Leveraging beauty aspirations to influence vitamin uptake – Indian calcium packaging.
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Check out more Random Specific images on Flickr
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Weights are anointed with holy powder at Grant Rd Market daily. Just one of the many intersections of creed and commerce to be observed across India.
Check out more Random Specific images on Flickr
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Earlier this year I stumbled on this skilled spot of street art, tucked away on a stair well in Haus Khaz Village complex in Delhi. On reflection I mused – not only was it undeniably hip – but also drew relevantly on the prolific costumed capers and adaptive character of it’s inspiration: the iconic Air India maharajah.
I was transported back to airline’s posters which I’d been in awe of as a child travelling to India. Was there any location where the maharajah didn’t feel at ease? Wasn’t he a great host, buddy, traveller – with elegant charm and worldly wit? A bit of digging round proved him to be the brainchild of in-house commercial director Bobby Kooka and illustrator Umesh Rao of JWT in 1946, way back when Air India was Tata Airlines. Initially their character was merely destined for an inflight memo pad, though he clearly had his sights on riding more than paper planes. Impressively the maharajah did not remain grounded as a static image as many brand front-figures of the day – but jetted zealously round the globe in dynamic and debonair style.
The maharajah still continues to make appearances – though he doesn’t seem to get up to quite his old high-flying hijinks, he’s not looking bad for 65! Great to see that at the hands of Delhi street artists, he still manages to show folks that he can spin it grand style.
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Foreign visitors to India are often startled by the prevalence of this symbol – featuring on temples to trucks, doorways to stairways, fabrics to food decoration and even electoral ballot papers. Many locals could enlighten them that the symbol is called svastika (स्वास्तिक). Some might add that it comes from the the Sanskrit word svasti – sv = well; asti = is – encompassing good fortune, luck and well-being. Others, noting a tourist’s repulsion, may offer that the symbol differs in rotation from the offending swastika by 45 degrees and mention that it’s local history predates Nazi Germany by over 5000 years.
It has been said that the svastika’s angled arms indicate that the path of our aspirations is seldom straight and takes unexpected turns. They also convey the indirect road to faith – in which intuition superceds intellect. Four dots are often included which symbolise North, South, East and West – or in Hindi: Uttar, Dakshin, Purab and Pachim. Reverence of the symbol is given by Hindus, Jains and Buddhists across the nation.
Travellers who pay attention to the widespread veneration for the svastika are likely to reassess their symbolic norms – and appreciate they’ve encountered a case of cross-cultural same-same-but-oh-so-very-different.
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Less is More, set in unadorned typeface Helvetica (more for Helvetica fetishists)
We’re so used to global transport networks featuring unimbellished typography in their signage and way-finding systems. Fair enough given that commuters require information to be legible, especially at high-speed interchanges or at unfamiliar junctions where there maybe all manner of other distractions. Fonts in the context of transit tend to be of the less-is-more, non-decorative, minimalist variety.
Frutiger pops up on Swiss road signs, at London’s Heathrow airport, on the Dutch national railways, and more. Univers strikes signage on the Montreal Metro, San Francisco’s BART and the Frankfurt Airport. Helvetica graces the NYC Subway system, my former regular transits on Hong Kong’s MTR, the Madrid Metro and beyond. (Its unobstrusivenss promoted typographic creator and critic, Jonathan Hoefler, to quip on it’s elusiveness to being evaluated: “Its like being asked what you think about off-white paint?”) If you’re a transit-type nut – you can check out more wiki-liciousness yourself, while everyone else reads on.
“Dilli-Metro” hacked in typeface Shree 715 (thanks to local type-geek Ghate)
On my recent trip to Delhi I encountered more of the uniform minimalism associated with mass public transit signage. Though tracking down the typefaces used proved to be a much tougher journey. I started by consulting with my cluster of global type-recognition experts, who all drew frustrated and occasional blushing blanks. My obsessive typo-curiousity evetually led me to Mudra Max’s wayfinding consultant, Sanjeev Hajela, who had led the team which devised signage for the Delhi Metro. The Hindi is Shree 715. The English is Brunel (Positive). Again, if you’re type-obsessed, you can venture on to Brunel’s relative obscurity yet public prominence and leave everyone else to stay with my train of thought.
Finally getting to the point – what really sung out at me during my own stop-hopping Delhi Metro experience, in India’s crowded yet colorful capital, was this exuberent diversion from standardised norms. Guys – don’t you just feel like you’re missing out on the party?
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Last month I had a blast hosting the Typocentric: Bazaar workshop at Delhi’s UnBox Festival. We had global players join local folk to construct typographic forms from objects commonly found in Indian markets – buttons, bindis, decorative mirrors, candles, textile embellishments, match-boxes and more. I had initially proposed the workshop to run over three days which somehow got condensed to three hours – but much fun emerged on this insane time frame. Having graphic designers joined by those with backgrounds in anthropology, education and finance led to a random-specific blend of capacities which kept everyone typo-ventilating throughout.
I got a particular kick out of working alongside my gifted former student and pixel-pro, Abishek Ghate, who experimented with constructing typographic forms out of various elements to devise the intense workshop format.
We started out by having small groups create Hindi words in Devanagari script out of bindis. For those of you who are in the dark, bindis are the red or coloured forehead markings worn by many South Asian women – often but not always signifying marriage.
Bram Pitoyo, Digital Strategist at Weiden + Kennedy, collaborated with others to form Usha (उषा) meaning the first ray of light from the rising sun.
Another group took a different path to create the same word. And that’s the arm of Kriti Monga from Tumeric Design – a typographic doyenne – who wears it on her sleeve. Some of you may recall her superb visual journal from Design Yatra which featured in Creative Review.
Workings + resolutions for Sakhi (सखी) – an endearing term for a girl, a friend, a confidante.
Babe (बेब) – phonetically from English and peppered through Hindi conversations when hotties are on the radar.
We then switched to a smorgasbord of elements from local bazaars. The pressure mounted and creativity escalated as teams raced against the clock to follow typographic guidelines while exploring the limits and opportunities that their designated objects presented.
Decorative mirrors, often used for textile ornamentation, were used to artfully form the word Chhavi (छवि) which means reflection or image.
A team working with matchboxes experimented with multiple approaches to celebrate the name of our hosts: The UnBox Festival.
Impressive collaboration from those who worked with coloured buttons to create the name of our host city: Dilli/Delhi (दिल्ली)
Decorative flourishes from a group working with gotas – pleated fabric embellishments used to adorn sarees and other traditional clothing.
And pyromania ensued to give justice to the word Lau (लौ) or flame, built with candles.
Ghate and I were joined in energising participants by Codesign founder and UnBox spearhead, Rajesh Dahiya – who was a former colleague of mine at India’s National Institute of Design, where he continues to teach typography as adjunct faculty. My Design Observer co-contributor and by now close conference-buddy, John Thackara, had to put up with our fervored racket from his more earnest workshop which took place a just few paces away – luckily I made up for it the next day by swinging us a table at the ever popular dining spot Gunpowder. With it’s scenic view, this was a great vantage point to reflect on the UnBox Festival – where I had also presented as Community Manager on OpenIDEO. It had indeed lived up to it’s promise to encompass work and play across contexts and mediums plus “rethink and stretch design practice through imagination, provocation and stimulation for those interested in social and cultural change.” While many of the conference sessions were focused on more worthy pursuits, we’d like to think that Typocentric: Bazaar ignited a hankering for the handmade, a love of the local, a craving for collaboration – all within the alluring hype of type.
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Youth in the slums of Nairobi. Future readers of literature delivered by mobile phone?
Yoza publishes short, hip novels and classic literature on mobile phones for African youth. Designed to encourage reading, writing and responding, Yoza engages African youth with stories and social issues. The project, which was spearheaded by Steve Vosloo – a technology researcher in Cape Town – and financed by South Africa’s Shuttleworth Foundation, is dedicated to a participatory culture hungry for micro-doses of literature that are accessible as pixels not paper.
Officially launched last September, Yoza is based on Vosloo’s observations that African youth are book-poor yet mobile-rich. An estimated 90 percent of urban South African youth have access to cell phones and 70 percent of those phones are web-enabled. In stark contrast, more than half of South African households own no leisure books and only 7 percent of public schools have functional libraries.
Illustrations from Yoza’s premiere edition: Kontax
Yoza’s first story, Kontax, followed the adventures of a local graffiti crew around Cape Town. Its 20 pages were initially published over a month of daily dispatches via a mobisite and later on the popular MXit social network. Each episode, released in both English and isiXhosha, was around 400 words long. Prizes were offered for the best comments and sequel ideas from Kontax readers.
Via Yoza, 17,000 users accessed the full premiere Kontax series for free — well eclipsing the South African “best-seller” standard of 5,000 book sales. Each chapter costs the reader around 1 US cent to download. Explains Vosloo, “Mobile data is cheap relative to voice and SMS — and of course, books. It’s also about access.” According to Vosloo, readership exploded when Yoza was made available to MXit’s 15 million local subscribers — a share currently far greater than Facebook’s.
Yoza content on MXit social network and on a mobisite (Image courtesy of Yoza)
The comments feature allows Vosloo to stay in touch with what readers want. “It’s become clear that youth are keen to be both educated and entertained,” he notes. “We get many requests for stories which are relevant to their lives. We’ve had requests for story lines which cover drugs and teen pregnancy, careers, money and more.” Feedback has helped to shape onwards content which includes Streetskillz, set during the football World Cup, Sisterz which explores dark family secrets and teenage life plus Confessions of a Virgin Loser which follows a boy steering his way through a complicated world of peer pressure, teenage sex and HIV/AIDS. Social issues provide a further avenue for interaction. A story which touched on domestic violence elicited a slew of comments in support of the affected character and posts of personal accounts which empathised with her situation.
South African students read and respond to Yoza content. (Image courtesy of Yoza)
Alongside popular culture content, Yoza has also been adding episodic versions of classics from Shakespeare to Wordsworth and other curriculum related texts. Feedback from teachers in low-income schools tells of class assignments given in conjunction with Yoza content and applauds the access to classic literature which the platform has provided. While some may criticise the informal use of language by readers – comments across the site also highlight an engaged audience ready to amend mistakes which have eluded Yoza’s editors. Although youthful readers may comment in text-speak, they eagerly respond with corrections on errors which creep into stories.
Looking to the future, Vosloo has been speaking with various potential sponsors who understand the bridge he has created between reading, response and social issues. One such discussion has been with a bank around the notion of a series featuring elements of financial literacy within its storyline. An aspect which is attractive to sponsors is the appetite created through releasing stories in installments but also that the entire series is then available on the Yoza site and continues to attract commentary. “It’s a bit like the transition from a box-office to DVD release,” adds Vosloo. “There’s the initial rush to devour a fresh feature yet the legacy contributes to a growing library of accessible content.”
An edited version of this article appears in my Change Observer Report on Design Observer.
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iPhone Wallpaper by Isaiah King
African Digital Art points us to a number of designers who are responding to the revolution which continues to unfold in Egypt. Check further down for some less graphically resolved yet more immediate and compelling responses from scenes of protest and those on the ground.
Posters by Michael Thompson
Meanwhile, global protests spark savvy signage:
Istanbul protestor. By Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty, via Foreign Policy
Protestor in Toronto via BuzzFeed
And on the ground – the most powerful messages speak volumes from their immediacy:
Sarcasm abound: “Go Mubarak.” By Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images, via Foreign Policy
Thanking Facebook. By John Moore/Getty, via Foreign Policy
Plain and simple. By Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images, via Foreign Policy
Down but not out. By Manoocher Deghati/AP , via the Guardian
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© Patang – Kushi Productions
Many of you know I’ve been photographing the Uttarayan kite festival in India for a number of years now. While teaching at the National Institute of Design (NID) for a couple of years from 2005, I lived close to the action in Ahmedabad’s Old City. This week I was back there for the chaos, colour and celebration of the annual festival. My visit was made even more special as I attended a warmly hosted private screening of the superb film Patang which will officially premiere in at the Berlin Film Festival next month.
Patang (Hindi for ‘kite’) is set in the Old City where a family duels, spins and soars like the countless kites in the skies above. During it’s poetic journey, the film weaves together the stories of six people transformed by the energy of India’s largest kite festival. When a successful Delhi businessman takes his daughter on a trip back to his childhood home for the festival, an entire family has to confront its own fractured past and fragile dreams. With naturalistic performances from actors (Seema Biswas, Nowaz, Sugandha Garg) and non-actors alike – bold, lyrical editing, vibrant cinematography and a kinetic score – Patang enchants the senses and nourishes the spirit.
Patang features three interwoven stories. Image of kite-string paste by yours truly.
The seeds for Patang were planted in 2005, when script-writer and director Prashant Bhargava’s travels to Ahmedabad coincided with Uttarayan. “When I first witnessed the entire city on their rooftops, staring up at the sky, their kites dueling ferociously, dancing without inhibition, I had to make this film.” He returned for the next three years, documenting his experiences with over a hundred hours of video footage. Slowly immersing himself in the ways of the Old City, he became acquainted with its unwritten codes of conduct, its rhythms and secrets. Prashant would sit on street corners for hours at a stretch taking in the nuances of daily life. Over time he connected with shopkeepers and street kids, gangsters and grandmothers. This process formed the foundation for developing the characters and story. As he began writing, Prashant realised that capturing the spirit of the festival and the city – its beauty and flow, joy and strength – would require multiple narratives. And so Patang found its shape as three interwoven stories centering on a family that reunites for the kite festival. Patang’s message and cinematic style developed organically from the deep roots of life in the Old City. Prashant reflects: “The sense of poetry and aesthetics became less of an imposed view and more of one that emerged from the pride, the people, the place.”
One of my stills, shot in Ahmedabad’s Old City, from Patang’s opening sequence.
Some of my photographs were featured in the title sequence – but Prashant far surpasses my efforts to capture the flavour, festivities and texture of Uttarayan during the film. I was especially proud to hook up the production crew with my über-talented former student Satya Rajpurohit of the Indian Type Foundry, who’s multi-lingual typeface also features in the opening titles. I managed to join Patang’s crew, actors and friends on a fabulously located rooftop during Uttarayan this week as the sun set and the sky filled with kites followed by floating lanterns and fireworks. An upbeat track from the film ended up on high rotation and I’d pick that it will be a city-wide hit during the festival’s quintessential rooftop musical rivalry next year.
From the Patang rooftop this week. Photo by yours truly.
While the sun went down on yet another Uttarayan, my head was filled with rich memories from the Patang shoot, reflections on the film itself and thoughts of the Old City where my forefathers lived and loved.
Disclosure: I previously dated Prashant for 2 years, across 5 cities and 3 continents. Most likely that makes me a tad biased – though I’m sure those of you who manage to catch the film in upcoming months will surely appreciate his achievements.
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Uttarayan Kite Festival (Flickr)
High Flyers of Gujarat (The Guardian)
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New Orleans remains peppered with vacant storefronts and folks who still need things. Designer, artist and urban planner, Candy Chang, created a participatory public art initiative which provided voice to residents – sharing thoughts about what they want and where they want it. I Wish This Was encourages locals to write their thoughts on fill-in-the-blank stickers and put them on abandoned buildings and beyond. A great way to spark conversations and nudge folks to imagine what their city could be.
Candy is a sassy, multi-discplinary player who has strung her projects across the globe from Nairobi to Finland, Brooklyn to Johannesburg. She’s got degrees in Architecture, Graphic Design and Urban Planning and has toiled for Nokia and the New York Times.
She’s devised some fab initiatives including a neighbourly post-it note exchange, a guide for street vendors in NYC and a spot of sidewalk psychiatry. More recently she co-founded Civic Center – a studio that creates projects which make cities more accessible and engaging.
Image (detail) of Candy by Randal Ford for Fast Company
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