POOL 69

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Deepali Saini pg 26 | Photographed by Hari Nallan Ranit and Subhrajit 02 Shaila Khubchandani 10 Sonal Malhotra 16 Upasana Makati 20 Kruttika Susarla 40 Richa Aggarwal 44 Aradhana Anand 54

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Editor in Chief | sudhir@indidesign.in

May 2016 | # 69

Sudhir with Frank Zierenberg of iF Design Awards, Germany at INDI Pune office

Happy at Work It's true that happy people make the world go round. Watch closely and you will find that everything that works was created by, maintained by, and run by people who are happy. People who love doing what they do, are at peace with themselves, and value what they do.

It is also true that unhappy people stop the world from moving. You see many examples of this all around...people who take shortcuts to reach faster, and get done with something quicker. Design by nature is not a profession that you can attend to while being unhappy. That's when you will feel stuck, not moving in life, and in your profession.

If you ever feel unhappy at work, there are a few things that you must do before you ruin your work and someone's world.

1. Check if you are unhappy with work or something else...

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Maybe it's health, or money, or your love life. Don't blame everything on work. Try and keep things separate, which might be difficult. It is better to take some time off and step back, stop work for some time, take a break. Or take the next step.

2. If it is work, talk to someone who knows better...

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.

If it is your work that's making you unhappy, you need to do something else for a while. Change projects, company, and colleagues. Better still, speak to someone you see as a mentor. Nowadays you can chat with someone, download all your apprehensions, and be open to suggestions.

We are in one of the few professions where people like what they do, so it better make us happy! We are the people who make the world go round. The work of happy designers always shows.

http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/designindia

Endorsed by

Sudhir

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space design

THE STEEL SYMPHONY Kolkata-based Square Consultancy Services designed a pavilion for the Durga Puja festivities last year, the first time an architectural firm has ventured into the arena. For principal designers Ranit Maiti and Subhrajit Gunakar Mitra it was a unique opportunity to merge technology with tradition.

A Public Pavilion Durga Puja is one of the biggest socio-cultural and religious festivals in India, especially in Bengal. In Kolkata the temporary pavilions or pandals set up to house the idols are visited by millions of people over four to five days, and hence can be envisaged as the containers of the public realm. So far the work of creating these pavilions has been taken up by artists and local artisans who display wonderful creativity in the use of materials and incorporating innovative themes.

The fact that these temporary pavilions act as attractors of public realm interested us. As designers you often seek new 2  POOL #69

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sustainable fashion

SOMETHING TO CROW ABOUT Shaila Khubchandani’s Ahmedabad-based label is committed to being organic, ethical and hand crafted

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installation

THE COMMON LINK

Sonal Malhotra’s recent interactive public art installation innovatively brought to the fore the similarities that bind us all together. A full time user experience designer, Sonal also takes up independent art projects, and her latest was a part of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival 2016 in Mumbai, and the Make in India Week. She tells POOL all about ‘The Common Link’.

From the moment we are born, we are fixed in our identities based on religion, language and culture.

Over time we forget that at the core we aren’t any different from each other. Only a person with an open mind can connect to everyone and remind us of our striking similarities. When you put on the happy face of a clown, you become ‘The Common Link’ connecting everyone to the joy within you.

In this case, when you wear the clown mask, the people in picture frames on the wall react to you, either by laughing or clapping.

The installation comprises four screens (made to look like photo frames) with pre-recorded videos of people from different strata of society. The screens feature a young city girl, a small town Muslim man, a middle-aged socialite lady, and a middle class Sikh man respectively. The profiles are chosen keeping in mind their varied socio-cultural and 16 POOL #69

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publication design

A BRAILLE-ANT IDEA Upasana Makati’s lifestyle magazine ‘White Print’ reaches out to the world’s largest visually impaired population

Let’s start with a little about yourself.

UM: All through my childhood I always loved to take the initiative and be at the forefront of everything. I have always had a caring, sensitive outlook towards people, a trait that might have influenced what I am doing today.

I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Mass Media with a specialization in Journalism from Jai Hind College in Mumbai, and pursued a course in Corporate Communication from the University of Ottawa, Canada. On returning to Mumbai, I took a job at a PR agency in Mumbai, which I quit to start White Print.

(What she doesn’t mention is that she was listed in the ‘30 under 30’ list

by Forbes India in 2016.)

Tell us more about White Print.

UM: Most people are unaware that India is home to the world’s largest visually impaired population. One night in the year 2012 I began thinking about the various reading options available for a visually impaired person. To my surprise I could think of none. I immediately shared the idea of a magazine for the visually impaired with my closest bunch of friends and began the research process. Three months into the research I decided to quit my job and commit myself completely to the venture with the help of a few friends who were really supportive of my idea. They would assist me whenever I needed their guidance and also double up as writers for the magazine.

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cover story

(L-R) Deepali Saini, Rama Aleti & Hari Nallan

WIDENING HORIZONS Architect turned design strategist, and Co-Founder of Think Design Collaborative, Deepali Saini plans to expand the footprint of her New Delhi-based organization across multiple geographies

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graphic design

A FINE LINE Kruttika Susarla doesn’t believe in living up to labels – what matters is giving shape to the ideas in her head!

Illustrator or graphic designer?

I actually consider myself an illustrator who also practices graphic design. Finding this clarity and accepting it was a huge part of the initial challenges when I started out straight out of college. Because I studied 'graphic design' technically, a part of me always felt guilty about wanting to do more of illustration-based work and not what one would at the time consider 'hardcore' graphic design. Over time, I understood that everything goes hand in hand. It's always great to have the skill to be able to put down on paper what exactly you're visualizing in your head and obviously these illustrations were not going to appear in isolation; they have to work as a part of a whole system, which is where my graphic design understanding often helps me.

I learnt to understand that this was my voice: illustration-led graphic design work. This is what I enjoy doing the most. I equally enjoy figuring out complex user flows for websites/mobile applications and designing interfaces for them as well. Often, I find these labels to be rather redundant — graphic designer, illustrator, user experience (UX), user interface, strategy development, so on and so forth. Aren't we all striving to give the best user experience through the work we put out in the world? Don't we want to make it meaningful anyway?

I think that a good designer is an embodiment of all of these things and so it doesn't make sense to talk about them in isolation.

Real life inspiration I think a lot of work I do comes often from my own experiences and day-to-day things. I feel like it feeds into my work unconsciously — 40 POOL #69

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Cat comic

The other part of online design resources is portfolio sites like Behance, Dribbble, etc. These resources are quite helpful in pushing oneself and setting higher benchmarks for the quality of work one produces, as it's very easy to see where you stand from a global perspective. I think it has also allowed clients to understand what is possible and how good design thinking can help their businesses succeed. I feel that clients these days are very open and risk-friendly which feeds off directly to the kind of work being produced today.

Exciting line up I've always been fascinated with textures. I'm doing the ‘36 days of type’ series currently and it's given me a lot of room to experiment with texture and also brush up on my Bezier skills.

I have just finished my first self-written + drawn comic as a part of an Indo-German residency with eight German women and seven Indian illustrators. This will be a part of a feminist magazine in Germany called 'Spring' and I'm very excited about it.

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furniture design

CHAIRS WITH STORIES

Aradhana Anand’s tryst with furniture design started with a frustrating search for the perfect wingback armchair

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IKAT WEAVES Contemporary Interpretations of a Timeless Craft

Contemporary Ikat home textiles

An age old fabric whose design is determined even before it is woven, one that has retained its motifs through centuries, can be found in cultures spanning continents, and was once used as a form of currency on the famed Silk Road...Ikat or 'Ikkat' is a textile with timeless appeal, a storied history, and versatility in application.

Ikat comes from the Indonesian-Malay word 'Mengikat' which means ‘to bind or wind around’. Unlike most other types of surface embellishments like block printing or tie and dye, which are expressed on the fabric after weaving, the warp 60 POOL #69

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