The Businessweek Interview

Anuj's interview with Business week. The article in the December issue of the print issue is attached below the video



Click on the images to enlarge them

IndiaVision contd.. Kerala Shots

Nithin had gone home last month to his home town called Kollam (formerly Quilon). Here are some snaps from one of the southernmost cities of the country.


Check out the serene backwaters that the world knows Kerala for.

The city also has a clock tower in the heart of it to mark the city center. Kollam is a historically significant port city which had significant trade links with China and Europe..


This building was a former Royal rest house for the King. The architectural uniqueness of Kerala seems to be blending with influences that I cant really point out. Any suggestions?

These boys from the beach orchid hotel were conducting an Earth Day Signature Campaign, trying to get a few tourists to sign on the white canvas in the backdrop..


And here is one of the paintings from an earth day painting competition... The 9 year old artist seems has transfered quite a bit of emotion on to paper! Simple expression of the earth's feelings?

J-PEGS!!

Need I say more?..

India vision 2

No words..

Desmania in DNA

A feature on Desmania at DNA .


Read the article: Click here

India Vision 1

Truck graphics in india are iconic. They represent the Indian design spirit in myriad ways. Infinite permutations and combinations of colors and motifs result in imagery that is almost always spectacular. This one from Anuj's collection however takes a deeply artistic and metaphorical turn.. from Ekta body builders! Information overload is an understatement! we are talking religeon, pragmatism, logic, art, road rules, curses for the one with a bad eye ( the text on the lowest beam) and hey even a desi version of tata logo.. also notice the ABCDE and 12345 on the planks to make sure the lady gets built right!! - click on the image to enlarge it

And mind you, this is pretty tame as compared to what you can normally find on Indian trucks

IPL Logo Shootout!

Now that the big IPL series is about to kick off from tomorrow. We did our own little shootout for fav logo!. Chennai Super kings beat Kolkata Knight Riders and Delhi Daredevils by a fairly narrow margin! Seems like desmania likes the lion.. What do you like?


Royal Challengers and Punjab XI Kings didnt have any takers! anyways, let the best team win, no matter what name and logo ;) we just had the designer itch and had to scratch ..

The real Budha Bar ( Candy bar I mean )

Whoa!


Look what we found here through engadget .. A budha themed candybar phone ! Do we get divine enlightenment with the package as well? Even if we choose to sideline the religious theme , the detailing on the phone is nothing short of spectacular. I am not sure if this is a release version as the original page was google translated. Engadget thinks so anyway
Real or not real, worth a look anyway!

Check out the original story here click

Oorja

"A 2006 report prepared by an independent agency concludes that the stove reduces carbon monoxide by 71 percent and lessens suspended particulate matter by 34 percent. Cooking takes less time. Biomass use would thus fall from 1.5 to 2 tons per family per year to 0.4 to 0.6 tons per family per year"


This is no high tech Gadget i am talking about. This is an innovation that came out to cater to the needs of the India that does not rely on gas and electricity, but wood.

A cooking stove project called oorja is very slowly creating a revolution in rural India. Where conventional stove manufacturers provide the consumer a device and not a solution, oorja has a completely different take on selling stoves as a service. They supply cooking pellets to fuel the stove too. The fuel pellets, burning more efficiently than wood, reduces biomass consumption, cooking time and cuts carbon monoxide emissions, while giving employment to more than 2700 rural Indians.

Check out the original story Click here.

Frame your inner beauty!

It could be you in that frame...




No joke, no wordplay here. The frame in this picture is a DNA portrait. For a fee DNA11 takes personalized art to the next level! As we stand at the threshold of an experience economy that is about to transform and engulf our lives, these snippets are just packets of messages from the future?

you can read more here dna11.

Solar leaves..

Found this piece of treasure while browsing!
A solar wind hybrid energy generating concept..



You can read the full story here
http://ciid.dk/solar-biomimicry

The King and the common man.. let the common man be killed

A few years back, on 23rd August 2003 to be precise, a brand took birth in Indian skies. It was named funny by aviation standards, it was marketed as cheap, the logo showing a pair of open palms was compared by many as a "kids sketch" and the muted colors screamed low cost. But as the first ads talked of a ticket at Rs 1, all hell broke loose.
And then, the brand created avaiation history for the Indian subcontinent. You know what I am talking about. Air Deccan.

The first flights were miserable, infact the innaugural one even caught fire! The time schedules always disrupted, the crew nervous though efficient and the new airline passengers pulled out of the trains, unruly. But over the years, the airline grew, matured and created an identiy that established itself, on the sheer fact, that they offered a competitiveness in price that no one could match.The Air Deccan brand grew strong and a completely new class of airline and passengers were created. The colors became synonymous with 'value' as compared to cheap. The open palm became the icon for the India that always dreamt of flying but never could. The tagline summed it all, the experience, the ideals and the dreams that the brand had for the nation - "Simplifly!" The logo spoke for a nation that was spreading wings, the colors spoke to your heart and then it said simplifly! What a promise, and what a way of expressing it! I was a fan.. and I continued to be.

And as the Indian skies opened up to more value carriers like Spicejet, Indigo and Go Air making more and more Indians hit the skies. A flamboyant new airline entered the arena on 9th May 2005, sporting a bird that the entire country loved and admired and got high on.. Kingfisher

Pampered was an understatement for the flight experience with Kingfisher Airlines. They call you "guests" They feed you to death and they revelled in red! Kingfisher, succesfully brought 'high flying' into India, and established itself as the king of the sky where Deccan stood for the common man.

Four years down the line for Deccan. On December 19th, 2007, Kingfisher and Deccan decided to merge. The most unnatural aquistion there could be! As a loyal fan and observer I was devastated. The concept was unthinkable.But then this was a new challenge. We hoped there could be groundbreaking new identity. As Designers we awaited the arrival of a brand that would merge the opposite poles in a balanced identity.As the new airline unveiled itself in a (spectacular nonetheless) advert that made people go wow ! at first sight, as the new Deccan airplane came out of the clouds. Then we said oh!.

Air Deccan was dead. The airline called itself simplifly deccan! The typeface was the same as Kingfisher, the common man was gone and so was the open palm logo. The statement was clear. No more commonality. Thanks!

What has happened after that is sheer confusion. The flights were unrecognizable in their red tails that had the same kingfisher logo. Visual cues forced itself upon the passengers trying to find a Deccan plane/Check in counter. Red was everywhere. The soothing blue was gone, and so was the simplicity.

Now as I write this post. Mr Vijay Mallya has announced plans of the final nail on Deccans coffin. Yes, Air Deccan will be killed.

Though I, and many of the Deccan loyalists, had a hard time watching the brand turn unidentifiable, the intention of the rebranding exercise has finally become clear. Kill Deccan.

Though it is announced only now. It was done the day Air Deccan changed from blue to Red. That defenitely was a great job done. The colors, the typeface, everything was aimed to make simplifly Deccan and identiy that would not stand out alone. It pointed to Kingfisher everytime you looked at it.

But Air Deccan goes down in history as the Aviation brand that created history in India. The open palm will always remind you and i that a brand represented the masses to a fault, and communicated everything it stood for in a single word "Simplifly"

What do you think? this post is not taking sides, it is just making an observation. And if you realy want to get the feel of the brand you can check out one of their old ads click here

ND

Almost looks like an idealist dream!!

Some action from the 15 years congregation!

Hehey! so after we jumped back into work. We get the time to sit back and process some of the footage from the mad ads contest. Here is the winning entry...

Indian Media is taking note of Design like never before

Theories about decoupling from the US economy still doesn't hold true for an emerging market like India. Our markets are coughing blood as our market indicators crash to crippling depths for countless investors. The outlook for the moment, is caution.
The outlook for the future however, seems to be bright and confident. A trip to any Indian mega city can give you sights, sounds and flavors of a developed nation, though in small patches. The symbols of urban wealth gobble up our visual space on a daily basis, and new and attractive careers that help corporates leverage this newfound confidence emerge.

In a scenario of rapid growth and tremendous competition to attract and hold the faith of a population that is entering the consumer market at a rapid pace. The Indian industry is on the look out for new capabilities to differentiate themselves from a plethora of competing brands and products. The industry has started showing signs of willingness to accept Industrial design as a strategic component to business success. Testimony to this fact is the sheer number of small and ambitious firms making a beeline for Design services from us.
It is only natural that the media and the nation as a whole, are taking note of Industrial Design as an alternate career/business opportunity. There is an excitement about the design sector in the last 3 to 4 months in the media, as there have never been. The number of articles in business magazines about design stand testimony to India's positive outlook towards Design.

This week was eventful for desmania with our 15 year congregation, Kaustubh's profile at HT etc. Before the grin left our faces, Sanbid, the head of our Mumbai team is featured as the Outlook money posterboy! for design. I have the article attached here, click on the picture to
read.

15 Years and how!

Desmania celebrated 15 years of fun filled existence with a congregation of the Delhi, Mumbai and "No-Fuss naturals" Teams at an artist's village near gurgaon.. The two days spent together bonding with each other left the team with..

some 1331 still pictures..
a dozen or so video clips...
and amazing memories that we will not be able to erase from our minds for a while. The tears that welled up as we said goodbye, the hugs that lasted longer and felt tighter than they normally ever do between colleagues, all betrayed the 'people' behind the 'professionals' as we said goodbye to each other as the Mumbai and Delhi Teams parted.


Here is our team ..we are kinda, one of the best in the world when it comes to working together..

Where is the photo Kaustubh?

Well well.. our "media shy" designer dude Kaustubh was featured in Hindustan Times, much to our disappointment there is no photograph! did you bribe the reporter not to put one eh?..

P.S: The mumbai edition and the web edition both have pictures.. so here is a link to the pic --> kaustubh

Anyways the article is here for you to read..
The original article can be found here: at Hindustan Times



but hey we are all flexible about this whole form function thing aren't we?
What do you think?

Hurray!

Now this is what I call a good start!

This test blog has got itself up and running in no time. So now it is upto fellow desmanians to let me know what they think of this activity.. you can comment below to start with .. true blog style ?

So coming back to seriously discussing this new activity. This blog is our window to the world… this is where we plan to “voice” our thoughts, give them shape, get ideas from a round the world and share the fun of creating something that we are all excited about..

but we do have to make sure that we do not share anything that we are not allowed to share ethically ( client info/project information etc) but this should be a platform where we can have discussions on design, products, stuff you and I like, and don’t like… and yes, use a language fitting the image that we are projecting through this blog.. of exuberance, fun and our dead serious attitude towards being design evangelists for the world at large..

The company’s objective of having a living blog is..

1. To establish our presence in web2.0, which is the new generation of internet driven by user generated content. User generated content would mean contributions from you and I.

2. To link up with the thousands of design blogs out there and also connect with individual designers and enthusiasts.

3. The presence of our blog will redirect quite a bit of traffic to our web site due to the “trackbacking” by other blogs where we comment and also by feed trackers like technorati which keeps track of popular blogs and will expose us to people and institutions with similar interests.

4. Last but not the least, to create and evolve a viewpoint that is very Desmania. To be a reference portal on trends and to provide informative posts

Fundamentally, a declaration of change and preparedness for the future.