This answer's Liam's question :)
Landor Associates on India
Being a creative person I prefer Pentagram like structure than of Landor's; where the creative decisions are made made by people who work for it and not the shareholders. Still a great document worth reading.
Being a creative person I prefer Pentagram like structure than of Landor's; where the creative decisions are made made by people who work for it and not the shareholders. Still a great document worth reading.
He may look like royalty, but he isn't royal
We as Indians love to be nostalgic about the British colonial period. Especially in the cities like Bombay (even I hate to call it Mumbai, where names and credits are pretty much a life and death issue, see this) We love buildings that the British built, we still use the same rail. India is extremely vernacular in its culture. We are a visual culture. We see things on surface and imitate them. We did that with whatever western design we were exposed to. At least that's what I thought until I saw the immortal Air India Maharajah (in a bad shape) in south London. Its ironic. Because too much of takeaway food either affects your vision or your body.
On the cover of Creative Review's April 09 issue is a big, bright, beautiful Bombay taxi. (see this) The cover is designed by Grandmother; a small but exceptionally good design agency in Bombay. Kurnal (one of the partners in Grandmother) loves to archive fast-disappearing hand printed shops signs as well as the urban taxi art. (you can read the full interview and see pics here) Bombay taxis are one of the earliest visual lessons that a child gets. I have seen them since forever. (and I am not even from Bombay) I don't know how/why this art started. But I think it must be a some kind of rebellion against all the British visual discipline. Those designs are organically Indian. There is no 'philosophy' behind it. Everything is on the surface. Like Indian people. (well most of them)
I started thinking about all this when I saw the disproportionate Maharajah in London. My earliest visual taxi memory is two Lufthansa swans facing each other (in perfect symmetry but in bad proportions) holding a necklace of pearls in their beaks. All this in single color reflective hand cut vinyl. When I actually saw the Lufthansa logo, I literally thought that it's ripped from the taxi. Some designer (probably German) wants to express their visual taxi culture on a bigger form of transportation. If you think its quite believable. The exactly same thing has happened here in London. Someone wants to 'express' India graphically (with extremely tight budget) and wallah! Our own Air India Maharajah. With all the ingredients such as wrong color, wrong proportion, wrong mustache thickness (this is really offensive in India), wrong turban (again offensive), wrong footwear, wrong finger count of the left hand and all the jazz. The London Maharajah is a bit Walt Disney and a bit of sumo wrestler. Its also wrong branding, you cant show a fat person on a takeaway restaurant. Ronald McDonald isn't fat.
I am happy because at least someone in the west is aspiring visually to be like some form of Indian graphic design. Its something we did for years with western graphic design. I remember carving Nike swoosh on my school bench or the classic Reebok logo.
If you see this link, as the years passed by, the Maharajah is growing smaller and we are trying to be more and more 'western' in design. I don't doubt that one day some young Converse clad 'creative director' will say, "it's time to say goodbye to Maharajah." It will be a sad day for Indian graphic design.
The title of the post are the words of Bobby Kooka, the man who conceived the Maharajah. Click on this link to read more. Click here or here for another extremely good archive of Air India graphics with Maharajah.
BRAND NEW!!
I like things. I like precious things. I like nicely made stuff. I like preserving them. I am a collector. I am the guy who doesn’t takes out limited edition stuff from its wrapper. I don’t play with it.
Today I am going on colossal killing spree. Everything just lost its preciousness. Now I am actually gonna use things for which they are created. I have a huge collection of nicely printed stuff (3 big boxes full of), I have never let go a good chocolate wrapper, I have a film camera and I am nostalgic about all these things. Day by day when I realize that I am not a graphic designer, I like to call myself a collector. I have a nice collection of great real life stories, jokes and just stuff. I defiantly have OCD. Getting rid of wrapper makes me uncomfortable. I cant even list them all of my stuff; its so much. But in order to kill a collector and save a designer I am gonna do it.
From now on everything changes; even this blog. It’s gonna be nice not precious and in order to be nice I can’t be restrictive.
So a brand new website and a brand new attitude with 50% less preciousness and 100% up to date . . . and oh yeah it’s all organic and innocent and green and shit.
Have a look at it. Just click here
Honest mistakes issue one
Honest mistakes is a tribute to 90s Bollywood cheesy masterpieces. It is a proof that Indian creativity at its best when careless.
'Sumeet Ballal Photography'
It took Sumeet thousands of miles, £10,404.50 and 144 days to get here. So here it is . . .
You can talk to him on +44 75039 46320 or sumeetballal@gmail.com
You can talk to him on +44 75039 46320 or sumeetballal@gmail.com
Yeah! make it
Make the logo big.
Make the logo bigger.
Make the logo big.
Make the logo bigger.
Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can.
And make the logo bigger.
That logo isn't big enough.
So, make the logo bigger.
Bigger, bigger, make it big.
Make the logo bigger.
Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can.
And make the logo bigger.
Yelling
Don't try to be the brave guy!
We don't have a job for you!
You know what you've got to do!
You gotta stick to the process!
Make the damn logo as big as you can!
Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can.
And make the logo bigger.
I don't want to tell you how to do your job.
But, could you make the logo bigger?
Bigger, bigger, make it big.
Make the logo bigger.
Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can.
And make the logo bigger.
http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/003259.html
Make the logo bigger.
Make the logo big.
Make the logo bigger.
Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can.
And make the logo bigger.
That logo isn't big enough.
So, make the logo bigger.
Bigger, bigger, make it big.
Make the logo bigger.
Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can.
And make the logo bigger.
Yelling
Don't try to be the brave guy!
We don't have a job for you!
You know what you've got to do!
You gotta stick to the process!
Make the damn logo as big as you can!
Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can.
And make the logo bigger.
I don't want to tell you how to do your job.
But, could you make the logo bigger?
Bigger, bigger, make it big.
Make the logo bigger.
Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can.
And make the logo bigger.
http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/003259.html
“Europe belongs to Picasso, Matisse and many others, India belongs only to me.” – Amrita Shergill
I get up every day to the ‘times’ of India! I don’t go to college; I go to the ‘British’ Library. My default language of cell phone is English. I follow books/zines/music/movies completely out of my world. I feel disowned culturally and I start a rebellion. I start wearing Converse sneakers and Levis 501s. And I “feel” original! I am a punk of a post-modern, time frozen mediocre and a numb society. And that’s it.
Mathematically, physically, organically that is wrong! The whole culture of branding doesn’t belong to India We don’t go overboard like the Japanese do in the east, we have a sense of balance, simply because that is the only critical thing we have to maintain in our lives as Indians. We are mediocre; we are so hugely mediocre that India is the only country with such a large middle class population. We vandalize Taj Mahal, but we are not Banksy. We put up “rebellious” political posters but we are not Barrack Obama. We kill each other but we are not Samurais or anything, we do that in road accidents. Anything we do is so un-original. Simply speaking we are so numb to realize that we are numb.
We are just like every culture that is followed by history. We were ruled by the British for more than a century. We drive on the left side, we drink tea, we are eccentric, and we have a British vocabulary. We have systems set by the British. Our education is British so is our design education. Design especially graphic design in India is almost non-existent. Whatever and whoever I ‘idolize’ in India like Grandmother India–now that I think sitting miles away–are not original. Yes they are colorful and exotic but they use Helvetica Ultra Thin and the language, English. Every type of industry is coming to India for the search of originality and cheap labor. That’s what I call a dangerous combination! I mean Wally Olins is coming to India, for me it’s BIG, it’s huge. But when I think about it all that I feel, do these guys have expectations from us as a country to deliver originality? Having an exotic image anyone will expect that instead of using Helvetica! Helvetica is a Swiss modern typeface, it’s originated in Switzerland, and it’s the Swiss culture of 50s and 60s. So being a country with 22 scheduled languages with their own script and 28 states and so much cultural and visual diversity and a massive history don’t we at least deserve our own type face? Don’t Chinese and Japanese have their own languages in their gadgets? Is that the reason behind their original success icons like Manga and Honda? Are those just products or organically original concepts? Why are we dependant on the western visual bombarding when there is so much to explore in our own roots? Yes we were free only for last 60 years or so but are we really free visually? Didn’t Japanese face an A-Bomb and a total devastating war 60 or so years ago?
I am not just admiring Japanese people for their success and originality but there are younger countries than India with nothing compared to vast Indian cultural resources that are making mark in the Design world. We as Indians on other hand follow trends; we, the people living in metros, the only existent visually educated (or rather uneducated) Indians, like any other metro culture, are desperate for money. We want to put our mouth where the money is. We research about ‘future trends’ and try to invest in them (currently the animation industry in India is in boom). We get over bubbles like dot com, we blame each other. We don’t discover and re-discover our rich cultural roots like any design movement did in the past. Yes, the propaganda and history supports that but don’t we have a truck load of that?
Wim Crouwel designs in grids but that’s the way he thinks, he is a Dutch designer, is it right to apply Dutch graphic methodologies to Indian design in a non-content led shallow way? The only thing we share with them is orange; it’s the upper part of our flag! Applying any system in such a way is a style driven superficial approach which will lead to a bad design and at the end of the day, a bad market. I won’t go so far and call India a bad market, but yes, the market is the biggest difficulty in order to (re)invent a system. It’s inevitable for India because “good design is good business”. (Watson, T.J. 1950s, founder of IBM)
The best and sometimes the worst part of India is its scale. Everything is super large. The people, the cultures, the land, the diversities, the food, the colors; everything is so big in numbers that no single principle can accommodate it. People in metro are blind readers and tribes have the most vivid palette. How can we combine both? Or at least how can we universalize it so that everyone understands it? Or should we think of different principles for different class of people? Isn’t that what we do when we ‘communicate’ to the ‘target audience’? Whenever anyone tries to re-think of any part of Indian socio-economic system there are no singular definite answers. Just like million questions we need to come up with hundreds of flexible principles and system that can be applied to such a large mass of earth.
We need more content led solutions. We need to come up with solid systems which will revolutionize the approach to design and transform the markets. We need to do exactly what Wim Crouwel did, we need to follow strong principles and principles not formulas then apply them to Indian context. We invented zero, we can do anything!
Bibliography
http://www.sikh-heritage.co.uk/arts/amritashergil/amritashergill.html
http://www.theplayclan.com/
http://www.grandmother.in/
http://www.campaignindia.in/news/breaking_news_wally_olins_to_start_design_firm_saffron_in_india
http://in.rediff.com/money/2005/mar/17spec1.htm
http://www.eyemagazine.com/print/feature.php?id=150&fid=620
http://www.tarabooks.com/about/handcrafted-books/
http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/striking-the-eye-an-interview-with-wim-crouwel/
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjwa174981.html
http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=24647
Hall of fame
10. Ogilvy - http://www.ogilvy.com/
My first love, first job, first salary, first creativity, first evolution and first work. For last 6 years my target was to work in Ogilvy and I did it 4 years back.
9. Safforn Brand Consultants - http://saffron-consultants.com/
I want to work with Wally Olins. It’s a personal thing. If I was born in the 60s I would’ve said Wolff Olins instead of Safforn.
8. Wolff Olins - http://www.wolffolins.com/
I think this is the only BIG Company with user comments on their homepage! If you ask me would I like to work with Wolff Olins right now at 21 I would say no but yes when I will have mortgage to pay and stuff. It’s a company, its not a designer studio anymore. I think that’s how Wally Olins’ brain works. Its scientific and calculated branding company.
7. Fallon - http://www.fallon.co.uk
Clever, witty and creative success. BIG business, BIG people.
6. North - http://www.northdesign.co.uk/
They don’t have their work up on their site but I have seen their Telewest Broadband identity project and its superb. To judge with just one project I’d say they know how to sell or rather create sell-able stuff. Great business.
5. Grandmother India - http://www.grandmother.in/
I think the only design shop from India making international presence with great talent. (Not like those Oscar films) Their artistic or abstract – if I may say – value is pretty high for Indian audience. I am yet to decide whether that is good for business or not. For those who don’t understand, their logo is number 5 in Hindi.
4. Spin - http://www.spin.co.uk/
Spin has beautiful abstract value in their every piece of work. That’s something I envy. I love the fact that they have put an inspiration section on their website. Like Derek says this is one of those design shops who educate client to a different level and answer the brief in such way that it just benchmarks their work every time. And they are inspired by one of my favorites Mr. Vignelli.
3. Airside and Peepshow - http://www.airside.co.uk http://www.peepshow.org.uk/
Being a collective helps so much and it shows through their work. I have lots of friends in different creative industries like films, animation, illustration (http://www.inkbrushnme.com/), photography, fashion. So collective is something that I am gonna try back home. I simply am in awe of its high entrepreneurial value.
2. Bibliothèque - http://www.bibliothequedesign.com/
To some up this is my ‘dream’ place to work. And they are in Shoreditch!
1. Chakra – We currently don’t have a website.
One of the greatest products my dad produced (other than me of course). He is pioneer of design in my city (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pune) He already works in a collective without knowing the word collective. He works alone and he is passionate about it.
I am gonna take it to the next level. I am gonna lift up the benchmarks. If I am a brand then my punch line would be ‘Great business!’ I don’t think I have to say anything else.
The Rebel
I don’t want this.
This is not my way of thinking, I have never pushed myself so hard for a piece of work. I mean I have faced dreading deadlines, I have come up with a concept in the last 30 seconds n sold it but not this. This is not my game. It might be the right way of thinking, but its not for me. If I have buffer for mistakes then here it is, I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS.
More then I don’t, I cant do it. I admit I lose thoughts just because they are not on paper, but see it this way, the thoughts and concepts which I remember are worth remembering. Its defiantly not “visual research” just for the reason being that there is no single definition of research. Mine is defiantly not this one. I don’t get people carrying a notebook (http://www.moleskine.co.uk/). Sketching is ok, but if you ask me, I wont do it. Its not that I cant draw, I don’t want to draw or put everything I see in a notebook slash blog. Whenever I see these notebooks of these ‘cool’ artists/designers/thinkers I feel its style over substance. I know me and I wont believe it unless one of my gods tell me to do it e.g. If Massimo Vignelli carries a moleskin around NYC, then I might try it. Its skinny jeans and shoreditch and colored hair and underground gigs, I GET IT! Its not fucking culture, if it was it would have survived. It’s a kinda work which we see in 12 pound magazines. Its not open ended. At the end of the day the world is more than that so common and get real dude!
I want to be a tomato ready to squeeze all the time, why should I give out my juices? Why should I rely on a personal Getty images like stock whenever and however if I look back at it? WHY?
(But hey! I will of course do it coz a dreading deadline is approaching.)
This is not my way of thinking, I have never pushed myself so hard for a piece of work. I mean I have faced dreading deadlines, I have come up with a concept in the last 30 seconds n sold it but not this. This is not my game. It might be the right way of thinking, but its not for me. If I have buffer for mistakes then here it is, I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS.
More then I don’t, I cant do it. I admit I lose thoughts just because they are not on paper, but see it this way, the thoughts and concepts which I remember are worth remembering. Its defiantly not “visual research” just for the reason being that there is no single definition of research. Mine is defiantly not this one. I don’t get people carrying a notebook (http://www.moleskine.co.uk/). Sketching is ok, but if you ask me, I wont do it. Its not that I cant draw, I don’t want to draw or put everything I see in a notebook slash blog. Whenever I see these notebooks of these ‘cool’ artists/designers/thinkers I feel its style over substance. I know me and I wont believe it unless one of my gods tell me to do it e.g. If Massimo Vignelli carries a moleskin around NYC, then I might try it. Its skinny jeans and shoreditch and colored hair and underground gigs, I GET IT! Its not fucking culture, if it was it would have survived. It’s a kinda work which we see in 12 pound magazines. Its not open ended. At the end of the day the world is more than that so common and get real dude!
I want to be a tomato ready to squeeze all the time, why should I give out my juices? Why should I rely on a personal Getty images like stock whenever and however if I look back at it? WHY?
(But hey! I will of course do it coz a dreading deadline is approaching.)
Form, function and Prabhu Deva
Hyderabad, women in veil, a bus and some Biryani. You can almost visualize whats happening, if you cant then be dumb and Google it. What happens after that is simply benchmarking human physics (and biology). You don’t see ‘sights’ of Hyderabad, the women become male chauvinist dancers, the bus becomes transparent and biryani is gone! The madness continues as the ‘MJ’ of India moonwalks on a bus and redefines gravity.
I feel it’s a modernist approach to not just dancing but some physical gravitational revolution. It just answers the brief. The theatres have holy ‘housefull’ board for 10 weeks for those five minutes and four seconds. Crème de la crème India pays ten thousand Indian rupees (around £ 120) to see the real MJ but a coconut vendor on the streets of Chennai (formerly Madras) pays ten Indian rupees (around 15p) for more evolved experience. (With the words Madras and coconut vendor I almost gave ‘English eccentric nostalgia’ to the Brits)
There are so many trendy and not-so-much-required things in it. But at the end ‘form follows function’. MJ gives people what they expect from him, Prabhu Deva offers his client something that he isn’t expecting. And after that he is loyal to brand Prabhu Deva (I am).
Above all Prabhu Deva is still dark and loving it! (aaaoooo)
This one is choreographed by Prabhu Deva. Those of you who think its Hritk Roshan, its NOT, its rubber in the mould of a Hritik shape.
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