During my last trip to India I was intrigued by the social norms, occupational cues and semi-uniformity surrounding the ear-cleaning profession.
Kaan-saaf wallas often don red head-gear and subtly sport a fresh cue-tip alongside other professional apparatus. This alerts folks to their services without the need for brash announcements of their humble and sensitive trade. More images.
Gotta love those who’s work revolves around enhancing our ability to listen.
Related posts:
Walla: Pavement Purveyors
Disrupting Urination Norms
Last week in Mumbai someone kindly explained to me the custom of putting wall tiles of gods from different religions along street facades. They’re positioned at pissing height – and act as a perfect deterrent in a reverent nation.
Related Posts:
Illuminating Urban Imperfections
Same, Same But Different
I was scoping out Dharavi yesterday for upcoming ethnographic research and came across this pair sharing headphones to catch the India/Sri Lanka cricket match via a mobile phone. The aspiration value of this part-shared, part-private use of a cellphone feature was evident – as onlookers could sense the excitement they were missing, through following the men’s expressions as the game progressed.
Check out images over upcoming weeks on my Dharavi Flickr set.
[Research updates were previously posted on the the now defunct Prepaid Economy blog]
Last week I became a contributing blogger over at Osocio – a website that aggregates
non-profit campaigns and social advertising from around the globe. Here’s a relevant bit
of cross-posting on a surprisingly simple yet highly effecive design strategy that playfully encourages behaviour change:
Scooping up a D&AD Yellow Pencil in this months awards is the brilliant Newspaper
to New Paper project from Dentsu, Tokyo. I feel D&AD are also to be applauded in acknowledging the great worth of this humble project. It signals that they are gauging quality not so much by the effort that is put into a design but more by the effect it has
on its audience.
Entry Rationale
BRIEF:
Design a package for a street vendor that sells farm-grown vegetables and fruits. The brief required somethig original, easy to use and low cost.
SOLUTION:
We focused on old newspaper used to wrap vegetables with. Newpaper was used for good reasons – for its moisture retention quality which helps keep vegetables fresh longer and for its reuse value. Under the “Newspaper for New Paper” project we utilised what was already there – the newspapers – and added an element of design that would be playful and make people smile… both those selling the vegetables and those buying them. By re-using old papers that would be thrown away, the project was friendly to the environment as well as to the budget. By simply adding colourful dots or stripes to the old paper we came up with a totally new package design.
RESULT:
Sales grew by 20%, as did the number of customers. There was more interaction with customers. Because they liked the design, people didn’t just throw away our New Paper but re-used it for something else. News of the low-cost, original design wrapping paper spread virally to other stores that used newspaper for wrapping. The New Paper project was not just a new design for wrapping paper but a pointer to a better lifestyle for us all.
Related posts:
High Flying Waste
Scarcity Sustaining
