The Secret Life of I

We all have secret lives, which we share with our confidante. Ever wondered how many people have such secret lives? Every second person, you meet, you wonder, whether they are as good as they seem? Too many questions, too few answers. Curiosity kill the cat?

The Designquest Presentation

In Search of Indian design Identity on Prezi

PLEASE VIEW ON FULLSCREEN (access it on the more button on the left of the window) AND USE THE ARROW BUTTONS IN THE CENTER OF THE WINDOW

Thank you Roshnee for the 'coo shun' image
Garre for introducing me to the software
Anup for introducing me to, Norman's 'affordance of objects'
Brinda a.k.a. budi for the IBM (Indaraj Bhadoo Movers) image
and Flickr and you tube for the rest of them.
Also, Bangalore R&D NID campus students for putting up with my eccentricities
I would invariably add that it was impossible to do this without Reagan, Sumit Bhaiya, Bhabi, Anjika, Mahima & Daddy :D

Harbour Line @Mumbai

I have always wondered why the harbour side of mumbai is so deserted. By harbour, I am referring to the stretch from Masjid to Wadala. Isn't sea side supposed to attract crowds. Even if its just at ferry wharf, what about the rest? Many derelict warehouses and deserted crumbling buildings exist there. Why is it that people haven't taken notice of this prime property. Is it because of the land belonging to railways or port trust?

It is such a beautiful stretch. If your notions of beautiful do not include slums at the sides, maybe it won't be for you. But it has this freeness, which you wouldn't obviously notice in other parts of the city. The roads almost don't seem like having much of connecting to do. Since there are either G+1 or 2 buildings or huge boundary walls indicating some 'gate' or 'bunder'. I feel we can re-look at this part of Mumbai. Because in mumbai things always change. Wonder when this quiet charm will give way to more housing and shopping malls for the rich?

Designquest

It was a great show at blue frog. We all had a great time. Few of us bungled up, few in our own world, few did well (according to the judges). All in all it was a great experience. No one was snooty or aggressive. It went smoothly and we all managed to finish by lunch, with precision. Blue Frog @ lower Parel, I think was an apt venue. Not too large to intimidate the speakers, not too tiny, to feel like a closed jury. And excellent lighting design!

Results will be out shortly, Hoping for the best. Keeping my fingers crossed (I wish I could bribe Almighty ;), but mere paap ka ghada is overflowing so am getting mailer daemon's back at me ;))

please fill this for my project!

thanks a ton

Yashmi

Information Design

Us industrial designers are all so 'product oriented' that our research generally takes a back seat even if it is relevant. We cant put information together at times or cant point to the crux of the information cause we are trying to make our products look more beautiful. I came across these booklets which given an introduction to information design. Incidentally, they explain all the concepts very clearly with the aid of live examples. They are primarily, targeted for NGO's and SME's for communicating effectively. Any of you interested, can check out their work at http://www.tacticaltech.org/. Happy Informing!

'The art of wayfinding'

I was around when the 2 day workshop with a Canadian, Prof. Jay Rutherford & a German Architect, Dr. Bernhard Klein, was being conducted in the R&D campus of NID in Bangalore. It was super fun, in-spite of me not taking part in the assignments.

It basically dealt with wayfinding in cities and how a common man deals with information on the go, to be able to reach his destination. It also interested me due to the architecture & urban design angle to the topic. In our fourth year of architecture school, we had visited Jaipur and made a thorough analysis of a few blocks of the old city of Jaipur. Now just to connect the two, we studied about the wayfinding elements at the city level namely:

Paths

Landmarks

Nodes

Edges

Districts

These were categorized by Kevin Lynch and it kinda made life simple for urban designers to incorporate certain thumb rules from the above theory so that it makes navigation effortless, for people residing in a particular locality. These same things make life simple for graphic designers who design signs or are orientation specialists who can analyze an existing space for better navigation.

Now, also if it interests you, you can look at the work of Romedi Passini, an architect, researcher and visual artist.

Please Vote at

http://thedesignquest.com/users/Yashmi-Prasad

People who matter to you the most