackle different design challenges, and learn to design for a given context.

Currently, apart from NID, there are also several well known design institutes in the country, such as IDC in IIT Bombay, MIT pune, Symbiosis, Srishti, Nift, Pearl, and so on, However, the Indian design education in general overall still has to mature to the extent that the west already has.  Graduates from all these institutes are now working in various capacities in the Indian industry. 

A culture of extensive inquiry and discovery of the Indian design idiom, and constant efforts to preserve important arts and crafts, to revive them and bring them back into the mainstream through intelligent design intervention has been a very important facet of the journey of an Indian designer. We often ask ourselves questions such as " What is India?" " What makes something"Indian?" " Does it just have to 'look' Indian? "" What makes our culture what it is? What is contemporary India's culture? What is its visual language? what then defines Indian design, in an era of modernisation and worldwide standardisation? 

These questions constantly play on our minds.

One of our well respected professors, and design educators, Mr M P Ranjan has captured many such moments in his extensive blog which can be found here:

http://design-for-india.blogspot.in/

This blog is an amazing resource for anyone, be it a designer, or a non designer, and is often a reference for all of us. 

 And I should say we are extremely lucky to have been born in this country. As a designer, it is a treat to have an endless palette of things to inspire you, to have cultures and stories all around, to have situations that challenge our abilities (such as the Indian public toilet, and the attitude towards using a loo, in rural areas, and the cultural phenomenon behind it, and the challenge of bringing change), where every change is not merely in a small habit, but shows a ripple effect in culture, in caste and community, and by extension, in thought, outlook, and the world. 

As a designer, I hope to grow, to be able to answer to these challenges, and hopefully, build a better tomorrow for our country.