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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.
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Illuminating Urban Imperfections
Same, Same But Different
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What do laundry and lunch delivery have to do with my favoured intersection of communication, culture and creativity? Well, in the case of Mumbai’s Dabbawallas and Dhobi Ghats – quite a lot. Via their respective coding systems, both enterprises are able to track items within their service chain to ensure accurate delivery.
The Dabbawalla service entails collection of freshly prepared meals from the residences of suburban office workers from vast reaches of the city, delivery to their workplaces and the return of empty lunch boxes (dabba or tiffin) to its original home – all for a reasonable monthly fee. Delivering over 200,000 lunch boxes each day to workers who have diverse eating habits (often governed by religion) requires an accurate system – especially as each lunch box commonly passes through the hands of at least six men, in quick exchange, on its path from home to office and back again. Most tiffins are collected by bicycle, sorted into destination groups, then carried together on trains and cycled to the offices of their respective customers. In between they are commonly carried on hand pushed carts and large head-balanced trays – all while jostling with chaotic Mumbai rail and road traffic.
With low literacy being an issue for some of the 5000 dabbawallas, they have devised a coding system using colour, symbols, numbers and a few letters which is painted on the lids of the tiffins to indicate the train lines, hub points and destinations at both ends of the delivery cycle. Each part of the marking can be understood by the relevant dabbawalla as the lunch box exchanges hands through the service chain. In the case that a lunch box gets on the wrong path, the code allows it to be set back on the right track – yielding only one mistake per 6 million deliveries according to economic analysis.
The Dabbawalla’s have been operating for over a century and the business continues to grow at a rate of 5-10% per year. When I asked about the effects of the economic downturn I was told with a smile that “the stomach knows no recession.” Their innovative localised system has been studied by business schools worldwide and covered by international media including the New York Times. As a brand strategist I also note an additional factor that contributes to their iconic status in the city: the dabbawalla’s signature Gandhi cap. This further serves as a recognition device between workers at busy exchange points and failure to wear one attracts a fine from their registered co-operative association.
The Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat is the world’s largest outdoor laundry which processes three quarters of a million items daily from households, hospitals, hotels and schools.
With articles to be washed, dried, starched and pressed coming from distant neighbour-
hoods to this central location – they have also developed a coding system to track and assure accurate return. Many customers dispatch their laundry to local hubs which send in bulk orders to Mahalaxmi. Each laundry hub attaches their articles with a scrap of cloth bearing a code penned in indelible ink – indicating the short-form name of their hub and their total number of articles over the recorded individual item number.
Workers in both systems are proud of the value that their services provide to the megacity. Together they exemplify the virtues of bottom-up innovation and entrepreneurship at play in this densely populated urban centre. Most dhobis and dabbawallas are migrants to the city – but in the words of 65 year old dhobi walla, Jan Mohammed [pictured above]: “There’s no city like Mumbai.”
Related links:
You can see and read more on my Flickr sets of Dabbawallas and the Dhobi Ghats
and I have upcoming pieces on both services being broadcast on Radio New Zealand.
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My partner in crime from Hong Kong days, Oriana Reich, has curated an exhibition Cultural Confectionery for the week long Detour festival. New York-raised Oriana is a creative visionary who works globally and is currently back in Hong Kong dishing up a wealth of delectable treats from graphic design to culinary arts. Her imminent show brings together such passions and exemplifies her multidisciplinary approach.
“Cultural Confectionery aims to convey the fundamental notion that food is a cultural expression. Through exploring the relationship of Chinese confectionery to identity and culture, our exhibit will include a classification of Chinese confectionery, highlighting types local to Hong Kong and those that are part of a confectionery diaspora. The exhibition is a record of sweet memories: the stories, memories and traditions that surround our relationship with sweets. A series of photographs by Grischa Rüschendorf will explore local bakery and cha chaan teng culture, sharing a vital part of Hong Kong’s urban landscape.”
Acknowledging the reliance of our food experiences on smell, Oriana has indulged in a spot of olfactory alchemy to enhance the sensory and nostalgic qualities of the exhibition. She sought the input of San Francisco-based scent sorceress, Julie Elliot who dispatched a selection of nine scents for Oriana to blend for the show.
Get it while it’s fresh – between November 27 and December 9, 2009.
Related articles:
Still Life, Smooth Moves
Fruitful Pursuits
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My jet-setting former student, Sagarika Sundaram, recently touched down in London long enough to complete a 3 month internship with multi-disciplinary design firm Pentagram – between stints in Zürich and Dubai.
While there she assisted Pentagram partner Harry Pearce on his project for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) which provided graphic training tools for the Russian police. Employing national abbreviations (GB, US, RU, etc) the folding posters presented comparative data surrounding drug abuse, intervention, therapy and health related consequences – as a way of clarifying various aspects of drug policy during training sessions. (English versions shown here, with Russian versions being used on the ground. More posters can be viewed via Pentagram)
Sagarika’s input involved exploration of the folding component of the posters – a realm in which she has developed skills through her previous work on dimensional projects. Above she experimented in typography composed from playing cards to transform her understanding of 2D-form during her time in Baltimore.
And of maps, Sagarika has a few observations based on her extensive global forays:
“In India maps are not prevalently used – I think due to the immediacy of existence. People will go as far as they know then just ask where to go next. And it works in that context. Elsewhere people like to know from the outset where they are heading. I find that in Europe, maps take on added significance due to the proximity of interacting countries. It seems that European nations, in part, are defined by who they are bordered by.” [I caught Sagarika in Berlin this morning on Skype]
When I met up with Harry Pearce recently in New Zealand he noted that Sagarika was definitely one to watch – although we both agreed it was hard to predict where in the world she would pop up next.
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Taking inspiration from the other side of the globe, I recently implemented a weekly Learnings Initiative amongst the crew at Tardis Design & Advertising – where I consult from time to time. I’d come across the What I Learnt Last Week approach from the good folk at thinkpublic – a celebrated London agency that applies design to improving service experiences in the public sector.
Back here in the Antipodes we each present our learnings as part of weekly Tardis Time meetings. It’s our way of sharing and reflecting on the diversity of inspiration, skills, sightings and experiences that come through the office or touch our lives outside it.
 
A little something that honours the week that was… before launching into the one ahead.
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I’ve been throwing in the odd post to the recently launched REculture blog which explores the informal post-consumption economies of repair, repurpose, recycling and reuse at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP).
“Recycling has an entirely different meaning in the informal economy at the base of the social and economic pyramid across the developing world. Repair, reuse, repurpose and resale of products and packaging forms the basis of numerous small time businesses and services, creating a REculture that sees the potential for innovation and creativity where we might see waste.” – Niti Bhan
The REculture blog was launched by the globally prolific Niti Bhan of Emerging Futures Lab – a multidisciplinary research and consulting team focused on understanding the people at the base of the pyramid in order to improve the success rate of new ventures, products and services across the developing world.
A snippet on REculture from my end:
Advertising Ahmedabadi-style
A Ravivar Bazaar (Sunday Market) is held weekly on the edge of the Sabarmati River which runs through Ahmedabad. Noteworthy is the large tool trader stall which offers re-circulated goods for second-generation consumption. A micro-enterprise that fuels others to repair, reuse, repurpose and recycle.
The stall’s innovation is that by displaying it’s vast array of goods below the busy Ellis Bridge, it acts as a giant self-promoting ground-level billboard for itself. While corporates pay top dollar for hoarding space above street level – BoP entrepreneurs leverage opportune visibility below.
Keep an eye on REculture to shine a light on scarcity being as much of a driver of innovation as the numerous examples we see of abundance being the accelerator elsewhere.
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Sitting firmly at my favoured intersection of communication, culture & creativity are two exemplary projects by UK-based designer/animator/mutlimedia artist: Alan Warburton. Both explore food as an illustrative and participatory medium for enhancing dialogue.
The first was his Cutting the Melon/Cortando el Melon project in Venezuela. The concept was inspired by a conversation with a local friend on politics – who chose to illustrate his point by cutting a melon. The resulting project involved four pairs of participants from the Universidad Central de Venezuela who were asked to cut a melon to depict and discuss aspects of Venezuela’s political situation. Photography & video from the event were later exhibited – prompting viewers to reflect on their own narratives of the political context.
The second project, Fruits of Conversation, was held in the British city of Cambridge. It took the form of a community focused initiative where participants sliced, severed and sculpted locally grown apples to explore topics which they felt define their city. Issues raised covered traffic congestion, cultural integration, planning and development.
“Using apples is very much a leveller. It slows down discussions and makes people a lot more thoughtful and less combative, so when they need to make a point it facilitates a kind of levelled discussion. The first cut is always the hardest. They don’t want to cut the apple because they have to make an assertion. But once they’ve done that they throw caution to the wind.” – Alan Warburton, via the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts
Providing fabulous encouragement for playing with one’s food…
Related post:
Still Life, Smooth Moves
Cultural Confectionery
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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
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Earlier this year I spoke at the TypeShed 11 symposium here in Wellington, New Zealand which was a great opportunity to catch up with global type-obsessives I already knew and to meet some new ones. Though I always feel a bit out on a limb in such company as I’m no craftsperson when it comes to typography (having a short attention span for form) – but rather like to poke around the socio-cultural manifestations, functions and implications of type and type-making.
I spoke on Indian street graphics, touching on issues such as multiple language, globalised brands and competing technologies alongside the pervasive flamboyance of idiomatic typography in India.
You can download a summary of the presentation entitled Sign-wallahs: Indian Streetscape (2MB) that was published last year by the good folk at Lab Magazine or check some of my Indian street graphics collection on Flickr.
Related articles:
Viva Vernacular
Digitising Indian Ink
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