I have just added five of eight new kettles to the ‘Kitsch‘ section and two new Khiladi tables to the ‘Furniture‘ section. For those of you in Bangalore, they are currently on display and ‘for sale’ at the Sattva Arthouse Studio in Whitefield. Only for two days though- 5th and 6th of June 2010.
( Told you- I’ve been busy !!)

On august 13th 2009, I participated in a workshop for Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS), a design research and innovation firm based in Delhi and Bangalore.  The project was for a very popular brand of wall emulsions and paints- their 2010 catalogue. For NDA purposes I am as yet not allowed to disclose the specific names. But, I am working on that!!

“The catalogue” 2010, is an annual color forecast study conducted by CKS Consulting for the said paint brand. In this research CKS interacts with various individuals related to different fields of design. They invite design professionals to participate in a collaborative workshop with CKS and a specialized color team to review a mix of new visual data. Based on this review, the designers work with the CKS team to generate various themes that may emerge and with the assistance of the color consultant to define these themes with associative color palettes as well. In these workshops, six design professionals are invited at a time either from the same or varied discipline in order to create a collaborative atmosphere where creations of each designer is peer reviewed and finessed in the course of the workshop. The purpose of these interactions is to understand what inspires these designers to create the themes they choose and how they translate a concept into an actual theme with thoughts around color, material and forms. In order to try an learn about the various societal factors, design trends and influences which these designers choose to represent in their themes. The outcomes of these collaborative workshops are analyzed for how the themes have been built, recurrences and deviations and key design influencers in terms of color, form and material for the interiors industry for the upcoming year.

Needless to say, it was great fun to do and also a wonderful learning experience.  I leave you with a few images from the workshop.

P.s- It’s Asian Paints and their ColourNext 2010 Catalogue.

I got a call a few days ago asking me to judge an all India inter-college competition on Communication Design. Imagine my surprise and delight!  I said YES. Of course.
The rest as they say is history. It has been a wonderful few days. I am amazed at the talent out there. To see the degree of detail and thought that young college kids  can come up with. Some of the participants had never even heard the term Communication Design. 
Oh, and I also had to speak  for ten minutes on ‘Art as communication’. Which I did. Though it was a bit more then ten minutes. It was a load of fun with a lot of audience participation.

I was certainly in august company. My fellow panalists/jury and speakers were-

‘Communication Marries Technology’
Sandhya Prasad, President, STC (India)
Director of Information Development, BEA / Oracle Systems

‘Communication in a multi-cultural context’
Arundhati Ghosh
Founder, India Foundation for the Arts & Lead India Campaign participant

‘Communication as an Employability Enhancer’
Prof Pankaj Gupta
Director, Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (Bangalore)
Former Prof at IIM-K and IMT,
Fulbright Visiting Research Scholar, Ohio State Univ & University of Washington
(Unfortunately, he was unable to make it for the event)

I almost forgot to mention the contest itself. To design a poster, brochure and user guide for the Apple ipod touch. And yes, the winning team got one for each participant as the grand prize!! Boy, were they over the moon.
You can read about it here and here.

The event was organised and hosted by ‘The writers Block’