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DEKHO
Conversations on design in India
DOCUMENTATION OF
DIPLOMA PROJECT
SEMESTERS 8–11
GRAPHIC DESIGN.
2011–12
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF DESIGN.

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4 DEKHO
Conversations on design in India.
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Acknowledgements.
Thanks to the team at Codesign and Quicksand for all their
guidance, support, contributions and the belief in me.
Thanks to Mr. Suresh Immanuel, my project guide, and the
graphic design faculty and staff at the National Institute of
Design for course-correction and preparing me to face up to
the challenges that come my way.
I am grateful to the contributors for their time—late Professor
Joshi, Wolfgang Weingart, M.P. Ranjan, Amar Deep Behl of the
ADB Design Habit, Lakshmi Murthy at Vikalp Design, Ram
Sinam and Sarita Sundar of Trapeze design, Casey Reas, Stefan
Sagmeister, Neelakash Kshetrimayum, Orijit Sen and Gurpreet
Sidhu at People Tree—and allowing me to give shape to their
exciting stories.
Thanks to Irma Boom for the insights into pacing the book,
Steven Heller and Prof. H Kumar Vyas for kindly penning
the forewords.
Thanks to friends and batch-mates at NID for their
encouragement and interest in the project that saw me through
the few dull days.
Thanks and respect to the staff at NID academic office for their
assistance and support all along.
Thanks to the members of the extended family for all the love.
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CON-
TENTS
Section 1 Section 2
Section 3 Section 4
Synopsis
+ Codesign_11
+ Dekko_12
+ Why do a publication project + Why do
this project_14
+ Brief description of the
project process._16
+ The timeline_18
The Brief
+ Initial project brief_21
+ Reading, research and redefining the brief_22
+ Re-looking at the stories_24
+ Aspirations_26
+ Indian design versus design in India_28
Case studies_30
PROCESS
1 Content_35
+ New Stories / Inclusion / Exclusion
+ Decisions on the structure/format of articles
+ Example process of developing the form of a story
2 Design_30
3 Physical format_42
4 Treatment of articles_45
+ Example of design process illustrated with selected pages_49
5 Paper and printing_74
6 Typeface(s)_76
7 The Grid_80
8 Details of the printed book_80
Infrastructure concerns
+ Sponsors_92
+ Pitching and fundraising_92–93
+ Printing, publishing, distribution_95
The Journey_96
References_99
Colophon_100
Contact Information_101
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Section 1
This section is an
overview of the entire
diploma project.
It describes the project
background, the process,
and describes the
experiences and learning.
SYN-
OPSIS
Client And Sponsor: Codesign
Codesign is an independent brand communication studio based in Gurgaon, founded
when a few NID graduates got together, collaborating on a handful of projects and now
works with people across disciplines and domains of specialisation. The studio is headed
by Rajesh Dahiya and Mohor Ray, graduates from NID.
The studio occupies one of the very few remaining green patches in the otherwise
overbuilt Gurgaon landscape, works in close collaboration with Quicksand, a product
innovation and research studio housed in the same building. Apart from client projects,
Codesign also works on self initiated projects of contemporary relevance. Along with
Quicksand and few other collaborators, the studio organises Unbox Festival, a multidomain
conference that hosts discussions and workshops on design, among other
subjects—entrepreneurship, social responsibility, urban development, food and the arts.
Having completed my internship at Codesign the previous summer, the work
environment and people were familiar, and there was no “breaking in” period. Being
a self-initiated project by the studio, everyone was familiar with the premises and
aspirations of the project, and thus, ready with suggestions and help all along.
11

12 Dekho!
Initiated
as journal documenting inspiring stories of design, and
practitioners of design in India, Dekko had ambitiously sought
to—and continues to—meet the need for a design publication/
platform that did not resort to presenting designer portfolios
in accordance to the trends of the time, but related stories of
people and institutions behind the exemplary work. At the
time of its conception, there were hardly any platforms with a
similar intent. The design blog phenomenon had not happened
yet. Then, the platform was thought of as a periodic journal,
which demanded a set of recognisable visual features in terms of
presenting the content. It has been four years since the project’s
ideation and the media discussing design has undergone a sea
change. There are a number of regularly updated design blogs,
magazines that concentrate on aspects of design. Owing probably
to time constraints, most of them remain product showcases and
most of the visual design leave much to be desired. So, when the
studio decided to start work again on the publication, the format
and content had to be redefined and there were a new set of
parameters.
The Name
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14 WHY
DO A PUBLICATION PROJECT?
WHY this PROJECT?
Rajesh
j
Dahiya had mentioned this publication when I was
interning and suggested I think about taking it up while I
complete the academic projects. My interests were torn between
designing a display typeface in Malayalam and taking up a
studio-sponsored project by the end of the second academic
project. By then, I had also nurtured a love for content related
to design, reading every single project description posted on
Experimental Jetset’s website, consuming all kinds of content
offline on practitioners of design and the work that goes behind
constructing the impressive pieces in each portfolio, in addition
to the projects themselves. Then, on one of his visits to the
institute, Dahiya mentioned that the studio considered it a
good time now to bring the project back to life, with possible
sponsorships and some infrastructure for distribution in place.
The fact that the project, unlike a typical publication, demanded
more than a layout or even a system of displaying periodic
content—there was the possibility of generating content itself
and visuals—and the possibility of total creative freedom—since
the “clients” were people who shared the final-year-designstudent’s
(often utopian) visions of graphic design—convinced
me this was one of the few opportunities of a lifetime that would
come a diploma student’s way.
I had not done a full-fledged publication project not limited
by budgetary or technical constraints (the ones I had, were
optimised for very economic modes of production, being notfor-profit
projects) and had never dealt with content in the way
I always wanted to, and this one ticked all the right boxes. I was
also looking for an extended educational experience, which I
knew this studio environment could provide.
Deciding on a diploma project is defining the next six months of
one’s working life. It was also a time to decide on what medium
I wanted to concentrate on. Apart from the obvious screen-orsubstrate,
independent-studio-or-in-house-design-team choices,
the larger picture, for me, was about where to position myself
in the process of making something. This project offered ample
opportunities to be part of generating content, editing and
generating visuals that would form a whole.
The apparent creative freedom and opportunity for exploring
unconventional formats and visual styles when working on a
self-funded, self-published project is what helped me decide on
working with Codesign on Dekho.
At a time when the publishing industry is torn between the
screen and the printed page, with economic conditions not-sofavourable
for putting big money into expensively produced,
well crafted books, it made—probably as a response, however
subconsciously—perfect sense to see how viable it is to put
efforts into making and financing a book, to know whether it is
a sustainable enough practice to want to continue publishing a
series eventually.
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IN BRIEF:
PRO-
CESS
Brief description of the project
process. Find the process in detail
discussed from Page 23 onwards.
I began the project going through design magazines and blogs,
Indian and international. Also available was an unfinished
version of Dekko 1, which could not be published. Some of the
stories for my project were to be borrowed from this version,
while the content would undergo re-writing and updating, with a
second round of interviews
We began by emailing, calling up, and visiting people who had
contributed to the first version and searching for new stories.
As replies trickled in, I started defining features of the finished
product. At this point, however, I had failed to understand the
nature of the format and pace of the publication, and had formed
a mental image of a recurring magazine in its place. The layout
was designed—at this point—to be flexible, space-saving and
generic enough to accomodate a variety of content and styles. The
version I produced was also genenric, lacking the flavours and
pacing of the stories being told.
The decisions of how the content was to be distributed across the
pages had thus become a matter of economy and a fixed style.
After a guide visit, talking to Mr. Suresh, and listening to people
who have devoted a lifetime to creating publications led me to
rethink the format and pacing of the magazine, after having
spent four months and considerable design-time on the project.
I could re-use some of the artwork I had done for the first draft,
but the page size and the philosophy of the book was not the
same anymore. The magazine had become a book at last, an object
designed to reflect the nature of its content, even at the cost of
being a more time-and-money consuming exercise. The studio,
thankfully, was fully supportive of my decision to scrap all the
work up to that point and head in a different direction.
From that point on, I let the content dictate most aspects of page
design, focusing on giving enough space for each idea to sink in.
After finishing few articles, the printers were contacted so that
they can give us an estimate and show some samples of similar
(in volume and production quality) books.
With the finished articles, we approached potential sponsors
(most of them cultural institutions) and vendors who could
subsidise the production cost.
The project overshot my initial target of six months by about a
year, owing also to the nature of collecting stories.
At DesignYatra 2012, the Codesign team
met Irma Boom, who commented that
the book needed to do justice to the
importance of the content and respect the
pacing of it.
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TIME-
The Project
LINE
April 18
25
May 2
9
16
23
30
June 6
13
20
27
July 4
11
18
25
August 1
8
15
22
29
September 5
12
19
26
October 3
10
17
24
31
November 7
14
21
28
December 5
12
19
26
January 2, 2012
9
16
23
30
February 6
13
20
27
March 5
12
19
26
April 2
9
16
23
30
May 7
14
21
28
June 4
11
18
25
July 2
9
16
23
30
August 6
13
20
27
September 3
Understanding the Brief, Analysis of Dekko 1, Precedent Studies
Finding People & Stories, Information Collection
Interviews and Further Research
Making Transcripts, Editing and Creating Finished Copy
The time-line I had prepared at the
beginning of the project could not
completely be adhered to. The project
started in April 2011 and the publication
went to print in October 2012, taking
close to seventeen months. This includes
revising the structure midway, gathering
the content and proof-reading the
revised material.
= Two-week Units, proposed timeline at the beginning of the project
= Extended, actual timeline
Design Stage:
Illustrations and Additional
Visual content + Layout,
Refinements (Two stages)
Documentation
Some stories had to be dropped at this
point, owing to deadline complications
and second thoughts on relevance of these
stories. A process of filling the gaps—both
in numbers and in content—began.
This particular time schedule was based on the studio’s concern
over ending up spending too much time on the preparation of
content and, as a result, little time finetuning the actual visual
design. However, gathering stories and visuals for each article
took up more than eighty percent of the duration of the project,
beyond all anticipation and planning.
The design was executed in at least two phases of iteration.
This helped ensure there was always something to work on
while waiting for replies from different (often busy and out of
town) people. In the first stage, I divided and fitted the content
into pages and executed a basic layout, with artwork and type
treatments more or less in place. At this stage I added only basic
elements to help navigation and the flow of each article. The
entire book was completed in that fashion. Since each article was
treated differently and worked on over a long period of time, there
were jarring inconsistencies in style. The pages were put up on
a softboard (for weeks) and we noted down what could be added/
removed or changed from the version. The differences that crept
up over time could thus be more or less evened out.
The design stage doesn’t end until the
proof from the offset printer arrives
and is signed off. To realise this, it took
me countless all-nighters, including
ones at Thomson Press, Okhla, where
we waited for the digital proofs to be
printed and bound, at three in
the morning.
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Section 2
This section describes the
client brief, the philosophy
in terms of positioning the
book as well as its visuals
and content.
BRIEF
The
THE STUDIO’S
INITIAL BRIEF.
CREATE A PUBLICATION
JOURNALING INSPIRATIONAL
STORIES OF DESIGN IN INDIA.
Codesign has engaged in curation of
content from early on. With Dekho, the
studio wanted to create a platform for
discussion of design in India and the people
behind work done in the domain. Initiated
as a journal focusing on communication
design, the plan was to expand its reach
to include all design disciplines. The
publication had to be a well designed object,
and the studio wanted it to be a statement
on Indian design, attempting to transcend/
redefine the popular definitions and skewed
perceptions of the same.
The project targeted design enthusiasts,
students and professionals from India
and abroad. It could also be of interest
to the general public as an object
well crafted. The content, styled after
conversations, helped get rid of the
heavy-handed-ness of speaking
about design.
The format, production methods and
content were flexible enough, as long as
it adhered to the initial vision.
The original idea of creating a periodical
did come with some definitions on the
visual language. In the first version of
the publication, I used these as grounds
for making most decisions, as opposed
to the content dictating design in the
finished version.
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REDEF-
INING
&THE
BRIEF.
READING,
RESEARCH
The first few weeks at the studio were spent going through
old drafts of the publication, diploma documents that dealt
with the process and articles both online and offline which
discussed publication design and editorial design in depth. My
last project being an interactive one dealing with rudimentary
code and hardware aspects, I had ended up taking a long
break from designing publications and working with editorial
responsibilities. To revision the studio’s effort, one needed to have
a clear picture of where to position the product in a shelf-full of
design-showcase publications and research journals.
Reading the old version of the publication and the documentation
of its making helped make a list (and later, a spreadsheet) of
things I would like to avoid and things that had merit in them.
There were screen (PDF) and printed versions of the initial effort.
Comparing the PDF and the printed book, I could see how some
decisions must have made sense on a screen preview and, in
print, could not make the same impact. This is a mistake I had
been making all along, working in the safe zone of the computer
screen, ignorant to how it translates to ink on paper. For the
studio, the project was but an exercise which tested my (and
their) abilities in gathering and presenting the content. More
than a tangible product at the end, the learning and experiences
from that effort mattered. Being able to reflect on these in the
visual design was an added advantage. As for me, this helped set
rough estimates as to what the studio’s expectations are and
how extensive the work is going to be. (But these estimates were
constantly being broken and rebuilt, as the stories grew and
influences changed.)
The later phases of precedent research focused on changes in
the media environment and target audience. The internet has
made accessing designer portfolios and related content easier,
with the added advantage of being able to draw references from,
and point to multiple sources. Since 2005, a number of design
blogs catering specifically to Indian design (according to their
own definitions) have come to existence, along with a handful
of design magazines (lion’s share of them design showcases) and
conferences on design. Dekho as a magazine was not a unique
(or viable) idea anymore, unless the content and presentation
filled the gaps left by the volley of new products on bookshelves.
In this case, however, we were looking at an extended shelf-life
for the publication, beyond that of a monthly magazine or a
journal (which would be read once and shelved with no chances
of recovery) and making it something the reader would want
to go back to, time and again. Technological barriers have been
broken since, and the reader’s attention span is said to have been
reduced. But, before printed matter migrated to touch devices,
features of on-screen media had found their way into the printed
page. Magazines like Wired have long since adapted symbols and
elements of interaction from screen.
See the timeline.
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Revision of old content.
The content structure from the studio’s
first effort and my remarks.
Letters From the East. Amar in the Making.
Current Structure
History
Recent Developments
Neelakash
His Experiences
Possible Additions/Modifications
Better image content including sketches from the development
stage of the typeface, images of Meetei Mayek in use in today’s
Manipur
More recent developments including the further development on
the script and the Government policies, how the script is being
used and promoted
More backgroundd information from research, some political
situations
Similar stories, references, adds to the RESOURCE part of the
publication
Mayek projects. What Meetei Mayek has done to Neelakash’s
ventures since
/ Other work
Money versus soulful design / ask meaningful questions
Future / what happens now
Needs much more information on neelakash's experience
of designing the typeface as a student. We need to find more
questions to get more information from him on his experience?
Perhaps the other factual information on the script should be
isolated from Neel's dialogue?
Would be nice to add a small note at the end with what he and
others have been doing with the script lately."
Remarks
Pull out quotes as a standalone thing/ not pulled out of the text.
Refer to eyemagazine.
Image captions and tagging issues. Placing images and the
captions together/colour-tagging them.
Negative light on typeface design/the script. The text makes it
sound as if the design process happened at the cost of major
personal pain(s).
The 10 point comparison is misleading? If at all there needs to be
a comparison, base it on same x height?
Wrong pullout quotes
Notes
Add intricacy and complexity / Indian
The article as a conversation starter / “Here is some stuff, see
what you want to make of it”
Tone of voice needs to be more authoritarian/looking at the
reference aspects of it/maybe offset it with a more playful visual
language
Look at colours in a subjects website/book/body of work to base
the colours and embellishments in each story
Parallels
Design Issues
The Ride magazine
The Art of Looking Sideways
Current Structure
Influences
NID, CEPT, JNU, Interests
About Exhibition Design
USSR Exhibition, Experiences
World of TVS, working on models
Film Production / Partition
Possible Additions
Design Habit’s work on MUSEUMS and permanent spaces
? Talk to Ajoy David
Permanent spaces v/s temporary corporate exhibitions. What
Amar talks about in all other interviews about a possible burnout
and plans for a retirement.
Materials and processes/some quirky ones like the butterfly
canopies at the Mahindra expo. (ref: Story from one of the online
articles)
Introduce NID and CEPT somewhere? Talk about Exhibition
Design department in NID and earlier exhibitions?
Not clear how JNU enters and exits the story in relation to NID.
Amar's issues with NID on return are not clear.
What was amar's award-winning final project?
Maybe we can add Amar's viewpoint on design education while
he is reminiscing about his student days?
Re-consider choice of project for production design.
Showcase one project (maybe ongoing) for a permenant museum?
Remarks
Better information breakdown.
Reformat the timeline of projects as an infographics in one whole
spread. (why)
Project choices can be based more on involvement/experiences +
popularity, the production design project in particular
Notes
Old Photographs
Sketches from all museum work instead of 3D renders
Talk about the exposure to the medium bringing in lowered
attention spans. Screen is no more enough to grab attention
Signages versus spaces debate
Spirituality / Amar gets interested in spirituality at some point
while in NID
The poem Mahindra and Mahindra wrote about Oriole after the
IEFT exhibition
Parallels
Le Corbusier, Charles Correa, Laurie Baker
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AS
PIRA
TIONS.
“Moore and Gibbons designed Watchmen to showcase the unique
qualities of the comics medium and to highlight its particular
strengths. In a 1986 interview, Moore said, “What I’d like to
explore is the areas that comics succeed in where no other media
is capable of operating,” and emphasized this by stressing the
differences between comics and film. Moore said that Watchmen
was designed to be read “four or five times,” with some links
and allusions only becoming apparent to the reader after several
readings. Dave Gibbons notes that, “as it progressed, Watchmen
became much more about the telling than the tale itself. The
main thrust of the story essentially hinges on what is called
a macguffin, a gimmick… So really the plot itself is of no great
consequence… it just really isn't the most interesting thing about
Watchmen. As we actually came to tell the tale, that’s where the
real creativity came in.” Wikipedia: Watchmen.
With the publication, I wished to create an object that celebrated
features unique to the printed book, emphasising its nature as
a thing to behold. Ideally, this would mean a book that cannot
be read as well in PDF or as an ebook, as in print. One of the main
sources of inspiration and a thing that set the initial direction
for visual design was a book compiling select issues of U&lc—the
design magazine from International Type Company—which
used to be in circulation from 1973 to the autumn of 1999. In
addition to Herb Lubalin’s way of treating type being a personal
favourite, the magazine’s strikingly modern use of fluid grids
(the grids were almost never present, in a sense) was suggesting,
I thought, a fitting way to present stories from individuals who
were so different from each other in terms of the work-output
and their philosophies relating to life and work. The question of
what it means to have an Indian aesthetic approach, however,
as a student of design who grew up idolising western graphic
design giants and having almost taken for granted the outlook
of Experimental Jetset on work, would be a difficult one for me
to find answers to, but is a question worth spending months
mulling over. The constant feedback from team-members at
the studio, the project guide, people who were approached for
funds, designers from India and abroad and the discovery of illfitting
elements after taking breaks from visual design to design
content—all of this played a major role in shaping my aspirations
along the way. With the passing of each deadline, I wasn’t upset
at time lost, but was hoping for that resonance of content with
design to happen.
A year after starting the project, the stakes were higher, with
changes in the bookshelves, and on the public sphere in relation
to content around design. TAKE had an issue on design for sale,
with commendable texts on design, design blogs in India had
started discussing design beyond the visual presentation of
finished pieces.
Pages of U&lc, photographed from
Mr. Immanuel Suresh’s collection.
We are firm believers in the utopian
dimension of design. It’s something we’re
absolutely convinced of. It’s our main
drive. But we aren’t sure if this utopian
dimension can be found in utilitarianism,
or social messages. Those particular forms
of engagement can be strong sources of
inspiration for the designer, and in that
sense they certainly play an important
role, but they often lack a real dialectical
potential. In our view, a true utopian
design should change people’s way of
thinking, not just their opinions.
If we are indeed living in a fragmented
society (and we believe we are) then
perhaps the only way to shock us out
of this alienation is to counter the
fragmentation of society with the
wholeness of design. In that sense, the
utopian dimension is to be found in the
internal organization of the designed
object, its inner-logic.
Quoted from:
http://www.experimentaljetset.nl/archive/dripdry-shirts.html
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INDIAN
DESIGN
An autorikshaw? the dabbawallah? steaming chai? (supposedly)
street typography? the ubiquitous bindi? references to Bollywood
posters of yesteryears?
versus Design In India
A Google image search for Indian design brings up myriad
instances of mehndi patterns. Intricacy and ornamentation seem
to be the key elements throughout.
It is saddening to see how often design from india is preconceived
to border on functionless aesthetic supplements, and nothing
much else. More often than not, unfortunately, work produced in
India fails to have an identity of its own beyond those demarkated
by popular perception. Part of the exercise I wished to undertake
was to arrive at an interpretation that respected functional
aspects of design in India. In a country where a vernacular word
that equals design doesn’t exist, it is natural to turn to texts and
people from beyond its boundaries for guidance and inspiration.
It was, therefore, an editorial decision to preempt kitsch from
the compilation of stories. This doesn’t mean I had taken up the
mission of redefining Indian design. What it meant to me was
that the presentation needed to be authentic, devoid of anything
that doesn’t add to the no-frills perception of the book as a well
designed object.
Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says:
How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How
nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the
grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.
This internal discussion on Indian sensibilities of design and the
apparent lack of local written accounts on design practitioners
helped define the context and decision to include inspirational
and intelligent design (and practitioners) from India and abroad.
In our opinion, the addition of stories from outside our sociocultural
boundaries complement our on views on form and
function, while serving as stories of inspiration and contrast.
As a nation that has undergone colonial rule for two centuries,
the vestiges of longing to ape a different civilisation are everpresent
in our societal and cultural leanings, which reflect in our
art and design philosophies as well. Turning to mindless kitsch
serves only as a vehicle to mass appeal, however short-term. In
reality (or my version of it) intelligent design practice in India
has long since severed its ties to kitsch. Possibly, design education
based on models of western origin brought about this change, but
the results are far from alien or lacking in authenticity. Dekho
subscribes to this view of design in India, and presents the stories
that inspire, rather than lull us into a sense of belonging.
Internationally, there is a big gap in the understanding of the
“Indian” in Indian Design, largely because of a lack of context.
NID projects that I later went through, while compiling MP
Ranjan’s interview for Dekho cemented my belief in indigenous
design intelligence.
From the introduction to Dekho:
Identity, being closely linked to culture, is a complicated matter
in a country as profusely diverse as India. Across the country,
manmade rituals of language, celebration, food and apparel
change every few hundred kilometers. For centuries, India has
nurtured a culture of assimilation and integration—absorbing
and creating hybrid expressions from the heritage of its
conquerers, travellers and other settlers. This makes it difficult to
separate what is truly Indian, and what is adopted. Furthermore,
a rich heritage of craft heavily influences the perception of
identity in design. The familiarity of what we know as Indian and
traditional, sometimes poses a steep challenge to deviation
and innovation. There are likely to be multiple answers to this
debate around the Indian identity—and it is quite in the spirit of
a multi-cultural society that several answers will find acceptance
in parallel. The key is to look at the search for “an Indian way” not
as a definitive solution-finding exercise, but a long-term, multipronged
effort to build a body of knowledge around design in
India that can serve as valuable reference for discourse.
Much later, in his foreword to the book,
this is something Steven Heller mentions.
Parallels to the sentiment could also be
drawn from the book Eames Primer by
Eames Demetrios, where he recalls the
idea of being able to build cardboard
computers indigenously, instead of
importing IBM machines.
"Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit."
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CASE
STUDIES
This is a selection of few
examples from the pool of
case-studies prior to the
design stage.
To acquire a broad perspective on documentation of design that
has been done before in India, I went through design blogs and
publications (even showcases), seeing how the content was
written and supported by images and diagrams. Something to pay
special attention to was the physical properties—size, weight and
materials—that made one object more covetable than the other.
In the process, I came to conclusions based on personal and peergroup
perceptions, often making dummies to see how decisions
of size and format work, while actually reading it as a book.
On looking back, I realise how I could have made a mistake by
looking at magzines as parallels to this project. It was much later
into the project (four months) that I figured the pace of the book
resembled that of a recurring magazine more than it should have.
This happened after my first guide-visit, talking to Suresh about
the vision and being able to browse through his collection of
U&lc, Emigre and other influential pieces of design, and meeting
Irma Boom at a design conference in Goa.
Eye: The International Review of Graphic Design (Issue 78)
Issues Per Year
Quarterly
Price
£ 75 / £ 40 (Students)
Size cm (w x h x spine)
33.7 x 38.7 x .9
Pages
112 + cover
The page number varies 88 and 96
Ads
12, including subscription ad. Varies to 17-18 pages.
All are design related. type foundries, image banks and paper/
print providers
Binding
Perfect
Content Structure
Features - 3
Cover story / Theme of the issue -19
Uncoated : 1 column + Reviews
Content Treatment
Front cover: Blown up image relating to the issue’s theme, no
textual information on the content
Back cover: Contents from any three articles, with no page
number or indexing information. Even recent issues had
indication to which article the quote is pulled from. Older issues
(60) had indexes with writers and cover-lines(article titles)
mentioned on the back cover
Interviews have commentaries added on the opening spreads.
Articles are well researched, with references mentioned within
the text. Still, the opening spreads remain true to a set style
and layout.
Image Treatment
Each image has a detailed caption. Explaining the project,
significance, etc.
Books and objects are photographed against a neutral
background. Never shown as held by hands or clipped. The
featured books’ sides are aligned to the grid, not the background
space. When possible, they are shown at real size/in a full page.
Notes
Extensive colophon (take an image reference)
Issues numbered sequentially, making it easy to search and locate
Different stocks and printing techniques for inserts making full
use of the perfect binding
Grid
6 and 8 columns overlayed
The grid is strictly followed across all issues and articles
31

32
ID: The International Design Magazine (Discontinued since)
Issues Per Year
8 times a year
Price
$ 7.99
Size cm (w x h x spine)
33 x 37.4 x .5
Pages
128 (88 to 128)
Ads
26 Including back cover and inside covers
Binding
Perfect
Content Structure
Cover story 1 / Features - 10 / Departments (columns)
Columns: letters, update(id story developments fro the year
before), note, expo(stuff to buy), q+a, rant(design philosophy +
theory), eco, new and notable, crit, back story(on daily objects/
history)
Content Treatment
Most are reports and essays on work. Interviews are given as is or
interspersed with commentary
Content treated somewhat according to content, utilising infographics
at places where required
Opening spreads designed to suit the content (typography and
image treatment both)
Each article has a title and subtitle in the beginning, which gives
a better understanding of the content at a glance.
Links below each article point to the studios and people whose
work is discussed
Front cover: Image from a story inside/relating to a story inside,
plus index on top.
Back Cover: Ad
Image Treatment
Images are treated as if in a showcase, even when they are
discussed for their design merit/part of a story. Well maintained
tagging structure with colour codes and shapes.
Portraits include meaningful parts of the studio or working
environment. Shots are specifically arranged for each story, fitting
to the format and layout.
Notes
Discontinued Since Jan/Feb issue 2010
Three typefaces throughout
No colophon mentioning typefaces and printer/paper
Grid
6 and 8 columns overlayed
Kyoorius Magazine (Issue 7)
Issues Per Year
Quarterly
Price
Rs 500 per issue
Size cm (w x h x spine)
21.4 x 39 x 1.2
Pages
136 pages + cover
Subscription card inside
Ads
7 Ads including 1 call for entries
Binding
Sections of 16 pages + 20 pages
Content Structure
Studio Profiles 3
Feature Interview
New Work: Design 2 / Advertising 4
Special Report 3Dutch DFA
Case Study
Illustrator
Education (graduates’ perspective)
Snapshots (gallery of event kdy 2010)
Content Treatment
Front cover: Changes with each issue: typographic, different
coloured stock+printing in 1 colour
Back cover: typographic, borrows style from the front, lists all
content with page numbers. More like a weekly magazine than a
repository of information
project Showcase with little insight to the individual stories
behind each artist/designer
Layout not governed by the type or content of the story. fixedgrid-based
layout
Outright portfolio-like showcase of designers/studios and their
work
Image Treatment
Image content is provided by individual studios. No consistency,
but similar to the ones in the studio websites.
Grid
3 and 4 columns overlayed
33

34
Section 3
PRO
CESS
1. CONTENT New Stories And The Process Of Inclusion And Exclusion.
As a general theme/filter for choosing the right content,
we decided to focus on people who have transcended their
chosen academic domains to create a body of work relevant to
contemporary Indian social/economic/creative sensibilities.
This meant there was already a “story” of transformation
inherent in each person/organisation and would thus make the
content that much richer.
This being the first issue to be published, we had the luxury of
acquiring some stories from witnhin the studio’s network of
friends and their friends. These were people with an experience
of being “in business” for more than fifteen years. Interviewing
people with that quantity of inspiring bodies of work and the
associated stories seemed to me a good opportunity. We listed
down potential people (more than the number that could be
included in a publication within the given time) and associated
them with generalised keywords, so that we could look at a
larger picture that showed us the amount and extent of variety
within. The stories also formed connections with each other,
which helped me structure the publication later on. This also
served as a secondary filter to decide on which stories would
suit the format better. The initial idea was to redefine Dekho as a
publication that transcends visual communication and presented
other disciplines as well. The variety of the stories, we hoped,
would more than compensate for the apparent lack of inclusion
of other disciplines in this volume. So, as a platform for telling
stories, the existing ones work well. Furthermore, the discussion
on what kind of filters and modes to set in place so that acquiring
of stories become less time/energy consuming and more
streamlined, aided limiting the number of stories per issue, so
that enough emphasis could be given on each individual article.
Also, from a studio infrastructure point of view, attempting a
hundred-page publication seemed doable compared to churning
out a three-hundred-page-thick book every year. The resources
required—both human and financial—would be immense, and
prohibitive, otherwise.
This was not the case, when, after a few
emails and phone conversations, some
stories had to be dropped, either because
we felt they had not ripened enough to be
part of the book, or because the deadlines
were constantly being ignored.
35

36
The People Tree
shop at Hauz Khas
village, New Delhi .
What keeps you going even
after 20 years?
Gurpreet It is other people’s energies. It is the
response of the world—when I am feeling
down and I meet somebody…
The other day I met somebody at our
first shop in Connaught Place. He was an
American guy, who had been living in India
for a long time. He said, “I have been coming
here for so long. I treasure everything I have
bought from you. Particularly one Batik
T-shirt I bought long time ago, it is still
so beautiful and so nice to wear, I may
have to stop wearing it, but I am going to
keep it forever.”
This kind of thing really makes you feel OK.
Decisions On The Structure/Format Of Articles. The Introductory Texts.
This was influenced by the overall “feel” expected of the finished
product as well as precedent studies. The idea was to let content
guide the design of each article, keeping minimum amount of
visual features constant to hold the book together. The obvious
bits are the body text that follows the same style throughout the
book—Greta Text Regular, 9pt on a 11pt baseline grid—and the
Pantone 805 highlights and accents. The other thread that ties the
complete book together is the conversational aspect of the textual
content. Most of it is edited to retain the flavour of listening to
someone talk passionately about something they live by, over
a chai. The overwhelming vibes of being inspired, humbled and
then ending up asking questions about the nature of work one
is doing, was something I was sure couldn’t be missing from
the finished product, however intense the temptation of neatly
aligned rows of text was going to be.
The structure of each article, therefore had the extra role of a
unifying element. Presenting all stories as interviews (questions
followed by answers) with pulled-out pieces and an introductory
text not only solved this problem, but also reflected the visual
structure, in that the design took cues from each studio/designer
and the work (if any) shown.
Excerpt from the People Tree story:
Sometimes I meet some people that I have
of lost touch with. They say, “Didi, jo kaam
apke sath seekha tha, woh ham bhulenge nahi.”
(Sister, the work we learnt with you, we will
never forget it.) So then I feel like it matters.
Someone coming and saying this space is
an iconic space, it is a symbol for certain
things—then I feel like it matters.
It would be really nice to go and set up shops
like our space in CP, in various little colonies.
We would love to work with a much more
People tend to slot us, but we don’t slot
ourselves. People get a surprise sometimes
when they say, “So you work with natural
dyes” and we reply saying “No, we never
saidwe were going to work only with
natural dyes”. We don’t take these thing
and carry it like a load on our backs.
“You don’t work with chemicals?”
“Bullshit, we do. Who said we don’t? ”
Or “You must be not eating any meat?”
“Nonsense, I do, what are you saying?”
We are human beings, we have the right
to enjoy and engage with everything as
much as possible.
middle class audience and see if we can
compete with the products that are being
used there currently. That is where the most
sub-standard, ghatiya (horrible) stuff is going.
People tend to slot us, but we don’t slot
ourselves. People get a surprise sometimes
when they say, “So you work with natural
dyes” and we reply saying “No, we never said
we were going to work only with natural
dyes”. We don’t take these thing and carry it
like a load on our backs.
“You don’t work with chemicals?”
“Bullshit, we do. Who said we don’t? ”
Or “You must be not eating any meat?”
“Nonsense, I do, what are you saying?”
We are human beings, we have the right
to enjoy and engage with everything as
much as possible.
In conversation with
Gurpreet Sidhu
People Tree
132_Of The Head, Hand And The Heart 133
of FACES DEKHO.
12
80
204
134
These were drafted, put next to each other so that differences
could be evened out. Each one referenced the interview directly
with sentences alluding to the content inside and indirectly
adding a flavour of each person’s body of work. The introductory
texts were to never reveal the whole content, but act as an
anchoring bit of text to pull the reader in. Later, the content page
would acquire this responsibility and move away from revealing
any dry facts.
P8 Foreword: Prof. H Kumar Vyas
P9 Foreword: Steven Heller
P12–P267 The Conversations
P270 Credits
P271 Colophon, Imprint
38
58
226
102
164
242
In 12 , MP Ranjan reflects on his experiences as a design educator
Learning Ground
and evangelist, driven by his deep conviction in the fact that designled
intervention can bring wonderful changes for India. In 38 , the
late Professor Raghunath K Joshi makes a case for sound as a precursor
Spoken Words
to written word and talks of the Deshanagari project—an ambitious
undertaking which explored the possibilities of type-setting in Indian
languages based on the way they are spoken. Neelakash Kshetrimayum
Letters From The East
takes us on a personal journey to the hills of Manipur in 58 , where
a dying native script Metei Mayek, is finding a new life with design
interventions like his type design projects. Lakshmi Murthy, 80 , does
By The People. For The People.
not subscribe to a top-down, generalised approach to developmental
communication. She offers valuable insights through her work in
rural India—co-designing effective, localized models for social
communication with the user. In 102 , Orijit Sen and Gurpreet Sidhu,
Of The Head, Hand And The Heart
founding partners of the iconic Indian brand—People Tree, celebrate
the intelligence of the head and the hand, and talk about craft as their
approach to design. Ram Sinam and Sarita Sundar look beyond the
Kerning Space
brief at their design consultancy Trapeze in 134 —elevating dialogues in
spatial design from what is said to how it is said. Amardeep Behl wants
Amar In The Making
you to be uncomfortable in 164 . Restlessness, he says, is the mother of
all design, and in the course of the conversation, walks you through
the intricate spatial narratives created by his practice DesignHabit.
In 204 , Wolfgang Weingart, known for his explosive rejection of the
Through Hot Metal
Swiss Style and radical experiments, continues to inspire new forms of
expression. Stefan Sagmeister, despite the absence of an introduction
Stefan Sagmeister Needs No Introduction
in 226 , shares his life’s lessons with honesty and zeal, tinged as always
with his inimitable sense of humour. 242 is Casey Reas sharing his
Process
fascination with the idea of emergence, and taking us along a journey
exploring the binaries of naturally evolving and synthetic systems.
6 7
The Contents Page, Forewords, Introduction, etc.
The contents page is the first page where the reader encounters
all the stories at once. I felt it would be an injustice to the
conversational nature of the book to have a contents page just
listing the various sections, interviews and such. The rough
draft I wrote in the thumbnail was meant to spark the reader’s
interest with catchy phrases derived off the quotes and pull-outs
from each article—in effect, the main themes of each story. It
contained crude lines like “Casey Reas lets the dot go on a walk of
its own.” The second, edited version, as it appears in the book is a
much evolved, informative version that retains the flavour of
the first draft.
37

38
Introduction Forewords
The introduction is left extremely long, since that reflects the
project history the best. The format was predecided to make the
reader hold the book like a long scroll, emphasising the lengthy
process and ensuring enough attention is paid to the text before
moving on to visually richer sections of the book.
This plays the double-role of being a mission statement and a
how-to of consuming the book as an object.
In recent times, conversations and questions around “What is Indian design” have begun to feature prominently in
design & innovation forums across the country. Design interventions, visible in products, services, brands, and
communication, are being examined closely by users and the creative community, to determine their suitability
and sensitivity to the Indian context.
Identity, being closely linked to culture, is a complicated matter in a country as profusely diverse as India. Across the
country, manmade rituals of language, celebration, food and apparel change every few hundred kilometers. For
centuries, India has nurtured a culture of assimilation and integration—absorbing and creating hybrid expressions
from the heritage of its conquerers, travellers and other settlers. This makes it difficult to separate what is truly
Indian, and what is adopted. Furthermore, a rich heritage of craft heavily influences the perception of identity in
design. The familiarity of what we know as Indian and traditional, sometimes poses a steep challenge to deviation
and innovation. There are likely to be multiple answers to this debate around the Indian identity—and it is quite in
the spirit of a multi-cultural society that several answers will find acceptance in parallel. The key is to look at the
search for “an Indian way” not as a definitive solution-finding exercise, but a long-term, multi-pronged effort to
build a body of knowledge around design in India that can serve as valuable reference for discourse.
INTRODUCTION
As a design studio working with local and international brands for a predominantly Indian audience, we are often faced
with comments like “This does not look Indian,” or references to cliches as “This is Indian,” and “This works for
India.” A fair percentage of widely available and consumed design products in India work on accepted cliches
of “Indianess,” thereby further perpetuating these beliefs in the eyes of the market, clients and the design
community. Despite the emergence of multiple forums for showcase for design in India, there is little knowledge
of the behind-the-scenes stories of designing in and for India. Dialogue only around a few, finished examples of
design, precludes knowledge-sharing about experiences, alternative viewpoints, failures and revelations that
inspire. For students and young practicing designers, there is little access to the real-life experiences of designers
in India. To understand the fine connections between tradition, culture, modernization and design, and to inspire
a truly “Indian” way of design, it is imperative that we nurture and create repositories of knowledge. This body of
knowledge should provide room for introspection, for reflection. It should provoke new questions. Most of all, it
needs to be real—honest and bold from the experiences of practitioners in India.
Dekho is an anthology of inspirational conversations with designers in India, probing their stories for cues to the
development of design in India and highlighting approaches that are unique to designing for India. In 2007,
Dekho began as an idea, fuelled by constant conversations within the studio about the lack of Indian heroes
for young design students. For the next few months, working through an intimate network of contacts within
the community, we travelled—meeting and recording conversations with designers, whose thoughts and work
struck a chord with our quest to understand the unique context of Indian design. The selective addition of
international voices for the publication came about with the desire to present stories that contained relevant
cues for contemporary design developments in India. The experience of the raw content that we gathered was
overwhelming in parts. With the first prototype of Dekho as a publication in our hands, we paused to consciously
think about our role as curators and creators in this. In the next 3 years, there was a great surge of activity in
design forums and platforms in India, yet most of these continued to be showcase-based, and lacking the voice of
the designer. This was in part due to the lack of writers with a good understanding of design, and the absence of
connections between design and the world/issues at large. After an extended break, the effort behind Dekho was
revived with greater clarity. People, places and stories were revisited—for stories within their stories, for contexts
that had changed in the interim, and for new people who had inspired us. The conversations were re-captured to
focus on issues and ideas that are pertinent to the maturing of design in India, ranging from inclusive approaches
to developmental communication, revival of dying Indian scripts, to the future of design education and the
building of an iconic Indian brand by design entrepreneurs.
The conversational format of Dekho, stems from the latent richness that is at the core of conversations, as opposed to a
commentary or report. Conversations have the innate quality to break boundaries, meander through seemingly
unrelated territories and converge at astonishing points of relevance, and most importantly, open up ideas for
interpretation. While editing and creating formats for the stories, we have been conscious of retaining quirks of
the spoken word—which may not always conform to norms of written language—but are expressive and laden
with the speaker’s intent.
Book design in India has been largely relegated to two extremes—academic and textual, or showcase-based, “coffee-table”
publications. Dekho explores possibilities in print design—driven by the voices and their stories. Design for Dekho
is a rich visual narrative that creates an experience of the unique context of each person, their work and their
ideology. The book is designed to not just be read from start-to-finish; but with multiple layers of image + text, it is
meant to be experienced anew, with each new story and each new page.
4 5
Dekho means “To See” in Hindi. At the outset, it is a simple word, as is the intention behind the project—to build context
for design in India not by imposing a set of characteristics or rules, but simply sharing real, personal experiences
of designing for/in India.
On deeper scrutiny, “See” can mean a dozen different acts of recognition—discern, spot, notice, catch sight of, glimpse,
make out, pick out, spy, distinguish, detect, perceive, watch, look at, view, inspect, view, look round, tour, survey,
examine, scrutinize, understand, grasp, comprehend, follow, take in, realize, appreciate, recognize, work out, get the
drift of, find out, discover, learn, ascertain, determine, establish…
That is what we hope the experience of Dekho will achieve for the reader—multiple take-aways and interpretations,
making for a larger, diverse and richer view of design in India.
8
Charting A New Path In
India’s Design Journalism
Prof. H Kumar Vyas
The forewords were planned to reflect the diversity inside the
book, penned by two eminent authors who are giants in their
respective fields. It was also interesting to see the viewpoints of
somebody inside the country looking at its design as well as an
external observer.
Email exchanges were promptly responded to, and both the
people agreed to write forewords based on work-in-progress PDFs
we could send at that time.
There has been a long felt need among the Indian design fraternity for a
platform to share each other’s work, not just as narratives of design solutions,
but at the deeper level of concept building and problem solving process. It is
good to know that Dekho is going to do exactly that.
It is interesting that the editorial team should select this particular name for
the journal. The conventional meaning of ‘dekho’ may convey the impression
of having to do only with seeing or looking at. And hence in the extended
context of design, confined to visual communication. Dekho, a Hindi verb
in imperative mood originates from Sanskrit root verb drish which may
primarily mean ‘to see or behold’. But in its secondary and more profound
meaning it begins to suggest acts of ‘seeing with the thinking eye’, of
examining and learning and even of composing—implying composition of
poetic hymns.
And as its contents rightly suggest, Dekho does not confine itself to
visual communication only. Right from the word go, it promises a much
wider reach—embracing all the modern disciplines of design and their
practitioners. It sets out to challenge the hitherto held stereotypical notions
about Indian design everywhere. The reason for this, as it rightly points out,
is largely the lack of right kind of documentation of the context and the
process behind design projects. Dekho has embarked on the formidable task
of meeting this vey lacuna.
The graphic format of Dekho charts out hitherto unexplored avenues of
visual communication. It informs copiously; at the same time excites and
challenges the imagination of the reader.
Referring once again to the present contents of Dekho, it seems to hold
a promise for exciting future possibilities. It has provided an excellent
platform for designers to converse freely about their inspirations, endeavours
and learning. At the same time it holds promise of expanding into a
repository of meticulously recorded case studies of selected design projects to
inspire young practitioners and design learners.
FORE WORD
Together We Are One (Sometimes)
Steven Heller
So many things could link all humankind together. Yet so few opportunities
arise to make these connections. We share music and art, sports and movies,
but too often these shared passions are experienced without connecting to
others. Even with social media as our current glue, we are still far away – and
many prefer it so or there wouldn’t be so many obnoxious pseudonyms in use.
Graphic design has magnetic powers. Since graphic designers are so often
misunderstood and misperceived, when we find and commiserate with
others who do more or less what we do, and we become instantly engaged. Is
it like “you’re a freak too? Let’s be freaks together!”? Of course not. Graphic
design is not a freakish practice, nor is it entirely invisible and unknown. As
designers we enjoy the tribal aspect of being a graphic “person.” And even
more than enjoyment, we yearn to be with others like ourselves, even if they
are thousands of miles and cultural boarders away.
So when Rajesh Dahiya asked me to contribute this brief introduction to
Dehko, I felt like I was invited on a journey beyond anywhere I have ever
travelled. In truth, I sit in my noisy office in New York, listening to the street
being torn up yet again, while scanning through the material I received. And
it reveals to me an aspect of Indian design I haven’t known before. My only
point of reference for the Indian design field is work that I’d seen come out of
the National Institute of Design in the Seventies. At the time, I was bored by
orthodox modernism in America. Helvetica had taken the joy out of design.
Swiss design fit like a glove into the austere stereotype. Corporate America
had co-opted the Typographic International Style for the same reason the
CIA embraced Abstract Expressionism—it was safe. Modernism had lost its
radical raison d’être as Abstract Expressionism had become institutionalized.
I may be very wrong, I know designers who would not be where they are
today were it not for NID. But I have also seen work that convinced me the
National Institute of Design fell for the trappings of the modernism, while
the products of modernism, in fact, were not as good.
Dehko offers me, at least, a different view and more hopeful feeling.
It incorporates rather than segregates, it embraces rather than pushes away.
It accepts the old and new, the modern and vernacular – in short it seeks
to harness the power of design through the joy of design. When Rajesh
asked me to write my thoughts, I thought this is will be a link to foreign
culture and fellow designer. The only difference between us is water and air
(and perhaps the colour of our hair). More publishing efforts like this,
which passionately and honestly confront stereotypes through eclectic and
eccentric belief should occur in the world. They may just bring us together,
if only for a moment.
9
39

40
The process of developing the form of a story.
Interview 1 » Transcript+Notes » Interview 2 » Transcript+Notes » Drafts » Verification+Approval » Article
Background Research And The First Draft Of Questions. First Round Of Answers And The Second Draft Of Questions.
I went through each person’s work (the parts we thought the
article should focus on, when talking about design practice) in
all available forms—web, print and in the form of audio/video
interviews and presentations, when available—making notes
and drafting questions where relevant. The questions were
intended to supplement the available information and highlight
the “journey” aspect of each person’s work and process. We had
discussions after each draft of questions were made, where they
were analysed from a potential target-audience-point-of-view.
The questions were crafted to ensure that a “yes” or “no” was
never generated as an answer, but the idea was discussed in
detail. To this end, we added cues (which were later removed from
or incorporated to the edited content, depending on relevance)
and broke the questions up so that each part would be looked at
in detail. For example, a question about Amar’s work-philosophy
would cite an instance from a project where it shows through,
often getting rich and awe-inspiring stories behind creation of
that particular project. The questions were circulated within the
editors, the creative head and a studio member, before they were
mailed to the interviewee or presented at a meeting. This ensured
no redundant information got through and the story as a whole
was clear.
Editing in space.
In most cases, the first set of replies were to-the-point, but
not lacking in vital information. I highlighted the parts which
could be explained further, framed questions based on the first
set of replies and started highlighting sections to be supported
by images. If these images were available online, I would make
a collection of screengrabs, with the URI wherever possible,
and send them over so that higher resolution images could be
arranged for. The process of discussion, reframing and adding
cues was repeated at each step. A second round of questions—in
some questions, this was happening after years of finishing the
first interview, which enabled us to include the latest bits of
the stories and refine the older version with new discoveries,
realisations and hindsight.
The iterative process of generating content helps not only in
rectifying things and adding to it, but the layered stories get
much richer with time. So each article also becomes a marker of
time, and in some cases, space.
Compilation, correction, pull-outs and notes.
I would cut-up the printed out content, put it up on the studio
wall and create a simple narrative out of the answers by moving
them around. Image content that I had thought of including
would be marked with Post-Its in place, adding or substracting to
fit the new flow of content. The edited content would be put into
the design software, a basic framework of text-space and imagespace
would be figured out with grey (4:3) rectangles for images.
This basic flow of text+images serves as a starting point
in figuring out more information (captions, notes, credits,
acknowledgements, etc.) and I would start looking for the sources
and references to be mentioned, if any. After receiving the images,
this is the first thing we do, sending a low resolution copy of the
PDF to people interviewed or their studios, asking to add relevant
comments and notes for the images. It was a matter of great joy
for most people to go through these images from their past, make
unexpected discoveries and recall incidences which would later
make the image captions richer than I imagined.
41

42 “What a commited reader has with a book is a relationship. And
like most relationships, it is sustaining, volatile, vulnerable…
the question is—does the book remain the same book the second
time around? Are we even the same readers when we revisit
these books? …it seems to me that our experience alters the book
even as the book alters our experience.”
The Groaning Shelf
Pradeep Sebastian
2. PHYSICAL FORMAT
The book as an object wants to be picked up, held and carried
along. To decide what kind of an object Dekko ought to be, I
looked through bookshelves (both at the studio and the nearby
Landmark) to see what sizes appealed to me, while constantly
reminding myself to not arrive at an average that would end
up invisible among books in a shelf. The final dimensions were
calculated based on these experiences and in a way so that there
is minimum of paper getting wasted after the trim.
The book, opened, has proportions close to 4:3, which corresponds
to the proportion of still photographs from most digital/film
cameras. This would later allow me to control the pace of the
publication with full-spread images whenever required, without
losing important parts of the image. The revision of paper size to
half of that of the original made the book double as thick, which
added to differentiating it from the familiar magazine format.
The book, closed, measures less than a 15 inch laptop, which
would enable it to fit into most laptop bags/cases and be carried
around with ease.
The decisions were based on analysis of the target audience’s
environment, resources available at the studio’s disposal, modes
of funding the project and most importantly, the desired “feel” of
the finished product.
Proportions / Page Size / Number of Pages / Economics
The opened spread measures 310
millimetres in width and 225 millimetres
in height.
43

44
3. IMPOSITION AND PAGE PLANNING
An initial estimate allocated around
seventeen pages per article, and an
additional sixteen pages for information
on people featured, credits, foreword, page
seperators and the lot. This gave a total of
220 pages, which could be section bound.
Printing thirty two pages per a sheet
measuring 70 by 100 centimeters, one copy
of the publication would take seven such
sheets to complete, leaving some margin
for error.
After the “pacing” happened and new
stories were added, the total number of
pages stood at 270, rounded off to 272, with
enough breathers in between stories,
sections and heavy content.
4. VISUAL TREATMENT, DESIGN Blooming Late. The next few pages will describe the
aspects of visual design of the book,
including page-layout process for some
of the articles, with sample spreads
discussed at length.
How a magazine and a book are/can be different. What (if) makes a
book more covetable compared to a magazine. Also looking at ease of
access to information online/in libraries and how the publication’s tone
of ‘reporting from the field’ dictates the visual language to have some
association with/with the work of the person in the article.
Introduction of electronic means of distributing content has
made possessing books a more nuanced experienced than what
it used to be. Arguably, design trumps content when it comes to
making a decision to pick up and hold onto a book. The nature
of the book’s audience demanded that I offer pleasant surprises
when it came to presenting content.
On one of the evenings at the studio, looking at the pages pinned
to the board, a colleague asked me whose work is it that was in
the spreads discussing Weingart’s story. This is something I have
asked myself n number of times during the project. The apparent
freedom over content and design, and the enthusiasm with which
the studio encouraged tinkering with the “normality” of design
convinced me the book is to be “mine” first, and talking about the
people and places later. I saw it as a way of bringing authenticity
to the pages. My way of dealing with this is to let the content
inform all aspects of design, often treating each page as a separate
entity, disconnected with the rest of the book. All this was later
visually tied together with the common element of a fifth, special
ink that ran across pages.
45

46
I began working on the project imagining Dekho as a magazine.
Naturally, I was concerned with saving space on paper, rigidness
of content hierarchies and grids, etcetera. The first-first draft
of the publication, thus, had its leanings toward a recurring
magazine in terms of overall visual language. This did not allow
enough “mental” space for thoughts that demanded their fair
share of the page and pauses, after them. “Pacing” the read was
what I failed to accomplish with the version. During my first
guide visit, Mr. Suresh suggested I might want to look at each
story with a different “philosophy” in mind and develop the
visual structure accordingly. After four months of working on the
project, I had the opportunity to show the work-in-progress pages
to Irma Boom—the Dutch designer who is considered one of the
most original and experimental book designers alive who pointed
out the issue of pacing as she read through the article on
Professor Joshi. These two events made me redefine my goals and
set new directions, and eventually, scrap the first four months
worth of work down to the format and number of pages per
article. The first-first-draft was not a failure in itself—the page
size was calculated considering the target group’s surroundings
(it was a tad smaller than a 13 inch MacBook Pro, as mentioned
earlier), aspirations (big images, enough width to make an array
of column-widths possible) and production constraints (economy
when made from a 70x100 sheet of offset paper)—but failed to
best represent the content.
This section would—mostly—discuss the second version drafts
after the format change.
Page layouts of the article Spoken Words,
before and after the first revision for pacing.
Major influences during
this period were
Alan Fletcher’s
The Art Of Looking Sideways
and Weingart’s Typography.
Pictured is half of my desk
during Through Hot Metal.
47

48
4.1 EXAMPLE OF DESIGN PROCESS ILLUSTRATED WITH SELECTED PAGES
49

50
The opening spread as a basic digital
composition (right) and the finished
version (bottom). These quick sketches
helped me decide whether it was worth
pursuing an idea. These spreads were often
designed at the end, after a visual language
could be derived from the inside pages.
I worked with separate software files
for each story, thus ensuring one article
doesn’t take visual cues from the other.
On hindsight, this feels extreme, but
it helped me tremendously during the
design process.
1
Learning Ground
The opening spread (and most of the inside pages) focus on MP
Ranjan’s role as an influential academic, and his belief in doing
hands-on design, preferably in the field.
The illustration is intended to show the person as a multifaceted
(referencing the mythical Brahma, the four-headed god of
creation) hub of inspiration, ideas and action.
The inner spreads reflect the visual richness of the diagrams
Ranjan uses to illustrate his design ideas. I requested him to
illustrate one of the ideas discussed, lending a layer of authenticity
to the article. The questions are often enclosed in boxes that
resemble parentheses, again referring to the connections,
diagrams and bringing an air of friendliness to the mix, rendering
serious ideas on design education and thinking approachable.
I was very happy with the images Ranjan had to offer. They spoke
of the amount of dedication that went into making each piece of
design, often by handcrafting and making prototypes along the
way. The photographic documentation, I hope, would serve as a
nice thing to go back to and be inspired by, constantly.
51

52
2
Spoken Words
In the conversation with late professor RK Joshi, the sound-wave
graphic element plays a key role, often rendering words inverted
out of them, in white. The spoken sound renders words. The effect
also is a node to the craftsmanship with which a calligrapher
brings forms into existence, aided only by a strategic positioning
of lines and the spaces between them.
The article uses a refined digital rendering technique to
illustrate the tools of a calligrapher’s tools, bringing in the
idea of traditional knowledge meeting the electronic, digital
counterparts in a seamless way.
The treatment of images is fiercely contemporary, highlighting
meaning. The images-as-words were given enough space to sink
into the viewer’s conscience, making sure the beauty of each
letterform is conveyed without loss in transition.
Some spreads play on mirroring, referencing the duality of spoken
and written word mentioned in the conversation at length, and
blending in with some of the pieces being shared.
The finishing
spread uses writing
instruments with
their caps about to be
put on (or removed)
paying homage to
the professor, who
died shortly after
the Dekho team’s
interview with him.
53

54
3
Amar In The Making
Amar’s conversation is his love-affair with spaces and immersive
narratives. The opening spread was laid out in the conventional
way before glitching it, generating a composition that played
with spaces, volumes and slants. The word-play was an added
bonus and was enhanced later with design-tweaks.
I decided to use Sujay’s illustration of Amar, with cropping and
distortions to gel it well with the new layout. The typeface took
the distortions rather well, prompting me to make use of them in
the inside page to evoke a sense of space.
There is a (sometimes forced) effort to make sure the reader
notices the spaces and pauses in between the pages. lines are
broken by spreads that celebrate white space, occasionally
featuring words that instil a sense of lowered pace through time.
The graphic elements are borrowed from space-design vernacular,
directional signs, figures and forms to enhance the “drama” built
into the conversation.
The quotes are treated literally as “conversations in space,”
referencing a thought Amar shared, with respect to
exhibition design.
the 3D software
simulated spreads
act as breaks in the
narrative, forcing one
to stop and think.
55

56
4
For The People. By The People.
This was one of the most difficult stories to give a visual
expression to. The visuals in use were raw portrayals of
surroundings and observations in a powerful way, often achieved
as simple sketches with a visual orientation that was difficult to
figure out. The break came when I realised that I needed to just
focus on the “simple” and “clear communication” aspects of it.
The layout focuses on communicating the story as effectively
as intended and celebrates the sense of austerity and control
exhibited in most of the supporting images.
The opening spread features a sketch of Lakshmi Murthy by one
of her trained youth volunteers. The lettering is tweaked to suit
the illustration, attempting to create ample harmony between
the “designed” and the “drawn.”
The above spread is the article in a nutshell. It was designed to
bring the contrast in the ways we visually communicate, which
would be backed by the discussion around the spread on why
generalised communication programmes just don’t work for rural
areas. The project’s nature allowed me to explore the use of white/
negative space in ways which could have met with disapproval in
a client meating.
The photography was
done after a draft of
the article was made.
This helped me plan
the shoot around the
layout, improving the
overall relationship of
things in each spread.
The holdall (left,
above) folds along the
spine, making sense
of its placement in
the layout.
57

58
5
Of The Head, Hand And Heart
People Tree story is a riot of colours, textures and quirky image
treatments, like their products. The title threw some light on
how the cover treatment should be, and the T-shirt is an object
to easily associate with the studio/shop. The finished graphic is a
pun on “People+Tree” while at a glance, it celebrates the freedom
and excitemet of wearing one’s self.
In a way, the conversation is not about clothes, while a thousand
references suggest otherwise. It is about people and individuality
and dreams and holding hands and speaking one’s heart. The
graphic suggests the human form inside the garment, replacing
the actual being with an abstraction of these ideas.
Some layouts were redesigned after rotating the printed firstdrafts
at angles, looking at them on a light box, looking for
arrangements I could easily have missed if I was hell-bent on
working within the grids. The second spread underwent many
such changes (top) and became the basis for the entire story.
The Kaladera trip is something the duo talks about, with visible
excitement. It was obvious when the folder contained countless
images from on the road, which, was later used to bring that
journey in between the covers of Dekho.
“We chose not to
work in regimented
work spaces…”
was a comment
I went back to,
time and again,
course-correcting
the design process
and keeping the
liveliness of the
conversation intact.
59

60
6
Kerning Space
Trapeze excels in using multiple techniques, materials, narratives
and qualities of space efficiently. The visual design of Trapeze’s
story is based on this confluence of materials and processes,
bringing the “inside story” of each supporting graphic to the
front.
The bespoke typo-graphic treatments allude to this being in
space, with material textures, geometry and fine lines pointing to
the detailing and tasteful selection of tactile materials in
their work.
This is the only conversation that directly talks about projects
while showing some of the spaces designed. The images, however,
are placed so as to not take the juice away from the text. They
reveal themselves as one interacts with the book, often making
one pause and go back to take the beauty of details in the images
in, in a better way.
It was nice to deal with the physicality of the paper in a way that
added to the message.
The paper becomes
a design element,
playing the role of
the bridge as well
as the divider at the
same time
61

62
7
Letters From The East
The opening spread plays on the metaphor of sunrise-in-theeast
(signifying a new beginning). The use of space to bring in a
sense of ambition, is a nod to the scope of the project, while it
also makes for a well-deserved break after the two articles that
precede it.
The pull-out quotes are treated the way type-specimens are
treated, visually mimicking meaning. The letters from the project
have a prominent place in the page-layout, putting the emphasis
where it belongs.
In an attempt to keep the focus on the
letters at all times, spacious chunks in
each page are occupied by the letters
themselves. In addition to documenting
the project process, this, I hope, makes
sure that the instances of the script’s
occurrence stays on.
63

64
8
Through Hot Metal
This is the text I started designing with. This is an awed tribute to
the master typographer, borrowing from his aesthetic sensibility
and introducing fresh ways of looking at an otherwise linear text.
The opening spread tries to instill the sense of being inside a
metal workshop, bending typesetting rules and setting type in
a galley to see a bunch of unusual forms emerge from the other
side of the press. Some authenticity is compromised by replacing
Akzidenz Grotesk by Gotham, owing to copyright issues. I
would have loved to do the setting in a letterpress machine, but
Weingart, Dahiya would remind me, was all about breaking away
from stereotypes and rules.
The quotes are often a direct descendants of the influential
typographic experiments by Weingart, which I thoroughly went
through during the initial stages of design as I read a copy of
Typography.
These spreads use the fifith colour to
create continuity while completing the
portrait when held in a specific way, which
is initiated by the use of white space
around the face and the symmetry in
cropping the image.
65

66
9
Stefan Sagmeister Needs No Introduction
The Sagmeister article went through a number of revisions (not
all of them shown) before I settled on a nod to his work with
bananas and time. The initial ideas included a word-play on
“meister,” an array of CCTV monitors that would be filled with
webcam shots of Sagmeister and Walsh studio, which is available
online, and dissected rats.
The title is a play on Sagmeister’s apparent irreverence to rules in
general and is along the lines of his philosophy about work and
life. The cock reference in the first sketch didn’t really evoke the
response I was angling for.
The brush-stroke type helps pace the article which would
otherwise have been laden with work from Sagmeister, which
didn’t really make sense given the popularity of his work and the
self-imposed thematic constraints of Dekho.
67

68
10
Response
This is an opening spread that celebrates itself. It takes the idea
of response as its reason of existense—a response to code, a
response to movement and response as in dialogue between the
photographer and the photographed. This is an opening spread
that has time embedded in it, like most of Casey’s processing
generated artwork.
The work that led up to this image was as enjoyable as the final
product itself for me, and we decided it apt to show the minor
imperfections in the type and not hide them with an image
editing program.
The layout tries to be “interactive” in the sense that it elicits some
input from the reader to be completely understood, be it turning
the book around, folding pages, matching marks or finding a
sentence’s way around a collection of dingbats.
This section was designed in constant consultation with the
physical, printed paper, folding, twisting, sliding one over the
other and cut-pasting. The physical format of the book thus gets
exploited for the sake of evoking response from the reader.
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70
11
The Cover
The cover went through multiple
iterations, two of which were taken to the
final stages. The first one dealt with the
variety of stories inside in a more direct
way, referencing it with a gradient of
colours and an array of symbols.
This approach, while time-consuming
and very rewarding as a creative process,
failed to resonate with the idea of Dekho
being a “smart” publication that engages
its reader in a conversation. It was a pretty
object out of context, offering no meaning
beyond what was written.
DEKKO
VOLUME 1
This version tries to put the reader back in
the riding seat, playing with the cliché of
seeing, with a geometric twist that makes
the cover appear to be moving with each
movement of his/her head.
A perfect distance between the black
lines, and a perfect thickness of the lines
themselves, was found after nights of
staring at slightly headache inducing
prints on paper in all shades of neon.
Dekho, in writing, appears to replace the
highlight on the iris, and when the book
is opened, the eyes seem to be lost in
thought. A good iris size was also found
out, which made the stare a lot calmer
than the other explorations.
DEKKO
VOLUME 1
DEKHO
My softboard at the studio, during one of the
nights working on the cover image.
Dekho
Conversations on design in India.
DEKHO
71

72
12
The Contents Page
The only place where photographs of the interviewees feature,
the contents page integrate the images into the story with the aid
of the fifth ink and graphic devices.
of FACES DEKHO.
12
80
204
134
P8 Foreword: Prof. H Kumar Vyas
P9 Foreword: Steven Heller
P12–P267 The Conversations
P270 Credits
P271 Colophon, Imprint
38
58
226
102
164
242
In 12 , MP Ranjan reflects on his experiences as a design educator
Learning Ground
and evangelist, driven by his deep conviction in the fact that designled
intervention can bring wonderful changes for India. In 38 , the
late Professor Raghunath K Joshi makes a case for sound as a precursor
Spoken Words
to written word and talks of the Deshanagari project—an ambitious
undertaking which explored the possibilities of type-setting in Indian
languages based on the way they are spoken. Neelakash Kshetrimayum
Letters From The East
takes us on a personal journey to the hills of Manipur in 58 , where
a dying native script Metei Mayek, is finding a new life with design
interventions like his type design projects. Lakshmi Murthy, 80 , does
By The People. For The People.
not subscribe to a top-down, generalised approach to developmental
communication. She offers valuable insights through her work in
rural India—co-designing effective, localized models for social
communication with the user. In 102 , Orijit Sen and Gurpreet Sidhu,
Of The Head, Hand And The Heart
founding partners of the iconic Indian brand—People Tree, celebrate
the intelligence of the head and the hand, and talk about craft as their
approach to design. Ram Sinam and Sarita Sundar look beyond the
Kerning Space
brief at their design consultancy Trapeze in 134 —elevating dialogues in
spatial design from what is said to how it is said. Amardeep Behl wants
Amar In The Making
you to be uncomfortable in 164 . Restlessness, he says, is the mother of
all design, and in the course of the conversation, walks you through
the intricate spatial narratives created by his practice DesignHabit.
In 204 , Wolfgang Weingart, known for his explosive rejection of the
Through Hot Metal
Swiss Style and radical experiments, continues to inspire new forms of
expression. Stefan Sagmeister, despite the absence of an introduction
Stefan Sagmeister Needs No Introduction
in 226 , shares his life’s lessons with honesty and zeal, tinged as always
with his inimitable sense of humour. 242 is Casey Reas sharing his
Process
fascination with the idea of emergence, and taking us along a journey
exploring the binaries of naturally evolving and synthetic systems.
6 7
The Partition Pages
These reveal the grid as a maze, a field of possibilities and works
as a reminder that the book is a celebration of graphic design
as well. The page before the international voices is designed to
follow the visual language of the grid-page.
10 11 1
73
This section of Dekho features a selection of voices from across the world, presenting relevant, inspirationa

74
5. PAPER, PRINTING
Meant for the person with enough exposure to finely crafted
books on design (and other subjects) the paper is guilt-free (made
of fruit pulp), has a subtle texture that adds to the tactility. The
slight translucency
THE
adds to a fine interplay and layering (physical) This also works as a metaphor for the
of content across pages. This, combined with a religious following stories being interwoven and seamless
of the grid for body text, makes for a compelling presentation. within themselves.
In this case, a highly refined sensibility from the print partner
becomes a major, defining asset.
Being from Kyooriyus Papers’ budget paper portfolio, the choice
reduced financial burden on the studio as well.
MAKIN
Paper-text block: Shiro Fruit Cocoa
Weight: 100 GSM
Dimensions: 70 x 100 cms
75
Paper-cover: Magna Carta
Weight: 250 GSM*
Dimensions: 64x92 cms*
Vendor: Kyoorius Fine Papers
Range: Budget Portfolio
Printing: Offset CMYK + Special Ink (Pantone 805)
Vendor: JAK Printers, Mumbai
*Proposed, at the time of publishing this document
AMAR
Many of the layout and design decisions were also meant to While at the first draft stage, we ordered a
exploit possibilities in print. The fifth—special—ink, Pantone 805 few samples from the vendor and test-
plays a crucial role in tying the whole project together visually, as printed pages to check showthrough and
well as elevating some key design elements (the story beginnings colour variations on actual paper.
and endings, for instance).
IN
AMAR THE
MAKING AMAR
IN THE
164_Amar In The Making
IN THE
MAKING

76
6. TYPEFACES, TYPOGRAPHY
Based also on how the articles were
intended to be treated, size, leading and
other technical details. The decision on
using a unique typeface per article. Budget
constraints and the typefaces the studio
has previously licensed.
In an attempt to cut costs, it was decided to stick to typefaces the
studio had acquired rights for. There were quite a lot to choose
from, and I didn’t want to choose. Keeping with the idea of going
where the content took the design to, I decided I would use as
many typefaces as i can, while a uniform body text could be used
to keep the visual language from becoming a Frankenstein’s
monster. With its generous X-height and open counters, Greta
appears to maintain an even grey tone over considerable lengths
of text laden with acronyms, names in italics (one has to expect a
great many of them in a publication dealing with Indian names)
and short paragraphs interspersed with line breaks (common
in an interview format). For each article, I would choose an
appropriate typographic expression based on the content and use
that to highlight sections that needed to be highlighted. Some of
them would be hand-drawn forms, some photographed and some
bespoke, constructed in Illustrator and Photoshop.
“The economics of the newspaper
environment also requires type which is
highly space-efficient; Greta uses maximal
shape counters to improve performance
in lower-quality printing and at very small
sizes. Although the typeface was created
to function in the extreme conditions
of newspaper production, it is also ideal
for other modern typographic situations
such as print and electronic editions of
magazines or books.”
Greta Text Concept, Typotheque.
Body text set in Greta Text
Designed by Peter Bilak (2007)
Learning Ground
Torque
Designed by Tal Leming (2009)
Spoken Words
Greta Display
Designed by Peter Bilak and Nikola Djurek (2008)
Letters From The East
Greta Grande
Designed by Peter Bilak and Nikola Djurek (2008)
For The People. By The People.
Hand-drawn letters
Of The Head, Hand And Heart
Output from a Travelriter typewriter
Kerning Space
Hand-crafted letters
Amar In The Making
Stag Stencil
Designed by Christian Schwartz (2008)
Through Hot Metal
Gotham
Designed by The Hoefler Type Foundry (2000)
Stefan Sagmeister Needs No Introduction
Hand-drawn letters
Response
Pro55ing
Designed by YouWorkForThem (2001)
Devanagari title on the back cover
set in Kohinoor Devanagari
Designed by Satya Rajpurohit (2010)
77

78
6.1 TYPEFACES, TYPOGRAPHY
The interview with Casey Reas uses Pro55ing, a typeface created
to be used in the processing IDE, and a typeface generated using a
simple Arduino programme based on persistence of vision.
An array of seven LEDs were lit intermittently aided by a simple
arduino program, while being dragged across space and captured
with a camera on very low shutter speed.
The conversation with Amar Deep Behl Design Habit uses a
stencilled typeface (Stag) simulated to appear painted on spaces,
evoking a sense of being inside Amar’s head, floating in space
amidst the words. The stencilled faces also reference graffiti on
walls, again bringing spaces into the picture.
The pages on Vikalp design employs hand-written letters. This
was an obvious choice as it visually reinforces the nature of
communication materials designed at Vikalp.
MP Ranjan’s interview features Torque, a no-nonsense sans serif
that makes statements, enhanced by the use of all caps. Often
seen as a hindrance to reading, the copy here reflects strong
convictions and makes their case in an unforgattable way.
The conversation with Gurpreet and Orijit of People Tree
uses textured letters produced from a Remington Travelriter
typewriter, referring to the hands-on, hearts on approach
to design and life. The letters are more physical in a sense,
their individuality reinforced by slight imperfections and
misregistrations, and mistakes left as they are, corrected by
typing over them wherever necessary.
The Sagmeister interview features a set of letters, made sensuous
by the use of a wet round brush loaded with paint, letterforms
overlapping each other and giving language, forms.
Can good design be copied?
Yes, it can, but why would you want to? I
have found that if I copy an idea, it winds up
to be not really my baby. I am reduced from a
parent to a babysitter. Babysitters tend to do
Lakshmi Murthy is the
Murthy says,
founder of Vikalp Design. For
on design for the rural audience:
over twenty years she has been tirelessly In distinguishing between the urban and
working with the rural population
rural audience, the latter is wrongfully
in Rajasthan and Gujarat as a commu- regarded as visually illiterate. The rural
nication designer, to develop effective, audience has a sharper perception of their
localized models for social communication. environment and are keener to infer from
In doing so, she has uncovered a new indexical traces that the urban individual
way of seeing and conversing
would neglect. In fact it is the city-bred
with her audience.
individual who may be “illiterate” in the
rural environment, lacking their visual
knowledge. While an urban designer will
draw in proportion and orientation of what
Then from T-shirts this went to other things.
they see as “known,” a villager would rely on
Some people made other stuff; so they
vernacular knowledge to draw, displaying a
would come and talk about it and if we liked
keen unlettered intelligence.
it we would say, “Okay, let’s do something
together.” And, then it started growing from
there. In the early years, it was a very organic
and unplanned kind of a thing. We were
doing what we thought was interesting,
and were open to engage with people who
thought the same and had something to
contribute. Along the way, the name—People
Tree—also happened. It was partly inspired
A participatory
by the big
process
pipal
of
tree
self-expression
outside the NID gate,
where holds everybody—design one answer. Encouraging students, auto
people rickshaw to draw has and been camel-cart looked upon drivers, as eunuchs
an on empowering their rounds, process sabzi-wallahs, that leads teachers and
to students inclusion from of notions the school otherwise across the road—
would come. Everybody difficult to express. could have chai and
a conversation. A lot has happened since then. ‘Branding’
82_For The People. By The People. Moving forward, what do you envisage as the
greatest motivator or need
to create and sustain design
schools in India?
THE GREATEST
MOTIVATOR IS OUR
BELIEF THAT DESIGN IS
What is your “design process” once you get the brief?
Since we design for so many different
projects and purposes, the process changes A POWERFUL FORCE.
as well.
has happened in an organic way over the 83
years. The spirit of openness that we started
the place with, is really what I think makes it Each of these contribute to making the
what it is today. People Tree has been shaped
by many people and that has only been respective stories unique within the
possible because we were open for that to
happen. We didn’t say “no, no, Vision no, this First is is our a citizen design
concept and this is how we do initiative it”. We actually context of the publication as a whole.
that came together
said, “let us get rid of our ‘designerly’ spontaneously notions in response
of how things are done and to how Government things of India’s
should be done, and let us actually decision try to to set up four new
make it a collaborative process”. NIDs and took shape in the
social networking space.
Many design teachers,
researchers and activists—
all NID alumni, came
together when the matter
was discussed in online
lists. These experienced
practitioners and teachers
were shocked by the fact that
Yes, new design schools are needed
A process I use in India. often We and are which calling has for been a serious
extremely helpful rethink to as me, part was of our described Vision First* by
Design—our understanding of it
and what it can do, is going through
a sea of change. The touch and
the initiative, though clearly
needed, was being undertaken
without any review of the
Edward DeBono initiative in a book to try called and influence Thinking the involvement of design is at the
situation and context, 50 years
Course. Edward Government DeBono is of a India philosopher and NID itself from heart of many qualities that get
after the setting up of the
Malta. He wrote to do a these lot of reviews books about as part thinking. of the 50 embedded into products, services as
National Institute of Design
year celebrations of the setting up of
He shows many exercises about how you
the institute. The greatest motivator
can improve
is
your
our
thinking.
belief that
There
design
are
is a
a
powerful
good
number of tricks force. in It there can shape that Indian I use all society the
time, that help and me we come can get up others with in ideas. power He to
well as policies that shape the lives
of our people. Design represents
an ability and knowledge base that
deals with the synthesis of all these
services and offerings—in Health
at Ahmedabad based on a
seminal report by Charles and
Ray Eames. It was felt that
a sustained dialogue with
stakeholders must precede
says, our brain participate is an incredibly in our conviction sophisticated in the services the quality of experience
108_Of The Head, Hand And The Heart such a move, so that the real
109
computer which days is that at lie its ahead. best in The thinking opportunities in that the patient, doctor or other
needs and insights from half
repetition. It are has both to be regional that way, as well otherwise, as sectoral, if participants have, would be largely
a century of practice could
and this kind of domain-specific
you want to pick up, say, a business card, and
approach will create many new
if the brain would be creative all the time, I
schools that would be uniquely rooted
would have to in think: the Indian oh, hands reality. go India forward, is a land go
down, fingers, of move, great opportunity now lift it up. as far It as would design
decided at the stage of design of these
offerings. Similarly, Banking and
Finance are facing severe issues of
inclusion and exclusion of poor and
underprivileged. New approaches
inform the new initiative.
be too complicated. thought The and brain, action by are necessity, concerned— need to be innovated and here
is very good at there thinking is so much automatically. to be done there But too design can play an important
when it comes across to creative as many ideas, as 230 the sectors. brain role. Transportation, Education,
also wants to think in repetition. So DeBono
shows you some ways to trick the brain out
of thinking in repetitions, to throw it out of
its regular paths.
Agriculture and many other sectors,
are all in need of urgent innovation
of products, services, processes and
policies that can be achieved with the
use of design at many levels—tactical,
The experimental 70s at NID.
A light play orchestrated by
Vikas Satwalekar and enacted by
MP Ranjan in the photography studio,
application, and strategic.
with a lighted torch in hand.
My favorite one consists of thinking about And, one of my most frequent sources of
an idea with 16_Learning a starting Ground point that makes inspiration is a newly occupied hotel room.
17
no sense. Say, I need to design a tea pot. I find it easy to work in a place far away
Normally I would think of tea, other tea pots from the studio, where thoughts about the
historically, the desire of consumers when implementation of an idea don’t come to
drinking tea etc. Instead, I think of a teapot mind immediately but I can dream a bit
starting with, say, a toe nail. So, lets see: A toe
nails needs to be clipped, is there something
with the idea that the teapot gets smaller
when there is less tea in it? Is it possible to
have a teapot like a balloon, where its larger
when full of tea and smaller with a smaller
amount. Maybe possible with some of the
new rubber materials, maybe even an idea
worth pursuing and I just thought of it right
here (I swear I did not cheat…).
more freely.
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7. THE GRID
“The grid is like the lines on a football field.
You can play a great game in the grid or a lousy
game. But the goal is to play a really fine game.”
Wim Crouwel.
Margins: 15, 15, 17.913, 15 mm
Six Columns
Gutter Space: 4 mm
Baseline every 5.5 pt
The basic six-column grid was arrived at based on word-count
when Greta at 9 points was used (on a 11 point baseline). The
grid, used in a controlled manner, is something I have tried to
avoid adhering too rigidly to. This decision is often based on
how content flows, the order in which I would want a reader to
go through the text. Often, I have tried to break the common
left-right-top-bottom reading order to bring interest back to the
content (and design) of the book. Initially, I was of the opinion
the design should be invisible and the content should speak
for itself. The passion with which each interviewee responded
to the questions, recalling experiences and incidents from the
work-period was something that I had to reflect in the design.
I was having a hell of a time talking to these people. I wanted
the design to do that to the reader—bring them to a chair
opposite the person being interviewed. Sharing the happiness
was a major concern, often overtaking the logical, sober route
of communication. For example, in the Weingart article, the
quotes hidden behind rules were more than a homage to his
experiments with type. They were my attempts at making the
casual browser stop and take in the excitement of being able
to play with language and letters in such a simple, direct, and
effective way. The proofreaders sometimes left these pages
unchecked for errors.
The grid becomes a breather before the conversations begin.
With a slight subversion (of opening it at two places, turning the
apparent mundane-ness literally into an adventure) this brings
the structure back into limelight, with hopes of reminding
how the perceived chaos is only a possible expression of the
order within.
It was, at times, difficult
to contain the emotions,
listening to the interview
recordings in loop,
seeing how involved each
of these people were with
whatever they
were doing.
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7. DETAILS OF THE PRINTED BOOK
The book is dedicated to “Designers who find joy in reading.”
The non-conventional format of the contents page owes its
origins to the conversational nature of the book’s content.
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84
The opening spreads are distinctly treated, with chapter names
appearing in the special ink to highlight beginning of stories.
All photographs are treated so that each spread would function as
an independent visual (like a poster) if left off context.
The visual treatment of typography plays with the word
meanings appropriate to the context each treated word
appears in.
A second layer of meaning is achieved by basing the artwork on
sound clip of Prof. RK Joshi’s voice.
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86
Each article has its own visual and illustration treatment that
aligns with the content, and referencing the work/philosophies of
the person being interviewed.
The structure of the book lends visual expression to some
of the pages, ensuring that the “book-experience” is unique
to the printed version and cannot be achieved in an
on-screen presentation.
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The pull-out quotes and core ideas within the text are
supplemented by appropriate graphic elements. In the case of a
pull out quote that also appears within the body of text, an effort
is made to present it only once.
Keeping with the idea of the “book-as-a-design-object,” physical
transformations during reading are used to add a layer of surprise
to the content, which may be discovered on a second reading.
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90
Text is treated as image in places where appropriate. The studio
gave complete creative control on the editorial aspects of the
book if it appeared to compliment the story in ways otherwise
not possible.
Visual surprises are hidden in many parts of the book. This made
a lengthy project (almost a year-and-a-half) enjoyable every day.
I would look forward to making these Easter eggs every
working day.
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INFRA-
STRUC-
TURE
CON-
CERNS
FINDING SPONSORS
Dekho
Documenting
inspiring stories of
design in India.
Since the publication is funded by the studio, financial help needed to be sought from
sponsors. The process of negotiating and convincing people to part with their money
is time consuming and laden with long periods of waiting. This section also describes
making a preview/mockup for presenting to the sponsors, halfway through the
design process.
The studio had already spent a lot of time, money and energy before I started working, on
the project. Now, for publication, we were looking for sponsors from cultural institutions
who would want to be part of the initiative. They would later become ideal partners to
help with distribution as well. Internal discussions on why anyone would be interested
in such an endeavour provided enough insights into what each presentation should
contain. In addition we also tried to get paper and print vendors to subsidise production.
The pitch:
There is a shallow, misguided
view of communication
design in India.
Why? \ Lack of documentation.
\
\
\
\
Current platform are showcase driven—lack
voice of people behind the work.
Lack of writers with a good understanding
of design.
Several finer aspects of communication
design—like type design—are never covered.
Lack of connection between communication
design and the world/issues at large.
Internationally, there is a big
gap in the understanding of the
‘Indian’ in Indian Design, largely
because of a lack of context.
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94
MP Ranjan is a world-renowned design
thinker, educator, author of several
books and papers on these subjects and
passionately talks about bringing
change through design.
Dekho is an anthology of
conversations with designers
in India—capturing stories of
inspiration, endeavor and learning;
and presenting them through
visually rich narratives in print.
Voices of Dekho. Professor Raghunath K Joshi was a
one-man institution on language and
writing systems. His work with digital
typography brought together
knowledge of tradition and technology.
Typographer and graphic designer
Neelakash Kshetrimayum recounts his
experiences and shares his hopes on the
revival of the Metei Mayek script of Manipur.
Book design in India is largely
relegated to 2 extremes—academic
& textual, and showcase-based,
‘coffee-table’ publications.
Moving forward, what do you envisage as the
greatest motivator or need
to create and sustain design
schools in India?
Readers.
Design/creative community—students
and professionals—within India
and abroad.
The general public with an interest in
design in India and its development.
THE GREATEST
MOTIVATOR IS OUR
BELIEF THAT DESIGN IS
A POWERFUL FORCE.
Yes, new design schools are needed Design—our understanding of it
in India. We are calling for a serious and what it can do, is going through
rethink as part of our Vision First* a sea of change. The touch and
initiative to try and influence the involvement of design is at the heart
Government of India and NID itself of many qualities that get embedded
to do these reviews as part of the 50 into products, services as well as
year celebrations of the setting up of policies that shape the lives of our
the institute. The greatest motivator people. Design represents an ability
is our belief that design is a powerful and knowledge base that deals with
force. It can shape Indian society the synthesis of all these services
and we can get others in power to and offerings—in Health services
participate in our conviction in the the quality of experience that the
days that lie ahead. The opportunities patient, doctor or other participants
are both regional as well as sectoral, have, would be largely decided at the
and this kind of domain-specific stage of design of these offerings.
approach will create many new Similarly, Banking and Finance are
schools that would be uniquely rooted facing severe issues of inclusion
in the Indian reality. India is a land and exclusion of the poor and
of great opportunity as far as design underprivileged. New approaches
thought and action are concerned— need to be innovated and here
there is so much to be done there too design can play an important
across as many as 230 sectors. role. Transportation, Education,
Agriculture and many other sectors,
are all in need for urgent innovation
of products, services, processes and
policies that can be achieved with the
use of design at many levels—tactical,
application, and strategic.
Vision First is an citizen
design initiative that came
together spontaneously in
response to the Government
of India’s decision to set up
four new NIDs and took shape
in the social networking
space. Many design teachers,
researchers and activists—
all NID alumni, came
together when the matter
was discussed in online
lists. These experienced
practitioners and teachers
were shocked by the fact that
the initiative, though clearly
needed, was being undertaken
without any review of the
situation and context, 50 years
after the setting up of the
National Institute of Design
at Ahmedabad based on a
seminal report by Charles and
Ray Eames. It was felt that
a sustained dialogue with
stakeholders must precede
such a move, so that the real
needs and insights from half
a century of practice could
inform the new initiative.
PRINTING, PUBLISHING, DISTRIBUTION*
The printer could be persuaded to provide thier services at a
discounted rate, the paper distributor agreed for a late payment,
and the Goethe Institut could contribute some money towards
the effort.
One advantage of being in a multi-studio environment is
knowing more people in decision-making positions in financially
stable companies who could be approached for the necessary
funds.
The distribution is planned to happen through social networking
channels, online bookshops and niche shops stocking design/art
books. We are also looking forward to using academic institutions
as launching grounds for the effort.
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96
THE
JOUR-
NEY
It has been an roller coaster ride full of pleasant discoveries, disturbing uncertainties,
moments of elation at finding solutions and journeys both real and imaginary,
full of surprises.
The absence of much pressure on deadlines or the visual style—or even the content—
made me too self-conscious in the beginning, and I ended up second-guessing every
other iteration after moving on to a different story. Things started to go into endless
loops, draining my enthusiasm as they did. It tested my ability to manage writing,
creating visuals and dealing with the structure of the book at the same time, often
leaving me no choice but to stay back at the studio till odd hours of the (often next) day.
The exercise taught me how to deal with time not only of my own, but also the people
interviewed and people working at the studio. Coordinating content over the internet
and the local network, engaging studio colleagues in the discussions and accepting
suggestions and contributions, was a new set of experiences after working on classroom
projects all alone. Realising the importance of multiple perspectives, listening to
opinions (often conflicting) of people, channelling them in a way that benefitted
both parties and learning that dependence goes a long way towards creating
something beyond the monotonous, are all things I am grateful to be able to take away
from the project.
The most fulfilling aspect of the project was being able to work in a way that let me
treat each article like a different undertaking, shifting from one material and technique
to another in a span of days, often leading to accidentally discovering new ways to
make things. So, while the project let me put to use whatever techniques, theories
and philosophies I could internalise during my classroom projects, it demanded fresh
experiments and risking these very basics.
I hope the publication brings a smile
to the minds of whoever happens to go
through its pages, and that a lot of people
happen to go through its pages. I could
consider nine months of my working life
well-spent, then.
I also have a toothbrush-and-toothpaste
set next to my drawing tablet on my desk
at the studio.
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98
REFERENCES
Typography
Wolfgang Weingart
Lars Muller Publishers
Processing
Casey Reas, Ben Fry
MIT Press
The Art Of Looking Sideways
Alen Fletcher
Phaidon
U&lc : Influencing Design & Typography
John Berry
Mark Batty Publisher
The Designer And The Grid
Lucien E. Roberts, Julia Thrift
Rockport Publishers
How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing
Your Soul
Adrian Shaughnessy
Laurence King Publishing
Learning From The Field: Experiences in
Communication
Lakshmi Murthy, Amita Kagal,
Ashoke Chatterjee
United Nations Population Fund
Things I have Learnt In My Life So Far
Stefan Sagmeister
Abrams
Typography
Wolfgang Weingart
Lars Muller Publishers
Processing
Casey Reas, Ben Fry
MIT Press
The Art Of Looking Sideways
Alen Fletcher
Phaidon
U&lc : Influencing Design & Typography
John Berry
Mark Batty Publisher
The Designer And The Grid
Lucien E. Roberts, Julia Thrift
Rockport Publishers
How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing
Your Soul
Adrian Shaughnessy
Laurence King Publishing
Learning From The Field: Experiences in
Communication
Lakshmi Murthy, Amita Kagal,
Ashoke Chatterjee
United Nations Population Fund
Things I have Learnt In My Life So Far
Stefan Sagmeister
Abrams
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100
COLOPHON
Set in 9pt Greta Text
Section titles in Stag Stencil
3 September 2012
CONTACT INFORMATION
Abhijith KR
Thanappatta House
Nanmanda
Kozhikode 673613
abhijith@keyaar.in
Codesign
Ground Floor C 2/4
Sushant Lok Phase 1
Gurgaon 122009
design@codesign.in
101

© 2013
ABHIJITH KR
abhijith@keyaar.in