Context as a teacher of
visual communication
Inspired by Ken Garland’s First Things First manifesto, a visual communicator decides to work with a grassroots organization. She leaves Mumbai and lands at Banni Grasslands of Gujarat, western India. She faces several challenges making her wonder whether as a visual communicator she is equipped with skills, necessary in the real world and if not, what skills are needed. She contemplates that there exists a classroom out in the field and a thorough investigation of the design context is a necessity. Finding her way around unfamiliar
geography and culture of Banni she stumbles upon interesting visual ‘codes’ of communication until she comes across some rather unfortunates codes of communication in form of animal husbandry malpractices. In reaction to this, she revisits her act of designing packaging for a local sweet and during all this unlearning and relearning in the field makes her question about the potential role that design education and visual communication could play in today’s time and age.
The seed Inspired by the ideas discussed in ‘First Things First’ manifesto and movies like ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’, I decided to take my skills to the grassroots. I showed up at Bhuj, in Kachchh region of Gujarat in western India to work with a non-profit called Sahjeevan. Sahjeevan works in areas of animal husbandry, drinking water, renewable energy and urban initiatives. I chose to work with animal husbandry unit. I lived in Bhuj, but my field area was 50 km. away at Banni grasslands. These grasslands are nestled between Greater and Small Rann of kachchh. Ken Garland wrote the ‘First Things First’ manifesto, on 29 November 1963 and published it in 1964. It rallied against the consumerist culture that was purely concerned with buying and selling things and tried to highlight a humanist dimension to graphic design. It was later updated and republished with a new group of signatories as the First Things First 2000 manifesto. Today, after 48 years these ideas are relevant more than ever.
Banni is approximately 17,000 to 85,000. No wonder animal husbandry is the primary occupation here, followed by charcoal making, handicrafts, embroidery, tourism and small businesses. Banni consists of 48 hamlets, organised into 19 Panchayats (village level administrative blocks). 90% population of Banni are Muslim nomadic pastoralists while 10 % are Hindus belonging to Meghwal Marwada and Vadha Koli communities.
Beginnings Given my background in visual communication and desire to work in the areas of gender and livelihoods I was given two assignments: designing labels for dairy products developed locally and understanding women’s role in animal husbandry at Banni grasslands. I started with the label design assignment first and made a few roughs and showed them to the livestock keepers. Livestock keepers were furious at me for having selected ‘such a bad buffalo’ to be the face of their products. One of them said to me,“ to design for Banni you must first understand it and that won’t happen in a city office, by working on a computer alone. They had a point and I moved to Banni. About Banni Grasslands Banni is a mud-flat with frequent sandstorms. Seasonally, it transforms from a dry-land to a wet-land. Primarily it is an arid grassland and a commons. That is no one living in Banni owns even a square inch of that land in their names. The pasture is used by the community as a common property for grazing their livestock. Banni is rich in biodiversity and is home to some amazing livestock species such as the Banni buffalo, the Kankrej cattle, the Sindhi horse, Kachchhi camel and Kachchhi sheep-goat. The ratio of humans to livestock in
Ground realities I moved from Mumbai to Bhuj to Banni. Keeping in mind my short term and long term objective (label design and researching women’s role in animal husbandry) I armed myself with a camera, voice recorder, sketchbook and a detailed questionnaire. One the first day, I hitched a ride with colleagues from the host organisation to a visit a village. The sight of me with my camera and questionnaire annoyed the villagers. They said, “You come here in a comfortable car, ask us questions about our hardships and earn your salary out of it, whereas we get nothing for answering your questions nor does our life change for better”. People’s resistance to talk continued for a while. At the design school there many conversations about user-centric design, contextual inquiry and empathy. How was I going
to apply this in Banni? At this point observation in the context became my teacher. I shunned private/ NGO transport and began taking public transport buses that make once-a-day trip within Banni no matter how crowded they were. I spent time at the bus-stops, Mawa (sweet made from saturating milk with sugar) shops, police check posts and the only hospital in Banni, in a hope that I see something I can use. A couple of things struck me: Gender dynamics: It’s a patriarchal culture, women are completely absent in public space. Appropriateness of research methods: Questionnaires turn people off and photography is a
taboo, how to conduct research work? Drawing and map-making shows the way. Natural rhythm of Banni: Like most places where traditional livelihoods are practiced, Banni also has its natural rhythm. Meeting a livestock keeper and asking for his time early in the morning and late afternoons is a no no as he would be busy tending to his buffaloes. Respecting this rhythm and meeting people accordingly increased the chances of them opening up to me. Cultural appropriateness: Keeping oneself covered from head to toe, was considered to be a signifier for a cultured Banni woman and I began to dress likewise. Small factors like the dress code of the field researcher could send out subtle positive signals of respect towards the users/community one is working with. Social capital in the field: Public transport is erratic in places like Banni and yet, taking the public transport gives the designer/researcher the opportunity to study one’s users/community in their own context. Also, connections made like this help increase the designer’s / researcher’s social capital in the field. Some individuals would have an access to large number of locals owing to the nature of their work. For example village head, a doctor, a teacher or a policemen, would know several people in their
community. It is good to make friends with such people, as soon as one visits a new field area.
Context unfolds: decoding Banni I had begun finding my way around Banni by observing and decoding the natural and man-made entities in the surroundings. I divide them into natural and man-made codes. Let’s look at natural codes first. Vegetation as a code: From Bhuj to Banni, one travels on a road like this, but the villages themselves lie 2 to 3 km. on either side of this tar road. If you are new to Banni, it is easy to get lost. In this case one has to look out for a thicket of ‘Desi Bawal’ (Acacia Nilotica) trees on the horizon and walk towards them. These plants grow wherever they find potable drinking water and typically villages are located around aquifers like these. Whereas Ker is a medicinal plant. Gando Bawal is a harmful invasive specie which has taken away nutrition from useful trees and grasses of Banni. Gando Bawal pods don’t affect the Buffalo’s on chewing, but they kill cows. This has caused livestock keepers of Banni to shift from being cow- rearers to buffalo rearers. Codes of animal health: After assisting with milking and feeding buffaloes, livestock keepers taught me about the followingCodes for a healthy buffalo: • Horns tightly coiled in perfect concentric spiral. • Thin skin • Ratio of length of legs to the size of hooves • Firm udders and tits • Fachar Aakar (pear shaped): Should be smaller in the front (head) and larger at the back, this shape is especially suitable for hassle free deliveries during childbirth. • Prominent milk vein • Body height should be proportional to body length and weight. • Feet shouldn’t be too long or short. • Codes for cattle are similar except, horns of
Kankrej cattle grow out long and thick. Codes for a healthy camel: Good height-body Hump slim and heightened Small chest pad Head and mouth raised upward and looking forward. Erect ears ‘Chavro’ colour (blackish brown) Scrotum uplifted (male), prominent milk vein (for female)
Man-made codes of Banni: Man-made codes can be further divided into non-verbal (audio, visual) and verbal. Audio-codes of Banni: Animals in Banni are not tied up in shelters; they graze freely, unsupervised and return to their owner’s homes twice a day on their own to consume cattle feed. The Morchung (shepherd’s harp) played by the livestock keepers and copper bells worn around the neck by dominant animal of every livestock herd, helps create an audio-boundary of sorts and animals graze within the hearing distance of it. The audioboundary ensures that the livestock is not lost or does not get mixed up in-between herds. Visual codes of Banni Tears and slits: Certain clans in Banni, make use of tears and slits in the ear cartilage to differentiate their herds from the rest. Branding: Banni has approximately 85,000 animals and there is a system to identify these animals and prevent them from a mix-up or getting lost. Animals are branded using iron rods to establish owner’s identity on them. Depending upon the symbol or name branded on the animal- one can tell which clan it belongs to. There are about 22 sub-clans amongst the Muslim pastoralists, each with their own symbol / brand-mark. For centuries together, branding would take place with heat. However, with arrival of dairies in 1980s, acid began to be used. Unlike heat which scars the skin, the acid penetrates deep inside leaving a wound. Pastoralists have taken to ‘fill-up’ this wound to prevent crows from pecking at it. They do so by mixing mustard oil and chemical mixtures from used pencil cell batteries and using this as an ointment on the wound. They believe that the black colour this leaves behind on the animal skin will make the brand-mark last longer. Other livestock keepers paint the horns of the cattle, some add colour to animal bodies as in case of sheep, some use accessories- especially in case of cows. Brand-marks as medical history: Apart from identification, branding is used as a traditional cure for illnesses. This cross brand mark was used to cure a disease of the gall bladder. Thus looking at the location and shape of the brand-mark on animal’s body one can conclude what diseases the animal suffers from. In that sense these brand marks also act as a visual medical record of the livestock.
Codes of animal husbandry based livelihoods: Milk flags: These flags tell the milk-van drivers where to stop and collect milk from the producer families who reside far away from the main road. A stick stuck in the dung tells other families of the village that this dung has been claimed for by a certain family for collection and sale, so others should not collect it as their own. Codes of animal buying and selling: To negotiate a buying or selling price of livestock, without others in the vicinity finding out about it, the potential buyer and seller cover their hands with a handkerchief or a scarf and decide on a price using fingers in a coded system, shown alongside.
Rs. One lakh
Rs. Forty thousand
Rs. Fifty thousand
Rs. Five thousand
Codes of personal identities: Identities of religions, clan and caste manifest in forms of housing, costumes and as symbols on vehicles. Extreme left, embroidery of Jat clan and Jat temporary house called Pakha. On left, embroidery of Sameja clan, below their circular house called Bhunga along with the rectangular separate kitchen. Below, vehicle o top with Hindu symbol of trident and swords while the vehicle at the bottom has Islamic symbol of a date palm and swords. It happens to be Saudia Arabia’s symbol.
Verbal codes I came across two verbal codes as well. Animal names: Typically a family in Banni owns anything between 30 to 300 animals. Feeding and milking them at a go can be a task. Hence they have devised a system where they have named each animal and when they call out a particular name, this animal separates from the herd and can be fed and milked in peace.
Penda* box as a code: Unfortunately, asking for Penda Box at local cattle feed stores in Banni is a code for buying Oxytocin syringes. The use of this synthetic hormone spurs milk production in low-yielding cattle. The government has banned its usage, but livestock keepers continue to use it to meet the daily requirement of milk that is sent to the dairies. Oxytocin harms the livestock in the long run. The quality of milk thereby produced needs to be tested as well. *Penda is a sweet made by combining milk and sugar
Discussion From designing a label to discovering ugly side of a traditional livelihood it has been an eyeopening journey in the field. When I went into an unfamiliar geography and culture, observation became my teacher. I came across several codes of communication. Some were related to advertising (like label design and promotional collateral) while others were related to environment and animal health. I studied these codes in depth and chose to focus on the latter. Looking back I realise, had I not left my Bhuj office and gone to Banni I would have never understood the context in its entirety. It is in the context that I was able to see why people behave in a certain manner, how and why they do certain things. This allows me as a visual communicator to make informed decisions when I design communication. Finally, I am not saying that designing packaging labels is unnecessary, but opening the box and seeing what’s inside should be a concern for a responsible designer. My future design with respect to Banni would include anti-Oxytocin awareness & clean-milk campaign, communication aids for locals that touch upon mother and child nutrition, combating anaemia, reproductive health and hygiene.
Matrix of communication codes at Banni Grasslands, Gujarat, India Audio codes
Bird / animal sounds Wet earth
NATURAL CODES
Olfactory codes
Rotting flesh Dung Vegetation
Visual codes
Animal health Animal dung
Azaan Audio codes
Copper bells Morchung
MAN-MADE CODES
Olfactory codes
Charcoal smoke
Brand marks
Branding symbols
Tears & slits
Branding initials (of owner’s name)
Heat & acid Decorative branding
Animal husbandry Visual codes
Codes of ownership
Application of Ghee Tail & wool cuts
Codes of animal decoration
Milk Flags
Codes of medical history
Claimed dung
Codes of animal husbandry based livelihoods
Animal trade Milk Flags
Personal
Claimed dung
Codes of religion
Animal trade
Codes of clan / caste
MAN-MADE VERBAL CODES
Animal names as code (for animals) Code for illegal Oxytocin purchase