Semester (4) Document by Vivek Menon

S EE M M FF O OU UR R

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Vivek Menon UG Graphic Design National Institute of Designâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;13

Typeset in: Neutra Text Family

Vivek Menon

2015

Semester 4 Document

After completing yet another hectic, yet lively semester of Graphic Design at NID, I find myself equipped with a greater & richer set of skills and knowledge, than I had in the previous semester. I would like to thank all the faculty I have interacted with this semester, namely Tridha Gajjar, TarunDeep Girdher, Rupesh Vyas, Bharat Suthar, Krishnesh Mehta, Urmila Bhirdikar & Immanuel Suresh. My batchmates and seniors continue to be a constant support & source of inspiration. I am also forever grateful to my parents for their motivation & helping me achieve my dreams of being a Graphic Designer.

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Vivek Menon

2015

Semester 4 Document

CONTENTS

PRODUCTION PROCESS 08 -------------------------------SLA 16 -------------------------------IMAGE MAKING 24 -------------------------------TYPOGRAPHY 2 36 -------------------------------COLOR 2 46 -------------------------------OPEN ELECTIVE 52 -------------------------------MISCELLANEOUS 66

Vivek Menon

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C O U R S E FAC U LT Y

D U R AT I O N

Bharat Suthar with Tridha Gajjar

2 Weeks

PRODUCTION PROCES S P R I N T I N G T E C H N O LO GY

2015

Semester 4 Document

RECAP • •

Basic Colour Models like RGB and CMYK Binding techniques from Workshops in Foundation

LEARNING •

•

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Five major printing methods- their advantages and disadvantages, how and when to make best use of each technique- theory and practical applications Identification of printing method used from physical printed outcome, and how to bridge the gap between expectations from screen to print Printing as a large scale process, with the help of field visits Overall prepress and postpress details to reduce overall costs of printing, including imposition and colour issues Binding and Cutting methods; Types of paper, specifications of weights and dimensions

Vivek Menon

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PRINTING METHODS The first course of the semester dealt with getting exposed to the many nuances of Printing Technology, that would essentially help bridge the communication gap between us graphic designers & the printers who end up actualizing our print-based designs, eventually in numbers, and to be able to effectively use the knowledge of limitations and advantages of each process more meaningfully and creatively.

2015

Semester 4 Document We studied printing as an industrial process, an essential part of publishing. All printing is done with the help of dots, which explained concepts like half-tone & colour density. We comprehensively studied five major printing processes used in the print industry, namely Relief or letterpress printing, Planographic or offset printing, Recess or Gravure printing, Screen or Stencil printing, and finally Digital printing - The basic principles behind how image & non-image areas are created in each technique; & its advantages and disadvantages. We also observed & carried out the processes ourselves, learnt how to select the most appropriate printing process for a particular outcome, and figured out how to identify the type of printing from the look & feel of the printed outcome.

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Preproduction techniques we covered included document setup, computer graphics, scanning, resolution, file formats, preparing files, crop, folding & registration marks, cutouts, over printing and mirror image. Our course included a field trip to a printing press, where we saw various printing methods taking place on a large scale, and printing of product graphics on medical packaging. We also saw a paper production unit where they manufactured corrugated cardboard. During the last week of the course we got our hands dirty creating a digital artwork to print using different printing techniques. We made a poster to showcase the difference between a German Dinner and an Indian Dinner, in honor of the German Exchange student in our class. We printed the poster using letterpress and offset printing techniques, and on different types of papers. Through this process, we were exposed to plate making and other prepress techniques.

Vivek Menon

2015

Semester 4 Document

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We also bound notebooks using different techniques like centre and side stitch, pad, perfect, spiral and section binding.

Vivek Menon

2015

Semester 4 Document

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C O U R S E FAC U LT Y Dr. Urmila Bhirdikar

Vivek Menon

D U R AT I O N 1 Week

S C I E N C E A N D L I B E R A L A R T S I N T R O D U C T I O N TO T H E AT R E

2015

Semester 4 Document

RECAP •

Semiotics, as studied in SLA 3- nature of signs, language being an arbitrary system of codification

LEARNING •

• •

How Theatre is just another form of expression like Art and Music, that fulfils man’s innate need to understand and be understood The structure & design of Tragedies & Greek Theatre Effective choice of media to communicate

Vivek Menon

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EXPRESSION The week long module of SLA this semester, dealt with the subject of Theatre. Theatre as we understood, is an audio-visual medium of expression, involving a â&#x20AC;&#x153;performanceâ&#x20AC;?. Like Music and Drawing, Theatre is also one of the earliest methods in which man tried to express himself. This culmination of Verbal & Bodily gestures along with Human language, helps in our deeper understanding of society. It depicts the innate need of man to create an sign & to be able to communicate. The nature of dialogue is such that by everyone using a codified language, other people have a different meaning for or understanding of words. Therefore, theatre is a codified set of public gestures.

2015

Semester 4 Document

STRUCTURE Like Religion, theatre is a set of man-made rituals or performance acts, usually in an “arena”, through which one draws fulfilment in the form of entertainment or spiritual pleasure. Traditional Indian Sanskrit theatre used to be limited to “Thamasha” or comedic criticisms of society, which were usually vulgar, obscene, and low class humour. Tragedies or destruction of evil, were only introduced to Indian culture later on. Through the course, we focused on three tragedies namely Antigone, Blood Wedding and Hamlet; the meaning of Tragedy being virtue unrewarded.

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GREEK TRAGEDIES Rather than analysing the actual text of the plays, we tried to understand the interesting structure of the script, & design of the performance space. Greek plays in particular, were performed in an amphitheatre, designed similarly to the Greek Democratic political space, where the elder political leaders took centre stage, a participatory approach to governance, designed to be publically gazed at, at all times. Therefore in the plays, the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Chorusâ&#x20AC;? continuously watches and comments on all the action. Audience participation was a key element.

2015

Semester 4 Document Greek plays worked on the principle of minimalism. Very delicate ornamentation was never a part of their design or architecture. Scenes were never staged at night, since no artificial lighting was ever used. A lot of the action is only reported & not acted, because of the verbose nature of Greek theatre. These plays also provided us with a lot of insight into the socio-economic conditions and cultural mindsets of the time. We briefly spoke of the nature of Brechtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plays, and the difference in nature of plays written by Aeschylus, Sophocles & Euripides, with respect to the number of people involved in each sceneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dialogue. We understood words like Catharsis, and Hamartia; the rigidity of Greek Fatalism and the role Theatre plays in questioning society.

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Vivek Menon

2015

Semester 4 Document

MOVIES WATCHED The course consisted of watching and analyzing a lot of movies as well. We watched a 1961 version of Antigone, and analysed the difference in ethics between drama being action-driven or thought-driven. The other movies we watched were a Marathi play called Ghashiram Kotwal, by Vijay Tendulkar, and a modern-day adaptation of Hamlet (2000). We also watched a brilliant performance-driven rendition of Blood Wedding, by Carlos Saura, which was depicted purely through an Flamenco Dance Routine. For my final submission, I wrote an essay analyzing the difference between the Script version of Blood Wedding, as compared to the dance performance, and how effectively the overall plot of the play was communicated through each.

Vivek Menon

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C O U R S E FAC U LT Y Tridha Gajjar

D U R AT I O N 3 Weeks

I M A G E M A K I N G WO R D A N D I M AG E

2015

Semester 4 Document

RECAP • • •

Basic functions of Graphic design Compositional rules such as Balance, Rhythm, Heirarchy, Emphasis, Contrast etc. Gestalt theories namely Dynamics, Closure, Expression, Figure and Ground and so on

LEARNING • • •

Overall skill of Visual meaning making Appropriate intended visual perceptions Application of Visual hierarchies with the combination of Type & Image

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LETTERFORM INTEGRATION

Our first assignment was to integrate two typographic letterforms, by experimenting with the distribution of black and white in the a given space creating the figure and ground relationship, thereby leaning visual correction and final form refinement. I chose to integrate my initials- the alphabets V and M, for which I made the following iterations until I reached a final outcome.

2015

Semester 4 Document I achieved this by trying to find similarities in the forms of the two characters, which I could combine. Care was taken to make sure the V was perceived before the M, and decisions were made to create that visual hierarchy.

Some iterations were rejected since one of the forms had more clarity than the other; or due to lack of overall stability. I also realised my initial mistake of confusing Letterform character placement with letterform integration. The same process was again applied to integrating a letterform and a number. I chose to use 4 and E.

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These were the two final forms I created, after much refinement, since they worked as stable letterform integrations naturally without seeming too forced.

Vivek Menon

2015

Semester 4 Document

Vivek Menon

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ABSTRACTIONS

We then studied various types of abstractions or simplifications; & the differences between Signs and Images; in order to create images keeping communicational purposes and practicality in mind. We were each to select a theme, and an object that would communicate the chosen theme, directly or indirectly. I chose Health as my theme and Hands as my object.

2015

Semester 4 Document First, we had to photograph the selected object and then create an abstraction of the image using black and white masses, and weighted lines, to visually judge and thereby simplify the light and shadow of the 3D form.

This was my final simplified, refined image that I then scanned, and vectorized.

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Vivek Menon

Next we had to create a poster, in order to communicate something related to the chosen theme.

2015

Semester 4 Document

This was my favourite assignment, since it made me feel like an Art Director, going through the entire process of visualising the look and feel of the image, Photographing the object in desirable lighting conditions, digitally enhancing and editing the photograph, and finally deciding what to write, and how to effectively place the text on the image to communicate what I intended. This assignment also taught me how to envision an image for whatever I wanted to communicate.

MAKING A POSTER

Vivek Menon

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CREATING PICTOGRAMS

Our final assignment was to create a pictogram in order to once again communicate something related to the theme. A pictogram is to be as informative as possible, without depicting the object from any dynamic angle or perspective. The line quality was to not be expressive but extremely neutral so that the viewer would be able to comprehend the signage as quickly as possible, without the image being open to multiple interpretations.

2015

Semester 4 Document I chose to create a signage for Washing Hands, and I went through various iterations before making the final vectorized outcome, in which all the elements were simplified to the maximum but still resembled the objects form.

Vivek Menon

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C O U R S E FAC U LT Y Tarun Deep Girdher

D U R AT I O N 2 Weeks

T Y P O G R A P H Y 2 COMPOSITION

2015

Semester 4 Document

RECAP • • • •

Elements of type & type terminology from Typography 1 Issues of readability and legibility of certain typefaces in specific contexts Evolution of printing technology as learnt in Production process Elements of Composition, such as Heirarchy, Balance, Contrast etc. as studied in Foundation

LEARNING • • • • • •

Study of popular Typefaces and how to recognise them Contextual usage of typefaces Combining typefaces appropriately Composition of Text, Page Layouts and Grid systems with respect to negative space Typography as an invisible messenger of the content Hierarchically arranging elements to create emphasis

Vivek Menon

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STUDY OF TYPEFACES The quick brown fox of Rockwell jumped over Vivekâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lazy dog. 301214

A two week course about Typography handled by Tarun ensued with a familiarisation of a set of popular typefaces from different classifications. The list included Baskerville, Rotis, Thesis, Ubuntu, Clarendon, Optima, Today Sans, Garamond, Bodoni, Filosofia, Comic Sans, Din, Warnock Pro, Bell Centennial, Meta and finally Rockwell, which I got to study.

2015

Semester 4 Document

Good things are in store for you this year!

But you have to find them, because things don’t come easy in Life.

POSTCARDS

There’s a new Serif in town, and this one’s a slab. HappyTwentyFifteen.

We then grouped together in pairs, to use the combination of our typefaces together and create typographic compositions in the form of Postcards for the New Year. In this exercise, with the typefaces provided, we had to come up with the copy, and the layout.

Please recycle this card for New Year.

Vivek Menon

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ADVERTISMENT LAYOUT

ADMISSIONS 2016-17

Paldi, Ahmedabad 380 007, India Tel: +91-79-2662 3462 email: admissions@nid.edu

APPLICATION FORMS

The National Institute of Design (NID) offers a 4-year Bachelor of Design (B.Des.) Programme at Ahmedabad and a 2.5 year Master of Design (M.Des.) Programme • Application forms can be downloaded at Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar & Bengaluru Campuses. and printed from the website and sent along with– • A Demand Draft of Rs1500/- for General Category/OBC (Non-Creamy Layer) and Rs750/- for SC/ST/PH Total number of seats: 100 Categories drawn on any Nationalized 4 years programme bank in favour of ‘National Institute of Main campus, Ahmedabad Design’ payable at Ahmedabad. FACULTY OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN • Candidates from Foreign countries may Product Design • Furniture Design • Ceramic & please refer to the website for necessary Glass Design • Textile Design details. • Reserved category candidates must send FACULTY OF COMMUNICATION a self attested photocopy of the relevant DESIGN certificate from the competent authority. Graphic Design • Animation Film Design • Film & • SC/ST candidates must send their caste Video Communication • Exhibition Design. certificate. • PH candidates must send disability FACULTY OF TEXTILE, APPAREL & certificate from the Chief Medical Officer. LIFESTYLE ACCESSORY DESIGN • OBC candidates must send non-creamy Textile Design. layer certificate from the collectorate, which should be issued after March 31, 2015, in the format given in our website.

BACHELOR OF DESIGN (B.DES)

MASTER OF DESIGN (M.DES)

Total number of seats: 275 2½ years programme

Incomplete or incorrectly filled application forms/ forms not satisfying eligibility criteria/ forms without required documents/ forms without required fees will be rejected. The application form fee (Rs.1,500 / Rs.750) for rejected applications will not be refunded. No official communication will be made regarding rejected application forms.

PG CAMPUS, GANDHINAGAR Transportation and Automobile Design (15) • Toy & Game Design (10) • Photography Design (15) • Apparel Design (15) • Lifestyle Accessory Design (15) • New Media Design (15) • Strategic Design Management (15).

Last date for receiving completed application forms at NID:

R&D CAMPUS, BENGALURU Information Design (15) • Interaction Design (15) • Design for Retail Experience (15) • Universal Design (15) • Digital Game Design (15).

JANUARY 10, 2016 B.Des. JANUARY 9, 2016

OCTOBER 29, 2015 Design Aptitude Test for:

M.Des.

TEST CENTRES

Ahmedabad • Bengaluru • Bhopal • Chennai • Chandigrah • Delhi • Guwahati • Hyderabad • Kolkata • Lucknow • Nagpur For all eligibility and application details, please refer to the website:

www.admissions.nid.edu

2015

Semester 4 Document

OCTOBER 29, 2015

Design Aptitude Test for:

JANUARY 10, 2016 B.Des. JANUARY 9, 2016 M.Des.

APPLICATION FORMS

• Application forms can be downloaded and printed from the website and sent along with a Demand Draft of Rs1500/- for General Category/OBC (NonCreamy Layer) and Rs750/- for SC/ST/PH Categories drawn on any Nationalized bank in favour of ‘National Institute of Design’ payable at Ahmedabad. • Candidates from Foreign countries may please refer to the website for necessary details. • Reserved category candidates must send a self attested photocopy of the relevant certificate from the competent authority. • SC/ST candidates must send their caste certificate. • PH candidates must send disability certificate from the Chief Medical Officer. • OBC candidates must send non-creamy layer certificate from the collectorate, which should be issued after March 31, 2014, in the format given in our website. Incomplete or incorrectly filled application forms/ forms not satisfying eligibility criteria/ forms without required documents/ forms without required fees will be rejected. The application form fee (Rs.1,500 / Rs.750) for rejected applications will not be refunded. No official communication will be made regarding rejected application forms.

TEST CENTRES

Ahmedabad • Bengaluru • Bhopal • Chennai • Chandigrah • Delhi • Guwahati • Hyderabad • Kolkata • Lucknow • Nagpur Paldi, Ahmedabad 380 007, India Tel: +91-79-2662 3462 email: admissions@nid.edu

For all eligibility and application details, please refer to the website:

www.admissions.nid.edu

BACHELOR OF DESIGN (B.DES)

Last date for receiving completed application forms at NID:

The National Institute of Design (NID) offers a 4-year Bachelor of Design (B.Des.) Programme at Ahmedabad and a 2.5 year Master of Design (M.Des.) Programme at Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar & Bengaluru Campuses.

MASTER OF DESIGN (M.DES)

2016-17

ADMISSIONS

Our next assignment was to redesign the newpaper advertisment for the NID Admissions, that gets published every year. This time all typographic decisions lay in our hands and issues of alignment, point size, widths, weights, postures, tracking, kerning, leading, readability and legibility all had to be managed. Choices of typefaces were done after observing different typefaces in print, and an inability to compromise on any of the information left us maximising the space asked to work with.

FACULTY OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN Product Design • Furniture Design • Ceramic & Glass Design • Textile Design FACULTY OF COMMUNICATION DESIGN Graphic Design • Animation Film Design • Film & Video Communication • Exhibition Design. FACULTY OF TEXTILE, APPAREL & LIFESTYLE ACCESSORY DESIGN Textile Design

Total number of seats: 100 4 years programme Main campus, Ahmedabad

MAIN CAMPUS, AHMEDABAD Product Design (15 seats) • Furniture Design (15) • Ceramic & Glass Design (10) • Graphic Design (15) • Animation Film Design (15) • Film and Video Communication (15) • Textile Design (15). PG CAMPUS, GANDHINAGAR Transportation and Automobile Design (15) • Toy & Game Design (10) • Photography Design (15) • Apparel Design (15) • Lifestyle Accessory Design (15) • New Media Design (15) • Strategic Design Management (15). R&D CAMPUS, BENGALURU Information Design (15) • Interaction Design (15)• Design for Retail Experience (15) • Universal Design (15) • Digital Game Design (15).

Total number of seats: 275 2.5 years programme

I created two final layouts, one horizontal and one vertical, with emphasis on Programmes Offered, Important Dates and Contact details.

Vivek Menon

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CALENDAR LAYOUT We were provided with printed sheets of numbers and Days of the week, set in the typeface Whitney, in two weights and two colours- Black and Red. With the colours, typeface and weights as constraints, the task was to create a layout for a structure that everyone is familiar with, a calendar. Now a Hierarchy needed to be established keeping in mind matters of continuity over multiple pages.

2015

Certain decisions I made were to set the weekends in red, and the current month in bold while the preceeding and succeeding months were in the lighter weights. I also chose to include the number of the month, and space to write for each day, because I always find those helpful in calendars. The theme of my calendar was to show the continuity of the months and not have them in isolation on each page, so I ended up making an accordian-fold 12page calendar which could be displayed in many ways.

Semester 4 Document

Vivek Menon

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Humanisation of Technology | Shri Ram Pitroda

not seen a designer designing a new broom. And to me these are some of the challenges I want to talk about. However designing for masses require different feel and touch for the masses. It is not very paying to design products for the poor. World over the best of the best talents is busy solving problems of the rich and the problems of the poor don’t get the right talents which are tougher and more difficult problems to address. To get design into the masses whether it is a train compartment, I must tell you this that every time I take a train ride in India which is rare I spend two hours washing the compartment myself. I clean the windows, I fix the fans, I clean the seat and my wife always says, “You are crazy”. You need that level of madness to really reflect good design, to really provide a significant change that this country needs in products and services around us.

NID must and will play an important role but it requires systematic thinking, structuring and it would require collaborations with many-many different institutions. Technology has been the driver for development. It is one thing to design a good x-ray equipment or computers it is another thing to design a good broom. To me today all of these things are becoming internal. In my business Information Technology the bubble that busted three years ago I believe had lot to do with poor design in the virtual world. I have given many speeches in the US on this. The virtual world will not reflect the real world and as a result it would not penetrate the masses. If you open your computer today it is very complex. All kinds of little programs, you get in and out of programs; word processor, accounting, spreadsheet. That is not how your mind works. The virtual world was disconnected from the real world and because of this the penetration went probably 3 or 4 percent and then it collapsed. User-friendliness was lost.

Humanisation of technology really didn’t go as far as it should have gone. Same thing a cell phone. The big ones earlier were not really effective. Now today we have about 1.2 billion cell phones because the design is just about right for the human interaction. It did require multidisciplinary approach even for IT and telecom people to take simple design of mobile phone to billion people. The earlier cell phone I had was like a brick that I used to carry with me and leave it on the top of my table. There were very few phones like that and as you see the new versions of technology coming more and more attention is being paid to user interface; simplicity, humanisation of technology, feel and touch, holding, handling, look. All of these things are digital to routine and mundane things. In India especially in modern Indian uses all modern processes in products designed to some extent abroad. Look at your television cameras, look at bulb, you look at all of the modern pieces of equipment unfortunately lot of these designs don’t reflect local conditions in India. It requires local solutions, indigenous development, it requires local applications. For example internet. Internet cannot penetrate in this country a thin. It is in local language in addressing local problems. I remember working on Water Mission with Ashoke Chatterjee in the mid eighties. We had then whole series of issues related to repairing water pumps. We had to print little books on how to repair water pumps in

What it means is that we would need to interact with the government, NGOs, industry and we need to really look at roads in front of us, buildings in front of us. Go see some of the government offices in Delhi and see the furniture; cobwebs, drapes and you can see my god there is so much to be designed and redesigned. I don’t know why these things don’t get done. I don’t know why in this country we don’t pay attention to little details. Perhaps because we are always looking for Brahminal work and working for the masses solving mundane dumb problems is basically shudra’s work. It is this class structure that we have in our minds that doesn’t allow us to address the real design problems of the masses.

Even the brick wants to be something | Shri Shekhar Gupta

So life keeps changing, my life has changed as a journalist. When we went to journalism schools I were given some formulas I am sure you’ve been given formulas at your institute of design. My formulas were that any new story has to be an inverted pyramid: most important thing at the top then less important, then less important, then less important, then less important. So if the desk editor is in a hurry at the end he can just lop off paragraphs from the bottom and nobody should notice.

And that’s how it was done because in the old days when you had hot metal type the foreman read the type in reverse like this with thick glasses and said isko nikal do, isko nikal do, isko nikal do.

So he took me to the police station he opened his log book and I can mention it now because he has been long dead. He opened his log book and I then discovered that Nagaon had no such thing as a photocopier. So with a Minolta while he held two bulbs I took 100s of pictures I think I have burnt 10 films of that document and that became the smoking gun. So unless we had found that form the content we had would not had made one hundredth of the impact because anybody can say my warnings were ignored. Anytime there is a terror incident in India you will find a story the same evening when five TV channels same reporter saying intelligence had already sent a warning and this is my exclusive. But in this case this was needed.

35th Annual Convocation Address

The other thing that we were taught was that news has six elements, five ‘Ws’ and one ‘H’. What are the five ‘Ws’: what, where, who, why, when and the H is how. But what’s happened now. Now, what, where, who, when have disappeared from my life as a journalist because everybody knows what these four ‘Ws’ before I know usually. Even my rickshaw driver knows it before I do. Cricket score kya hai, agar Gujarat hai toh stock market ka price kya hai, aaj sensex ka ya kahin par terror attack hua hai, ya Modiji ne kahan kya bola hai sab usko pata hota hai. So I have to now transit to why, how, and invent a new ‘W’, ‘what next’. I bet the same thing happens with all of you with design. I know maybe I am talking a bit more of architecture but that’s the thing that hits your eye most of all. I mean it really bugs me that I find so many new buildings in India being built by the same cookie cutter architecture school in Singapore because everybody says who is your architect, it is a firm from Singapore. And they all build these similar things. I mean you talk about ticky tocky in America look at the city of Bombay. I

think a couple of architects have ruined the entire skyline of Bombay. Some of the most expensive buildings in Bombay are the ugliest in terms of design and they are the most uncomfortable to live in. I mean I will tell you a building with my sense of outrageous not humour but black humour and I will say it here, it is a convocation and if you want to know why go back to an article I wrote from Bombay under the series ‘Writings on the Wall’ there I mentioned Hafeez Contractor, I call that building Asha Parekh twin towers. This is the Shapoorji Pallonji Imperial gardens, you cannot find a room in that building which is a rectangle or a square. Everything has funny angles. And you have to be a specially talented architect to achieve that. But I don’t think that was the purpose. The purpose was somehow to put something into a computer and something came out from the other end and you sold it to people who didn’t understand what was going on. Someone like me will have broken shins in those homes once a month. So design is also about comfort, design is also about life, design is also about soul and finally design is about another quality. It is a rare privilege today that I get to speak to design students and design faculty, usually I am invited to speak at journalism schools. And when I go there people ask me the same question even if I go to ordinary normal schools to give prizes people ask the same question, what are

“Content is your prayer. Anybody can soullessly recite a mantra but it has no meaning until is sung like your group had sung before the beginning of this ceremony. So it is“Content combining is your prayer. Anybody can soullessly form with content. That is what design all but it has no meaning until is sung recite aismantra about. ” like your group had sung before the beginning of this ceremony. So it is combining form with content. That is what design is all about. ”

15 different languages. The logistics of delivering, distributing and making it available in that language to the person who was supposed to repair was so compact that invariably the person in Kerala got the book printed in Gujarati. Internet gives you that ability to have easy access to information when you need it in the form you need it, multidimensional, local language instantly. But then how many people are working on internet to give you information on how to repair water pump. They will give you information on New York stock exchange on the internet in English. That is the design challenge in this country. It really starts with the change in the mindset. It starts with looking at problems differently. It starts with grass root realities. These are the things we know, these are all the things we talk about. Somehow it doesn’t get done. To me it starts with mindset. How do we change this? With all our education with all our capabilities why is this country the way it is. Why our airports are really not to the standards, why isn’t it pleasing to go to public places? Every time I come to Ahmedabad this great city I always make comments on the dirt and filth and the garbage. It is the biggest village in the world. And there is no reason for it.

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It is easier said than understood. And one of the greatest problems in any institution is trying to bring about this commonality. If there is ambiguity, it must be discussed. It must be discussed threadbare until there is standing. But in understanding, we have to be able to listen to others. It is common that we are aware but we do not hear. It is common that we hear but we do not listen. It is common that we listen but will not or cannot understand. In such discussions, we need to listen with what my behavioural scientist friends call “listening with the third ear,” making the effort to understand another person’s point of view. Perhaps the most beautiful description of this is the parable of the Sower and the Seed in the Bible, which talks of understanding as understanding from the heart. It is this understanding that is required in the course of the “give and take” which Smt Jayakar mentioned. This give and take is necessary if joint responsibility is to mean anything.

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1st Annual Convocation Address

There is reciprocity, mutuality and a mutual concern between us to see that the job is done and if in any way, I as a junior am incapable or am inadequate to the task, it is the obligation of my seniors to develop me. That is basic to the idea of joint responsibility.

If responsibility is to be joint, then every member of the community must have the opportunity of understanding and accepting a responsibility. Responsibility is not the prerogative of the socalled seniors by whatever criteria that seniority be established. If you are a senior professor and I am a junior professor, that seniority does not make you any more capable of running an education programme than 1. Your seniority is irrelevant to the task. But as a junior faculty member if at all I accept the notion of joint responsibility, then I have accepted the responsibility of undertaking important academic administrative tasks, just as the senior has accepted the responsibility of helping me, a junior accomplish them.

If a person is to feel responsible he must have the elbow- room to make decisions. To that extent the institution must provide him with the conditions under which he can find and earn autonomy in carrying out his responsibility. Autonomy like freedom is not just assumed. It is earned and won every week, every month, every year. The poet James Lowell perhaps described this excellently in his poem on Freedom. He wrote: “We are not free: Freedom doth not consist In musing with our faces forward the Past. While petty cares, and crawling interests, twist Their spider-threads about us, which at least Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and blind I

n formal narrowness heart, soul and mind, Freedom is recreated year by year ...” Later in the same poem he writes: “Freedom gained yesterday is no more ours; Men gather but dry seeds of last year’s flowers.” Such to my mind is the nature of autonomy, and our attitude towards it is a part of the institution’s culture. To develop such a culture requires a great deal of organisational flexibility. The only way this flexibility can be brought about and sustained, and this perhaps underlines the whole process of bringing about joint responsibility, is the exercise of self-discipline within the institution’s community rather than the imposition of authoritarian discipline from above. Whether in terms of building the Institute or in terms of accomplishing a more limited task, if we, as a community accept that these are tasks for which we are jointly responsible, then we must understand the nature of responsibility and autonomy and the restraints they imply. We must also understand that the working relationship in the Institute must be based on mutual concern and support underpinned by self-discipline. The second factor that I mentioned relates to the educational philosophy. There is not an institution concerned with applied knowledge that imparts professional skills where I have not heard the unending and age-long argument about ‘theory’ and ‘practice’. Perhaps it started when the first system of formal education came into contact with the guild and the apprentice- ship systems. It will probably continue until doomsday. I have heard this argument on this campus and on many other campuses. The substantive outcome of the argument may be important.

Even the brick wants to be something | Shri Shekhar Gupta

sent by the SHO or the officer commanding of Nagaon police station saying that these people were gathering, he was a Muslim, nobody paid attention to it and massacre took place. So he said but we have to get the smoking gun, we have to get that wireless message. And he said to me dekh tu aur main likh dengay and people will trust us because we have trust. But that is only content. For us to establish the story we need that wireless if not that wireless we need its picture. Now he didn’t say it then but I am saying now that was the form which was needed to establish the content. So I went Nagaon one late evening it had got dark by then I went to the police station, I asked for the SHO they said he has become very devout now he has grown a beard and he has gone to the mosque to pray. So I went to the mosque and I found him sitting alone and praying. And I told him who I was and what my purpose was and he said you have come and asked me in the mosque and you have come to look for the truth how can I say no to you. So he took me to the police station he opened his log book and I can mention it now because he has been long dead. He opened his log book and I then discovered that Nagaon had no such thing as a photocopier. So with a Minolta while he held two bulbs I took 100s of pictures I think I have burnt 10 films of that document and that became the smoking gun. So unless we had found that form the content we had would not had made one hundredth of the impact because anybody can say my warnings were ignored. Anytime there is a terror incident in India you will find a story the same evening when five TV channels same reporter saying intelligence had already sent a warning and this is my exclusive. But in this case this was needed.

35th Annual Convocation Address

Even the brick wants to be something | Shri Shekhar Gupta

have so much fun in my life because people make my life so much fun. Whether I meet an 85 year old, 87 year old Sitaram Kesri, everybody poured contempt on him. But I think I learnt more from him than anybody else and he gave me more stories in my life than anybody else. Or a 93 year old Ustad Bismillah Khan. People ask me which was the most interesting walk the talk I tell them the most fulfilling walk the talk was Ustad Bismillah Khan. At the age of 93 when forget walking he could not even get up from his bed. And he was incoherent and I can tell you this the only walk the talk I have paid for in 13 years more than 500 walk the talks was Ustad Bismillah Khan because he said, “Beta aap aa gaye ho Ustad ko? Bina nazarane ke kaise hoga?” So I said, “Ustadji, I will give you my entire fee for this episode. And next morning I took it in envelope and gave it to him and he took it as a nazarana. And what did he say, I mean he said many things, I think if you can find that on Youtube, you will find that on NDTV’s website, I think it is the finest lecture anybody can give you on secularism in India. Because I asked him ki itne log Banaras se Pakistan mein gaye san 47 (1947) mein aap kyon Pakistan mein nai gaye? Bole, “Bhai main Pakistan kaise jata? Wahan mera Banaras hai kya?” I said good point, Banaras toh Nai hai.

Then he said ki dekho main sangeet, music kaise karoon? Main toh Bhairavi karta hoon. Bhairavji ke bina Bhairavi nai kar sakta. Toh Musalmaan hoon, Namaz bhi padhta hoon lekin jab Bhairavi bolta hoon, jab sangeet bajata hoon toh Shivji ka dhyan bhi rakhna padhta hai. Toh maine kaha, “Lekin aap Banaras mein bhi rehte hain but can you go to a temple an do it” he said, “Nai, nai, nai. Mujhe jaane ke liye mana kar diya ki aap Musalmaan hai, nai ja saktein.” Toh maine kaha ki phir aap kya kartein hain? “Arrey bhai main peeche jata hoon mandir ke woh joh Shivji ka rakha hai na murty wagerah, woh deewar ke saath hai. Main peeche se jaake deewar ko haath laga deta hoon. Kyon ki Shivji ki puja ke bina toh Bhairavi nai hai.” Now, devout Muslim. Then I asked him ki Sir yeh bataein ki Iran mein kuch Maulvion ne kaha hai ki sangeet jo hai, music jo hai yeh sacrilege hai, yeh against God, against religion hai. Toh he said something so wonderful to me and again I remembered that coming a design institute today, he said, “Arre bhai, awaz toh Allah ko, Bhagwan ko sab wohi lagatein hain, sab wohi baat kehtein hai, meri baat suno, mera kuch kar do, lekin aap mandir mein jaate ho toh aap musically boltein ho, sangeet mein bhajan karke boltein ho ya kirtan karte ho ya aarti kartein ho. Similarly Maulvi jab mazjid ki minar pe jaata hai toh woh music mein bolta hai ‘Allah hu Akhbar’. Kabhi woh bina music ke bolta hai? Usne kaha agar bina music ke bologay toh Allah bhi nahi sunega chahe kisi naam se marzi bulalo usko.” So what was he telling you, he was telling you the same balance of content and form. Content is your prayer. Anybody can soullessly recite a mantra but it has no meaning until is sung like your group had sung before the beginning of this ceremony. So it is combining form with content. That is what design is all about. And it works in every field of life and every walker of life including mine, mine sort of philistine life. But I will come to that in a couple of minutes.

Walking in One’s Integrity | Prof. Ravi J Mathai

When I use the word ‘joint’ it would imply that there is more than one person involved in that task. There are groups involved in the execution of the task and I have accepted therefore to work in a group. While I will never sacrifice my individuality, while I have accepted the responsibility, my individuality cannot express itself adequately unless I learn to work in a group. You must have seen nesting tables where tables of different sizes fit into one another. Similarly you have hierarchy of tasks. It could be running the whole institution. The next level could be conducting the educational programme. The next level at NID could be conducting the ‘foundation’ part of the educational programme. The next level could be conducting a course in the ‘foundation’ programme. These are hierarchical tasks. But they all must have a consonance in their objectives. Similarly there are parallel tasks education, research, consulting, extension, work in the workshop. All these tasks have a commonality by virtue of the fact that they serve the same overall set of institutional activities and aim at the same institutional goal. This commonality is what underpins ‘joint responsibility’.

“To me design is all about celebration of life, festival, joy. It is great to feel and touch a well designed product.” 4

24th Annual Convocation Address

“To me design is all about celebration of life, festival, joy. It is great to feel and touch a well designed product.”

“Oh! To err is human.” I said good point. To which I then replied, “But to forgive is ‘Design’.”

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35th Annual Convocation Address

“Oh! To err is human.” I said good point. To which I then replied, “But to forgive is ‘Design’.” Look, what was the first design I saw when I opened my eyes as maybe as a young kid, it was in Chandigarh, it was being built in the late 50s, I was born in 1957. It was being built in the late 50s; everybody thought it was a model city. It was being built by Le Corbusier the great architect, and we thought wow a clean city with trees, with sectors, with numbers. I got educated in Chandigarh I finished my education in Chandigarh, I fell in love in Chandigarh, I got married in Chandigarh, worked in Chandigarh. I go to Chandigarh often, my mother in law which is our only surviving parent, lives there, but I hate Chandigarh now because I find Chandigarh such a design disaster. It is so soulless. Chandigarh represents architecturally and in terms of design exactly what is wrong with India’s society because it is so hierarchical. Somebody tells me his address, the name of his sector I can tell you what is his station in his life. Sector 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 rich people, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 judges and ministers, then as you go again and again, so it is so hierarchical that the city has no soul. It has no soul to the extent that there are no street names, there are no house names, so everybody has a sector number and a street number. In fact I remember there was a Punjabi poet on our campus who once wrote a poem on the agony of the rural students who come to the University. To the University’s impersonal environment, he doesn’t speak much English, so he feels very alienated. And the poem in Punjabi was a bit like ‘Mera koi naa nai, mera ek roll number,’ ‘I don’t have a name I just have a roll number. And then he says ‘Mera koi ghar nai’, ‘I have no address’, ‘Mera ek room number’, ‘I just have a room number’. So I go to Chandigarh and I find nobody has any address here. I am sector this and sector this. Alright it is city built on grids but it is just sector this and sector this, it’s soulless. So anything that is soulless, any design that is soulless

is content with no form. And that is why I want to rebuild Chandigarh. It is an outrageous thought but I want to rebuild Chandigarh. Then come to the city in which I live now Delhi. Delhi is a design monstrosity. I know that Professor K.T. Ravindran is here, he has headed the Delhi Urban Arts Council for a long time, to try and protect what’s there in Delhi. If I saved Humayun’s life from drowning in river Jamuna, although I don’t think who can drown in river Jamuna these days, and he offered me the kingdom of Delhi for one day the only thing I would like done is to demolish Lutyens’ Delhi, because what is Lutyens’ Delhi, it is a stratified caste based compound I call it India’s Kremlin, because the number of your house, the street, the size of your house determines your station in life. And those must be preserved as they are and the rest of us in Delhi have been condemned to the mercy of DDA which I call Delhi Destruction Authority. And I am sure every city in India has an equivalent. And then you have these housing colonies HIG, MIG, LIG - high income group, middle income group, lower income group. Now they are soulless, they are design-less, they are pointless, thoughtless, every government colony tells you the person’s rank, they demean you, they reduce your quality of life to mere survival. And they make it impossible to redesign them in future. Look at New York. Brooklyn used to be a rough district. Brooklyn is now the sexiest district of New York which has been rebuilt, rediscovered, it is the place to be. If you are creative, if you are rich, if you are rich and your pretence to be creative you go to

BOOK LAYOUT /

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2003

24th Annual Convocation Address

HUMANISATION OF TECHNOLOGY

Shri Sam Pitroda

About the Speaker

Mr. Pitroda came to the USA in 1964, after receiving an advance degree in Physics from India. He studied Electrical Engineering in Chicago, worked at GTE and formed Wescom Switching, Inc. In 1980, Wescom was acquired by Rockwell International, where Mr. Pitroda became Vice President, overseeing Rockwell’s Telecom business world-wide; he held this position until 1983. In 1984, Mr. Pitroda returned to India and founded the Center for Development of Telematics. In 1987, he became advisor to the Prime Minister of India, with the rank of a Minister, on National Technology Missions related to Drinking Water, Literacy, Immunization, Oil Seeds, Milk and Telecom. Mr. Pitroda was the first founding Chairman of the Telecom Commission in India, responsible for National and International Telecom operations, policies and administration, with over 500,000 employees. Currently, Mr. Pitroda is the Chairman and CEO of World-Tel Limited, an International Telecom Union (ITU) initiative to build telecommunications infrastructure in emerging markets. He is also the Chairman and Founder of several high-technology start-up companies in the US, Europe and India. Mr. Pitroda is also the founding Chairman of a non-profit Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions in India.

In 2000, Mr. Pitroda was invited by the Secretary General of the United Nations to join a special advisory committee, on Information and Communications Technology, to address the global Digital Divide. Mr. Pitroda holds over 50 world-wide patents and has lectured extensively on Telecom, Technology and Development, in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. He has been featured in numerous newspapers, magazines, radio and television programs world over. In 1992, Mr. Pitroda’s biography was published and made it to the bestseller’s list in India. Mr. Pitroda has lived in Chicago, Illinois since 1964, with his wife Anu, son Salil and daughter Rajal.

Annual Convocation Address

ear graduating students, Chairman of the Governing Council Hasmukh Shah, members of the Governing Council, Dr. Koshy, family, friends, faculty members, ladies and gentlemen, good evening. It is indeed a great pleasure to be invited to deliver this convocation address. I would begin by congratulating all the graduate students and wishing them the best in their future personal as well as professional careers. I want to apologize for the fact that you do not have a written speech. I was approached several times and I said that if I promise you a written speech I promise I will not deliver. I would rather look at the ambience, see the settings and then make some points as to what I feel that needs to be said on the spot. So if I ramble a little bit you have to forgive me. I really want to open my mind in today’s setting. It is indeed an incredible setting I look at the back drop reflecting Indian tradition, I hear the noise from the birds combining nature and I see young graduating students with hope for the future. NID is a very well known world renowned institution. I had several interactions in the past when Ashoke Chatterjee was at the institution. Unfortunately this is my first visit and I am indeed delighted to have the opportunity and honoured to be here to see an institute that has made a significant contribution to the world of design. To me design is all about celebration of life, festival, joy. It is great to feel and touch a well designed product. Design does deliver beauty and adding beauty in many ways is an important part of enlightenment, energy enthusiasm and excitement. Design is not about fashion nor is it about just one or two aspects. Design is about productivity, efficiency, cost reduction. Design is about delivery something at the end of the cycle that consumers can really enjoy using. Design is about simplicity, utility, ease of maintenance,

people talk about zero defect design is also about how to recover from failures. Design has to touch hearts and minds of the users. And design does help many-many different dimensions. India has had a great tradition in designs. Look at the temples in Madurai, look at the Taj Mahal, monuments, Golden Temple, the colours, the costumes, the smells, the sounds all around from north to south, east to west reflect the design diversity of this country. The past has been a very important part of the lessons we have learnt in designs in India. Unfortunately I find that it is not really reflected to the extent it should in modern India. I was in Delhi yesterday I had to meet somebody. I had the address but I couldn’t find it. I spent 20 minutes and finally made a mobile call. I carry UK phone so call from here to UK and UK to Delhi and the gentleman said that the only way I can get you here is please tell me where you are and I will find you. He took a car came to me and finally we went to his house. Then I thought of design; where are the street signs where are the right maps, who do I ask? I see very poor designs all around us in India. I also see lots of rich designs. Unfortunately so much around us is waiting for great designs. This morning at the airport I saw a lady sweeping at 6 o’clock in the morning. The broom was not designed for airport sweeping. It is the same broom that people probably used in this period (pointing at the monument in the background) still continues to be the tool in modern India. I get worried when we can’t bring good designs to our offices, to our furniture, to government filing cabinets, in daily use of products and services that large number of people use a good design is badly need. Somehow it doesn’t get the attention that it deserves. I have seen great Indian designers designing fancy watches but I have

2015

Semester 4 Document

Our final assignment was to create a layout for a publication. The text given to us was a copy of three examples of convocation speeches from previous years using which, we had to create a book layout for an entire publication. Once again the choice of typefaces depended on the context, the target age group, the shelf life of the text, and largely on how they appeared in print. The only constraint was to use black text on white paper. Once again the task at hand was to establish a hierarchy for multiple pages working with an unfamiliar structure that demanded certain typographic decisions.

I chose to use three typefaces for this assignment - the sturdy SlabSerif Rockwell for the headings and Subheadings, a contrasting Scripty Zapfino for Quotes, Names and Numbers, and a playful yet formal Caecilia for the body text.

Vivek Menon

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C O U R S E FAC U LT Y

D U R AT I O N

Rupesh Vyas

1 Week

D I G I TA L N UA N C E S O F C O LO U R

2015

Semester 4 Document

RECAP • • •

Issues focusing on Digital tools and all aspects of Production of colour through Digital Medium Various file formats, and the impact of digital colour on file sizes Usage of Colour in web based media, production issues and how to resolve them

LEARNING • •

Perceptual qualities, interactions, science & application of Colour as learnt in Foundation Relation of Colour to form, meaning making aspects of colour as learnt in Semester 3

Vivek Menon

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DIGITAL ASPECTS OF COLOUR By a process of chitpicking, we each got a topic related to colour that we had to study and then make a short presentation on. I had to study colour-blindness, in relation to other fields such as music, where colour blind people have the potential of listening to colour frequencies, instead of seeing them; or food where colour blind people have troubles distinguishing ripe or unripe foods solely based on colour, or food does not seem appetising enough. By this process, we were exposed to the various fields of colour that had potential to be chosen further to study. We learnt about Colour spaces, and colour modes that all had to do with digital colour applications; and we experimented with images in these various modes.

A poster was made based on our collective understanding and learning on various terminology and systems of colour.

2015

Semester 4 Document

COLOUR II colour modes RGB

colour blindness Stands for “Red Green Blue.” It refers to the three hues of light that can mix together to form any colour. When the highest intensity of each colour is mixed together, white light is created. When each hue is set to zero intensity, the result is black. TVs & computer monitors use RGB to create the colourful images you see on the screen.

Colour blindness is the reduced ability to distinguish between certain colours. This condition results from an absence of color-sensitive pigment in the cone cells of the retina, the nerve layer at the back of the eye.

Adobe RGB: Adobe RGB does not contain as many colors as ProPhotoRGB, it’s easier to use & advisable for both 8-bit & 16-bit image editing. ProPhoto RGB: In this space, 15% of the color space is beyond the range of human vision, so it’s not appropriate for 8-bit images.

CMYK Stands for “Cyan Magenta Yellow Black.” These are the four basic colours used for printing colour images. CMYK colours are “subtractive.” This means the colours get darker as you blend them together. Because of impurities in the inks, true black is difficult to create by blending the C, M & Y together. This is why black (K) ink is typically included with the three other colours. The letter “K” is used to avoid confusion with blue in RGB. File size increments when converted from RGB to CMYK, because the Bit-depth is now increased by one channel.

colour spaces WORKING SPACES

TYPES

CIELAB: This color space is used internally by Photoshop during color space conversions. CIELAB is not an easy space to use since it’s not intuitive for most people.

Deuteranope: Absence of green retinal photoreceptors. Protanope: Absence of red retinal receptors.

DEVICE-DEPENDANT SPACES

Tritanope: Absence of blue retinal receptors. Monitor RGB: Modern monitors have this space set as default.

INDEXED COLOUR DESIGNING FOR THE COLOUR-BLIND In digital photography and imaging, indexed colour is the term used to describe reduced colour mapping of 8-bit or less. This is done to compress image size & these images are most commonly used on Web pages as they are small and quick to load. The 256 color palette is mapped for best results on the Internet, taking into account the differences between the Windows and Macintosh colour palettes. File size reduces.

Avoid the following colour combinations, which are especially hard on colour blind people: Green & Red; Green & Brown; Blue & Purple; Green & Blue; Light Green & Yellow; Blue & Grey; Green & Grey; Green & Black.

sRGB: sRGB is the only appropriate choice for images uploaded to the web since most web browsers do not support any color management. sRGB is not a wide color space, it’s not appropriate as a working space.

CMYK Profile: When you print, you can either use a generic CMYK profile, or convert the image to a custom color space.

Make it monochrome: Using various shades of a single colour instead of multiple colours. Use high contrast: Colour blind people can still perceive contrast, as well as differences in hue, saturation & brightness, but not as strongly as those with normal vision.

BITMAP

A digital image composed of a matrix of dots. When viewed at 100%, each dot corresponds to an individual pixel on a display. In a standard bitmap image, each dot can be assigned a different colour. File size reduces in this mode.

DELIVERY SPACES

Adobe RGB: It offers a good gamut and very wide support. But note that Adobe RGB images that are uploaded to websites appear dark and muted.

GREYSCALE Range of monochromatic shades from black to white. Colour images contain grayscale information because each pixel has a luminance value, regardless of its colour. Luminance is brightness, which can be measured on a scale from black (zero) to white (full). Most image file formats support a minimum of 8-bit, which provides 28 or 256 levels of luminance per pixel. Some formats support 16-bit, which provides 65,536 levels of luminance. File size reduces.

Desktop printer profile: Your printer comes with profiles in the driver software.

Do not assume colours will signal emotions in & of themselves. Consider adding another symbolic element to get the point across to colour blind viewers. Use texture instead: In maps or infographics, try using texture in addition to colour to differentiate between objects.

bit-depth The colour information stored in an image. The higher the bit depth, the more colours it can store. A 1-bit image, can only show two colours, black & white. While a 24-bit image can display about 16 million colours. As the bit depth goes up, the size also increases because more information has to be stored for each pixel.

r0g173b238 | 28abe2 r153g153b255 |9595c9 Set in Neutraface text & display designed by Christian Schwartz

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Vivek Menon

RELATING MUSIC TO COLOUR

In a group of three, we decided to create a Motion Graphics Music Video for the song ‘’Help me lose my mind, by Disclosure (Mazde Remix)”. It was quite a race against time as I taught myself a new Software and successfully created this set of moving images in the span of four days.

2015

We divided the work by each creating frames for 1 minute, out of the 3 minute song, as can be seen on the left. We first brainstormed together to create visualizations and colour schemes for each frame, while listening to the song together many times over. Our main objective was to relate music with colour.Â

We also made mug and t-shirt designs inspired by some frames of the video.Â

Semester 4 Document

Vivek Menon

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C O U R S E FAC U LT Y

D U R AT I O N

Krishnesh Mehta

2 Weeks

OPEN ELECTIVE D R AW I N G F R O M T H E M I N D

2015

Semester 4 Document

LEARNING •

• • •

The mind is the seat of all answers to the Universe, & understanding the mind can ideally lead to understanding one’s strengths, one’s weaknesses, & harnessing this power can improve one’s quality of life, & undoubtedly one’s drawing skills The key to peace of mind is learning to be comfortable with ambiguity Anything is possible if one truly believes in it Our constant insistence for scientific proof & validity leads to the loss of imagination & inquisitiveness

Vivek Menon

54 / 55 The open elective I decided to pick after a detailed run-through of each elective’s course abstract, was Krishnesh Mehta’s “Drawing from the Mind”. I was attracted to the idea of getting to interact with Krishnesh once again, after attending his lectures briefly in Foundation; and I also found it interesting to actually understand the science behind drawing, the obvious disconnect between what one visualises in the mind, and what one expresses on paper and the reason behind it. As it turned out, the course ended up being completely unlike the vague idea I had in mind. The next two weeks preceded with him telling us how we were going to experience death, our brains were going to be altered, and our creativity would be enhanced. I was not sceptical but I also had no expectations entering this course, and I wanted to truly not believe everything I had heard or read about the controversial Krishnesh Mehta. And so I followed Krishnesh’s own advice of first accepting information without any preconceived bias, and then reflecting or believing it subsequently; rising above the animalistic instinct to react as opposed to responding to what we hear. He neither forced us to believe anything he said, nor did he make us feel uncomfortable in any way.

Through the next two weeks, we worked on improving our conviction of belief; our Presence of mind; Our ability to operate out of Love and joy; improving our concentration and willpower; Our inner locus of control, and finally to be free of inhibitions and consequential thinking, which would all eventually improve our drawing skills which we observed by comparing some initial and final sketches done during the course.

2015

Semester 4 Document

CONVICTION OF BELIEF So when do we draw best? When we have no inhibitions. Generally, visualisation precedes drawing or representation. A few lines is all the mind needs to recognise an image. The mind first has to get convinced that it can convey what you want to express. So we did an experiment where we spent a few minutes convincing ourselves that we were now going to draw to the best of our abilities, and that we were the best drawers in the world; and therefore by operating out of conviction, our drawings improved slightly. We often operate out of expectation, and consequential thinking, but good delivery only comes from good conviction.

56 / 57 In the brain, all forms of expression arise from the same processing, therefore one who is creative should ideally be creative in all fields of expression, including music, writing, dance and the performing arts, but that is hardly ever the case because we do not have our whole brain activated. We go through our entire lives only increasing our linear neural connections, or our Intelligence quotient (IQ), however to activate the whole brain, we must improve our Emotional (EQ) and Spiritual Quotient (SQ) as well, which would therefore allow us to make better synchronistic neural connections between different parts of the brain. As EQ gets lost with more one-on-one teaching methods in schools and such, there is a loss of community living, and increased emotional isolation. We practised an hour of Yoganidra- a sleep like state, to experience whole brain activation or wisdom, while maintaining full consciousness.

Vivek Menon

2015

Semester 4 Document Our mind tends to think in form, because that happens to be our primal instinct. However our biggest inhibitions and insecurities come from our primal drives, and one must learn to rise above them, and ideally be able to connect any two aspects of expression, which synesthetes happen to be able to do more easily. We studied the biology of the brain and mind - how the mind acts as software for the brain or hardware and the mind tries to understand the brain; its various parts and the different functions. He showed us various scans of brains under the effects of caffeine, nicotine and other drugs- where the frontal cortices deteriorate without us being aware of it because we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t use those parts anyway. We also saw scans of brains under anxiety, violence and depression. The different types of thinking- automatic, deliberative and social; and the different types of memories- Procedural, Semantic and Episodic. Individuals with a greater frontal cortex were shown to have greater control over their involuntary actionswhich can be improved through Pranayam.

58 / 59 Krishnesh introduced us to the process of expansion by asking us whether we feared our own leg. To which, we all said no, because it was a part of us. So by that logic, the ultimate way to not fear anything in the universe is to believe it to be inside of you or a part of you. And so we experienced this process of expansion by which we gradually imagined that with each breath, our body grew larger and larger to contain the seat on which we sat, the room, the building, the city, the country and so on until we put the entire universe and our idea of infinity inside us, while in a state of meditation. And eventually we reached a point where nothing mattered, where it was blissful and carefree. To me this whole concept was quite groundbreaking because I was always a strong believer of how insignificant and irrelevant all humans are, however here I was made to believe that we need to perpetually operate from that state, where we are actually quite expansive and purposeful. We also experienced death, by gradually controlling our breath and slowly and deliberately starting to see the world as energy as opposed to forms/bodies. I personally reached a brief state where I felt like my body had no outline, and that my energy was merging with the energy of the surrounding, like I was one with the Universe. Nothing good comes from being possessive about anything, an object, a person, a city, a job, or even life- because eventually you cannot express yourself wholly, and the thing starts to control you and your biases, when you are possessive. We realised that one of our innate ultimate fears, death is just as easy as falling asleep, and it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to be something to fear, because at that state, one does not worry about life. When one reaches a pinnacle moment of seeing the world in clouds of energy and not in forms, it is then that he has reached enlightenment.

Vivek Menon

2015

Semester 4 Document

QUANTUM ENTRAINMENT As the course progressed, we were becoming more entrained as a group, a phenomenon which occurs within a set of people with a common purpose or anticipation, where the pulse rates lines up. It is the mirror neurons in the brain, that enable this sensation. We understood how as designers,

we could take advantage of this phenomenon when we design, as we are generally unconsciously influenced by other people on the same wavelength. Thus, it became easier for us as a class to progress in terms of improving our energy levels. Telepathy is an example of the highest form of entrainment.

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OPERATING FROM LOVE We spoke of different types of relationships, and how love, sex and marriage are three very different things. What mainstream society perceives as love, is usually lust or physical appeal, and generally between two people. There is a need to own the thing, until you get bored of it, thus making it a short term attachment. Marriage is a forced long term attachment which takes place to fulfil this lust. Love happens to be a higher state of being, love is never directed towards one person, and it is expansive and need not be expressed, although ubiquitous. In real love, physical presence does not matter and it does not need to be reciprocated. It is as innate a need in us as humans, to love, as it is for water to flow or fire to heat. Once love is experienced, lust or attraction to a body is not longer desired. Therefore, we must slowly try to elevate ourselves towards this state, by rising above our primal drives and operating from this state in order to love our work and what we do as well.

Vivek Menon

2015

Semester 4 Document

We also conducted various experiments in class to demonstrate Quantum entrainment, whereby we were able to physically alter reality using the mind, or so it seemed. We did an experiment where our fingers seemed to grow longer after convincing our minds that it would grow, and then consciously being aware of it for a few minutes. We experienced spiritual healing, and planted thoughts in each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heads, and we played with energy through chakra meditation, we viewed stereograms and auras; we telepathically communicated with inanimate objects. We even experienced self- hypnosis. After the first week, the rest of the college thought we had started a cult, as they saw us chanting Om in our spare time together.

INHIBITIONS In order to get over our inhibitions, we needed to get over shame and guilt- two attributes which increase consequential thinking and lead to addictions and so on. Shame happens to be an implanted unconscious fear in humans, one that we pick up at some point while growing up, as opposed to learnt fears such as a fear of water etc. In order to overcome an implanted fear, one must question its validity.

Vivek Menon

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INNER LOCUS OF CONTROL On one of the last few days of the course, Krishnesh took us to two forests to face one of our innate raw fears. In the first forest we went to, we meditated and absorbed the energy from the igneous rocks that we sat on. We practised Spinal Awareness, a technique that channels energy through the spine. We also went to another forest after dark, which proved to be more taxing on the mind. With only the moonlight above us to cast shadows, I was more scared of the thought of going to a forest at night, than actually being there.

2015

Semester 4 Document

We each had to walk 200 steps in some direction by ourselves, with full knowledge of the fact that there were bears, leopards and tribals all lurking in the bushes around us, and we saw many pugmarks and animal remains to prove it. It was a process of going through a cognitive shock and developing oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inner locus of control. The challenge was to keep our inner locus of control within us at all times, without allowing our minds to wander onto negative thoughts. Personally I was extremely surprised with myself when I was able to not worry about anything really, as opposed to how I usually worry about situations perpetually. We all came back feeling remarkably good about ourselves and like nothing could touch us as long as we had good intentions.

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IN RETROSPECT What our eyes see, need not necessarily be a proof of reality, because to the brain, there is no difference between what is real and what is imaginary. Therefore everything doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need to be proved, everything in the world will work, is you truly want to believe it, because your mind convinces you that it is so. I woke up the weekend after the course, thinking that perhaps the past two weeks had in fact been a dream. However what I believe is that irrespective of whether or not all of this actually happened or whether it was just my mind playing tricks on me, now that I can operate from a point of view that does not require persistent scientific validity, I can now be more creative in terms of convincing my mind into doing or believing whatever I want it to. As Krishnesh would say, we all suffer from AIDS- Acquired Imagination/Inquisition deficiency syndrome. I somewhat believe I have almost regained the childish imagination which we all lose after years of cultivating a habit of scientific proof and logical reasoning. I will go so far as to say that this course has changed my life in so many ways, and given me answers to questions I had always had. It was one of the most intriguing and refreshing courses I have had at NID so far and I have been introduced to a whole new world of spirituality, that I never knew could give someone so much internal peace.

Vivek Menon

2015

Semester 4 Document

A representation of the states “infinity”, “love” and “energy” that I visualised while in the process of meditation.

What Krishnesh has given me, is a reason to believe in everything and nothing. A realisation that the key to satisfaction is to be comfortable with Ambiguity; because nothing is absolute and the world is not divided into binary oppositions. This is what Design education is about- to understand and comprehend the ambiguity of a problem, and the solution will arise automatically without us jumping to an answer, because the mind is an emergent property of the brain. And Everything, literally everything is the work of the mind, the seat of all answers to the universe.

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Vivek Menon

MISCELLANEOUS EXTRA CURRICULAR PROJECTS

2015

Semester 4 Document

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PROJECT HEALTHY EATING On the 9th of February, I began on a seven week online course about Human-centered design, organized by Novo-Ed and +Acumen in association with IDEO. We were a group of 4 made up of two Graphic Designers and two Product designers. The course dealt with basic principles of human- centered design and how the approach can be applied to any design process, in the form of three stages- namely Research, Ideation and Implementation. Through a series of five classes, the course explored the main human-centered design concepts through readings, case studies, and short videos. Meeting on a weekly basis, we had to efficiently make time for this during our respective design projects.

Vivek Menon

2015

Semester 4 Document

The project we took up as a group was to investigate healthy eating habits in NID. Our research comprised of surveys and interviews using the techniques suggested by the course, which I found to be quite similar to the design process we follow at NID, where empathy plays a pivotal role. As the course ends on April 18th, we are still at the stage of implementation, and hopefully advancing towards a tnagible outcome.

Vivek Menon

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BUILD YOUR BRAND

2015

Semester 4 Document

A friend and I took part in a branding competition hosted by IIIT-Delhi, which consisted of two rounds. For the first round, we created a logo for a Fast food brand, and for the second we designed a Jewellery Brand. We ended up having the winning entry, not to mention lots of fun designing the brands.