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Bhupal Ramnathkar pg 26 | Photographed by Ashay Kshirsagar Rupesh Vyas 02 Raahul Khadaliya 10 Arushi Aggarwal 20 Verena Gerlach 38 Chinar Farooqui 46 Ishani Kanani 52 Obituary-Kenji Ekuan 62
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Editor in Chief | sudhir@indidesign.in
April 2015 | # 58
Sudhir at the Zignition Auto Awards ceremony. Picture by Kunal Khadse.
POOL 58
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Bhupal Ramnathkar pg 26
What does it take to be a successful team leader and entrepreneur?
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Now this is a very big question. Many say this is an inborn talent, but I guess many qualities can be learned and developed. To be a team leader you obviously need to be happy with people and enjoy their company. You need to trust your team and respect them for what they can do. You may think you know more, and can do more...but that’s what makes you a leader in the first place.
| Photographed by Ashay Kshirsagar
Rupesh Vyas 02 Raahul Khadaliya 10 Arushi Aggarwal 20 Verena Gerlach 38 Chinar Farooqui 46 Ishani Kanani 52 Obituary-Kenji Ekuan 62
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Designindia was founded in 2002. It was started as a platform for interaction for the design community in India and abroad. Over the years it has grown into a forum spread over many social and professional networking domains, linking design professionals into an active, interactive and thought leading community.
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A good team leader always wants to share knowledge and is keen that his team grows. Your team should be able to trust you and respect your knowledge. These things you cannot buy with money. You do not become a team leader just because you are paid more and because someone is reporting to you. An entrepreneur is a team leader as well. A successful entrepreneur is one who is able to figure out a road where none exists; it could also be in very small ways. In a studio a creative director has to be an entrepreneur. He has to think of what he wants on a white paper, then decide which photographer, which models, which setting will fill the page. He always takes the help of the specialists. He is constantly learning and constantly teaching. Sudhir
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signage design
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
Rupesh Vyas introduces us to the Gujarat Government’s unique GIFT City Project
2 POOL #58
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sustainable design
THE RIGHT INTENTION Design has no meaning if it creates more desires than solutions, believes Raahul Khadaliya, Founder and Design Director, Studio ABCD
How did you get drawn to the concept of sustainable design? RK: It was sometime in late 2007, when I was studying Accessory Design at NIFT in Bangalore, that I first experienced the difference between a need and a want as clear as day. I was in the old market near Avenue Road and I stopped near a tea stall to take a few pictures of the surroundings. I saw a kid, hardly a year old, lying on the pavement, rolled up in a dirty cloth. I looked around to figure out who the baby belonged to and saw this lady come out of the other side of the tea stall, covered in muddy clothes, face covered in dirt, and hair loosely tied. In her hands she had two of the smallest possible plastic tea cups, one with a little milk, and the other with some water. Quickly picking up the baby, she began to feed 10  POOL #58
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social design
DESIGNING WITH
PURPOSE Appropriately named ‘The Initiative’, Arushi Aggarwal’s venture tries to bridge the gap between urban consumers and rural creators 20 POOL #58
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cover story
Designing For
Happiness An advertiser, designer and space designer with a penchant for making people happy, Bhupal Ramnathkar of Mumbai-based Umbrella Design dreams about that one big idea that will change things for his country!
Office Space 26  POOL #58
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typography
German type designer Verena Gerlach finds unique expression for her work in India with the Cold War and the Occupation, but we were free to travel. Berlin was a very honest and grey place, but we had the energy and space to fulfill our wildest dreams. The other West Germans didn’t like the West Berliners, because they thought we were all communists and spoiled brats, living in a supported (from their money) environment. Maybe this was true. I guess we all felt very special. Tell us about your project ‘Chamki Remix’.
Please tell us a little about yourself. VG: I have a Diploma in Visual Communication from Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee. I run a studio called fraugerlach in Berlin, Germany, and work as a book designer, type designer, graphic designer, instructor, and visual artist. I was born in and grew up in West Berlin, when it was still a quite isolated western island in the middle of the communist GDR. West Berlin was a very special, maybe even artificial place…very rough, very political, but also provincial. We were always confronted
VG: India’s world famous tradition of sign painting and lettering was the main incentive for me to spend two months at the Goethe bangaloREsidency in the summer of 2014. Initially, I conceptualized a poster series based on the needs and desires of young women from the weaker economic section of Indian society. Based on this lettering, I decided to delve even deeper into the world of Indian decorative craft, adding punch to these already powerful designs. Along my long and colorful research route, I visited the silk city Ramanagaram, where I documented all stages of silk production and met people involved in the production. I also came in contact with the young women participating
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craft
Ishani Kanani’s LukkaChuppi range of products revisits places she’s been and memories she treasures
52 POOL #58
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obituary
KENJI EKUAN 1929-2015
The design community lost one of its greatest and most influential designers, Kenji Ekuan on 8 February. Best known for his iconic Kikkoman soy sauce dispenser (1961), and the Narita Express bullet train, the Japanese industrial designer is remembered with fondness by those who knew him, and had the opportunity to interact with him. Says Ashoke Chatterjee, Former Executive Director, National Institute of Design, “Kenji Ekuan was one of the stalwarts at International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID), and in international design education. His work proved how grounded design can be in its own culture while being global in the best sense. As a former Buddhist monk he brought a special dimension of compassion to everything he said and did as a designer.” Sudhir Sharma of INDI Design remembers meeting the designer two years ago. “He was in a wheelchair and posed very happily with us. He unveiled a sculpture of Lord Krishna speaking to Arjuna on his chariot, and said it was his inspiration. 'India is special,’ he told us." A pioneer of modern Japanese industrial design, Kenji Ekuan left his studies at a Buddhist temple to pursue his new desire to be a ‘creator of things’. He attended Tokyo’s National University of Fine Arts and Music and later enrolled in an exchange program at the Art Center College of Design in California where he graduated in 1955. Two years later, he founded GK Industrial Design Associates, which later became GK Design Group, and is now one of the largest design consultancies in Japan. In 1970, he became president of the Japan Industrial Designers’ Association and joined ICSID as a Board Member from 1971 – 1973; he was Vice President from 1973-1975 and President from 1975-1977. He remained close to the international organization as an active Senator. Ekuan received many international awards, among them, Icsid's Colin King Grand Prix in 1979, Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), Order of the Rising Sun (Japan), Osaka International Design Award (1987), Sir Misha Black Medal (1995) and the Compasso d’Oro Lifetime Achievement Award (Italy). "Design to me has always meant making people happy. Happy in the sense of creating items that provide comfort, convenience, function, esthetics and ethics.” These words of the great designer will serve as his legacy. 62 POOL #58
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