Yet a vast amount of communications may well be entirely wasted, or at least measured with the wrong scales. We see something akin to an arms race, in which advertisers, for example, build ever better arsenals to penetrate the defences of audiences, who neutralise messages by knowing more and more and believing less and less.

The Deep Design of the phenomenon has to do with signalling, the notion that the what content of a message, conveyed in words, sounds and pictures, matters less than its context. That is, the when, where and who or the circumstances surrounding the message, leading to the why, an inescapable inference about what’s really, really going on. This meta communication trumps the actual message content.

signalling, the notion that the what content of a message, conveyed in words, sounds and pictures, matters less than its context.

Signalling is everywhere. Companies use price signalling in a number of ways, such as luxury goods companies using it to reduce availability, to connote exclusion, not superiority. We use signalling everywhere: LED lighting signals our concern for the earth, and less our pockets. Weddings are expensive, noisy and public to signal commitment. We vote in part to show we ‘care’. Software nerds take job interviews in sloppy (though uniform) clothes, not suits, to signal an obsession with code, and a sacrifice of convention.

Indeed, sacrifice has a lot to do with it. In biology and economics, signals are considered credible when resources are spent—especially inefficiently. A peacock, say biologists, grows a metabolically expensive tail despite its many disadvantages, to signal its health. Stalin’s armies, ever short of arms, shared one rifle among two recruits—”when the man in front falls, take his rifle and advance”— yet armed the guards who stood behind the ranks, to shoot deserters. Irrational, until one considers the signals.

A company that uses mass media lavishly to reach a small audience ‘wastes’ money, but it signals solidity and power. It’s rational to prefer the more heavily advertised product, quite apart from what the advertising messages. It’s one explanation of why advertising works, because its exhortations are expensively public, the more viewed the better. Every viewer knows that the commercials that aired during the cricket were watched by millions of others, tying her into a social lockstep. These are expensive signals. (In contrast, the doctor who rubs his hands with a self-drying gel from a dispenser on his table signals hygiene inexpensively, the latest stop in a 150-year campaign to get doctors to wash their hands more).

A company that uses mass media lavishly to reach a small audience ‘wastes’ money, but it signals solidity and power. It’s one explanation of why advertising works, because its exhortations are expensively public, the more viewed the better. 

A recent Apple commercial shows a sea of people in single coloured uniforms, running parkour-style through the streets, asking us to ‘make room for colour’. It’s beautifully, expensively, made; the track is highly listenable. Yet it is more like an ad for a tv set by an electronics giant than from a company that has defined techno-lust. Apple’s advertising has never leant on incrementally better technology but on a certain swagger. The typical Apple ad is more a statement than an appeal, an assertion of social proof of the iPhone’s desirability, not its functional superiority: if you don’t have an iPhone, well, you don’t have an iPhone. This ad is an appeal, to better implemented features, and credibly messages an excellent phone. But that appeal may send a different signal: of a lower level of confidence, from which one might infer Apple’s acknowledgement of a shrinking gap with competition. Is there a less vibrant pipeline of new ideas?

Signaling is non-verbal, and so is design. Obviously, designers can harness its power or at least be more aware of the signal value of their products and communications, not simply the rational content that is sought to be transmitted.

Signaling is non-verbal, and so is design.

Packaging is a good example where the wrapper sets our expectations of the product. We are seeing a slew of milk brands of the small food, or organic variety use glass bottles reminiscent of an earlier time. Plastic containers would be far more efficient, but the particular sort of glass bottle signals a score of things. The surface graphic design is secondary.

Apple’s trend-setting identity in the 1980s, by its choice of name, signaled its difference from the status quo in the fledgling computer industry. This act, of not naming it to connote techy-ness was far more significant that other readings of the name (to signify temptation, as one tale goes, or freshness or simplicity).

Apple’s trend-setting identity in the 1980s, by its choice of name, signaled its difference from the status quo in the fledgling computer industry.

Less obviously, expensive, hard to fake, official signage is a signal of competent governance, as has been argued in these columns. Branding may communicates ideas and attitudes, but these are arguable and malleable. But the consistent application of the branding program across geographies, media and applications, powerfully—and inescapably—communicates the owner’s ability to orchestrate thought and action. The wasteful packaging that e-commerce sellers use, where an unbreakable can is swaddled in superfluous amounts of air-filled blistered polythene, and then placed in secure corrugated cartons both assures and signals assurance. However, as environmentally conscious consumers, we might have to perform our own virtue signalling, by opting out with explicit instructions to forego the extra safety.

consistent application of the branding program across geographies, media and applications, powerfully—and inescapably—communicates the owner’s ability to orchestrate thought and action.

Now that you can see signalling everywhere, and appreciate that it’s a human, social tendency, a skilled instinct and not a synthetic learned thing, it’s a surprise that not all communicators or designers are alert to the idea. We’ve repeated, since school, that actions speak louder than words, but we may have lost the essence somewhere.

____________________

First published in a slightly modified form ‘Signal to message ratio’ in Business Standard, 16 March in Deep Design, a fortnightly column by Itu Chaudhuri.

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“It looks like a particularly unhealthy time to be a brand,” said the Slayer of Ordinary Design, a sardonic, sage and street-wise guru known more usually as The Sood, or sometimes the SOD, a term, as he pointed out, for a piece of turf—grass, earth and all.

“First, “ said the Sod, easing into a chair at the barbershop he’d chosen for our chat, “someone suggested that the logo had done its time, (didn’t you write a column on that, too?*) and was no longer central to the brand’s identity. Now you tell me that the art and science of packaging design—the best way to tell a brand story without advertising— is under attack from e-commerce. And I’m not feeling so well either,” he said, pleased with his humour, and fingering the unfashionably grown stubble on his jaw.

“I suppose the argument is that you already bought it, naked, on Amazon, so what use are clothes now that I don’t need to persuade you all over again, right?” I nodded, agreeing that it was a crudely correct summary of the view I’d encountered (packs need to be clean and simple, and stand out on the webpage and the mobile phone).

Truth be told, he went on, there’s something to the charge. The internet and the culture of marketing it brings is making life harder for the marketing as a whole, and packaging, too is a part of that. E-commerce strips your offering down to its objective essentials—you are a puny bunch of database entries. It emphasises price and facts, and turns it all into a entirely cognitive sale. You can’t be more than your product specs, and your brand vanishes in a click.

E-commerce strips your offering down to its objective essentials… You can’t be more than your product specs, and your brand vanishes in a click.

Also it’s difficult to build a relationship with something you can’t touch, where a human isn’t involved, and which you can return minutes after you’ve bought it.

How different things were! he said, taking in his greying hair in the mirror. Until just two decades ago, we bought from a neighbourhood store, with a counter in the front and a deep shop that you couldn’t enter, what’s known as a General Trade outlet. Most of the packaging is too far away to influence you. You came with a specific need; exploration was forbidden.
Perhaps you asked for a brand, learnt from newspaper or TV ads, or from family tradition. The shopkeeper gave it to you, or slammed down his recommendation on the counter, and asked how many you wanted.

When the pack came, your lizard brain kicked in. You had to decide quickly. Behind you was the street and to either side, fellow shoppers pretending not to notice your squirming in uncertainty, some openly staring, some offering or asking advice. Unless you could think of a reason not to buy, the deal was done. Conversation was all but ruled out. Retailer influence was decisive. Advertising and distribution decided matters. The pack’s job was to match the picture in the ad; and then to reassure you via a checklist of benefits, on the front, and then on the back of the pack.

In a way, he said wistfully, general trade is somewhat like an arranged marriage. The elders know best, and you may only refuse or accept. By that analogy, e-commerce is sort of like a responsible dating site, but with more information (vital statistics perhaps). Your partner has a small photograph to showcase herself; comparison is mandatory, and the volume and variety of choice can be stultifying. Reviews from previous daters are conveniently available, but read them at your peril. Rejections (called returns) are easy and commitment is slight.

General trade is somewhat like an arranged marriage. The elders know best, and you may only refuse or accept…e-commerce is sort of like a responsible dating site, but with more information (vital statistics perhaps)…perhaps modern retail is like romance, the start of an affair?

But in this story, said the Sod, we have jumped from arranged marriages, or general trade, to a responsible dating site, or e-commerce. In doing so, we have flown over what must come in between the two: Modern Retail. This type of shop has been proliferating rapidly since about 2000. It is the format where packaging comes into its own. In our analogy, perhaps modern retail is like romance, the start of an affair?

It’s useful to compare the demands on packaging for the three formats. In modern retail, there is no hurry to buy a product; in e-commerce it can be postponed indefinitely. There is little crowding and none of the enforced socialisation from shoppers; you are not on test. Retailer influence is minimal. The lizard brain is quiet, and love can flower.

In general trade and e-commerce, large, clear brand units are necessary to survive reduction when they are reproduced on a web page, and in the case of general trade, in advertising. These packs must be photogenic. Modern retail allows a more relaxed approach to the ‘shelf throw’ imperative that dogs all packaging design discussions: you are closer to the pack. You can pick it up, feel its material, and finishes. Premium finishes have impact; texture and material can be powerful influencers.

In general trade and e-commerce, large, clear brand units are necessary to survive reduction…Modern retail allows a more relaxed approach to the ‘shelf throw’… You can pick it up, feel its material, and finishes; powerful influencers.

Taken together, these characteristics of modern retail allow an unhurried, deeper narration of the brand on the pack, allowing smaller brands to compete alongside larger ones. Also since your pack stands alongside its peers from the category, it needs stand out from them, somehow getting to the essence of its proposition.

In reality, the demarcation between the three formats is not so simply acted on. For one, a pack, wherever bought, may begin a new life on another shelf: at home, in the bathroom or pantry. This is obviously true of, say,for example, a toilet cleaner, deodorant, or a Marmite jar. These can build relationships with their buyers anew. Even e-commerce presents the opportunity—and it is largely under-addressed— to impress the consumer at the point of receipt, when she beholds her date, once it emerges from the retailer’s protective packing. (The barber then took the hair apron off, and the Sod admired his new look in the mirror).

Equally, a product may be present in any two, or all three formats, so, never have the challenges or the opportunities of packaging been greater. Packaging design, under threat? It’s perhaps the strongest, and subtlest, means of turning consideration into conversion, to seduce the buyer into a long, meaningful relationship. Moreover, the pack is virtually the product, as I will explain another time.

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It’s a modern, seasonal disease. The new year brings with it a thick flow of trend forecasts, cheery and sweeping, and we read them with the forgiving spirit that the holiday season demands. For Deep Design, it seems foolhardy to indulge, yet churlish to desist, so here’s a holiday smoothie on trends themselves.

Some trend forecasts, such as those in fashion, are meant to be self-fulfilling. The great and big among the fashion industry make them. Thus buyers know what colours and styles to buy, and retailers know what to stock. The media is in it at the start, happy to report what the well-dressed citizen will be wearing. The consumer, she of the clued-in, independent mind, is eager to conform: it’s only fitting. Paris/Milan/Mumbai know best; empty shelves help no one.

The communications industry, unlike those that stock things, doesn’t face the risk of empty shelves. Yet trends there surely are. The dozen or so portfolios and the artfully designed CVs that our office reviews monthly give a clear view into what the bottom of the food chain has been eating. A set of colour palettes, a certain taste in typefaces, and a tendency to gratuitously quantify, in order to contrive a graph to replace text (give yourself a 75% hardworking score, or three and a half stars).

But unlike fashion, there’s no Big Design, no dominant source heavily invested in the forecast. Pantone, a widely used colour communication system, comes closest to announcing trends, along with paint manufacturers who try to drum up interest in their new shades, a hue and cry, if you will. For the most part, these graphic trends result from simple imitative impulses. This may account for the relative stability of these design trends.

But common to all trend forecasts, and trend commentating, is the theorising that identifies and proposes the driving currents. Inevitably, large, global turns of politics and their economic, social and cultural facets are called out as driving forces: Brexit, Trump and unless you are observing a news fast (another micro-trend) you know the rest. Deep Design, too, has indulged early and often, such as linking the discontents behind the rise of the US prez to those boosting the rise of Patanjali long before the final elections, not to imply direct link but to speculate on a similar mood driving both.

common to all trend forecasts, and commentating, is the theorising that identifies and proposes the driving currents. Inevitably, large, global turns of politics and their economic, social and cultural facets

Anti-globalisation and nationalism are the most familiar labels applied to this phenomenon. Commentators hear the voices of groups who feel ‘disenfranchised’, speaking with eerie simultaneity across continents. These voices have exhausted their patience with the ruling intelligentsia, and abhor its factual (or specious, or false), well-articulated utterances: better a mis-spelled, ‘feeling’ untruth that promises action, than an unproductive, pedantic truth. Going further: a suspicion of democracy, technocracy, complexity and balance, and the citified, corporate or university culture that spawns them; a yearning for viscerally inspired gestures. (Other strands omitted for brevity).

The trends forecasts that respond to these may be summarised (in a post-truth kind of way!) as a return to roots and basics; a preference for imperfection; the recycled; rough and natural finishes (call them unfinishes). The broad theme: authenticity.

The magazine Digital Arts purveys several forecasts, summarised here (Deep Design’s additions in brackets). Pantone’s Colour of the Year is Greenery 15-0343, to represent ‘fresh beginnings’ complemented by earth and mineral tones, and upcycled materials. Primary colours (from flags, and nationalism) remain in force. Expect packaging to be literally and otherwise transparent, to convey authenticity of provenance. (add: bucolic-ness and humanity). Photography, it says, will be more ‘real’ in terms of the human subjects, with emotion (add: imperfect skin) getting extra marks. The trend towards active, sports-inspired wear continues (cementing the general trend towards informality).

Despite the smell of truth about the causes that drive these trends, designers (which includes communicators, marketers and policy makers) should continue to take the trends themselves with a grain of ethically-produced, iodide-rich, rock or sea salt.

designers (which includes communicators, marketers and policy makers) should continue to take the trends themselves with a grain of ethically-produced, iodide-rich, rock or sea salt.

For one thing, many of these trends are old and long running. Look at restaurants that have opened in the last ten years in your metropolis, and note how similar many of the trends you spot in the concept and the design of the space. Exposed air conditioning ducts, cocktails in jam jars (Deep Design’s pet peeve), rope, rough hewn wood, local produce and food fusion. And watch for authentically brush drawn lettering on menus, coming soon to a grubhouse near you.

Further, trend forecasts are popular because they feed our confirmation biases; many may well have other less (or more) obvious causes, preventing a proper understanding. Several trends run concurrently, and play out differently depending on cultures (defined by geography and age).

Long-term trends, or movements, may exert a more strategic force on your next interaction with whatever you are designing, whether it’s a policy, product or communication. But it’s best to be ‘post-trend’—being alive to the babel of the conversations going on in the world without being in a hurry to isolate any one signal, is the golden path.

Long-term trends may exert a more strategic force with whatever you are designing. But it’s best to be alive to the babel of the conversations without being in a hurry to isolate any one signal, is the golden path.

This means paying attention to the invisible drivers behind the trends. For example, the most valuable lesson from post-truth is an ancient one: that the tendencies of people to think through the filter of their identities, anxieties, and pride trump all others. In this state, they will ignore ‘good design’ as a source of meaning. That’s what Trump’s diabolically plain election identity conveyed—nothing—which may have resonated with his voters as authentic, much better than the professionally designed, pointing-ahead, promise-laden ‘H’ from a Capitol-ist they didn’t trust.

Happy new (old) year, anyway.

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Brands place a premium on attention, firing images and words shaped into messages to inform and persuade. Indeed, we live amidst a war for our attention, an exquisitely perishable wisp that lives in the now.

But like breath, attention is a quick burning fuel that enables the flow of communication but does not add to its stock: exhale, and nothing is stored. While thieving attention can change behaviour temporarily—quick, here!—more sustainable is a stock of deep meaning. It’s a layered, mysterious lode which reduces our need to chase ever smaller amounts of attention with ever greater resources.

The focus on what brands “wear, say and do”, a popular heuristic, leaves out what the brand or product “is”, an objective, unalterable, and irreducible factual residue that outlasts the messages put out by attention-capturing armies. Provenance, for example, can be overriding: Made in Germany is ‘German’ and therefore a high-spec engineering product.

The focus on what brands “wear, say and do”, a popular heuristic, leaves out what the brand or product “is”

Deep Design’s interest is in the visual atom of this “is”, not least because it falls on designers to shape. I call it Physique: the mental imprint of a thing’s physical image, as a sensory perception (and sight trumps the other senses). The impact of physique is automatic. It precedes, escapes and even governs conscious thought. We sense it before we ‘read’ the thing, treating it as the most reliable indicator of its attributes, whether on a shelf or on a street.

The impact of physique is automatic. It precedes, escapes and even governs conscious thought. We sense it before we ‘read’ the thing

An example is race, which if experiments are believed, still shows up as racism in modern-day US: respondents consistently took a fraction of a second longer to tag faces, choosing between opposites (e.g. dangerous or harmless) when they were African American.

Physique creates stored meaning, or what we call an image, that can be exploited later. I’d wager a new Rs 2000 note that some of demonetisation’s approval ratings are because it targets cash, which is the physique of black money.

The Automobile Story

Physique isn’t simply an image stored like a photograph. It’s the attributes that it implies that stick, and can cast a long shadow on the brand. I’d speculate that Mahindra, whose roots are in steel, succeeded with jeeps and tractors, which register as industrial, rectangular, tough and boxy. SUVs, in physique terms are gentrified jeeps, and found acceptance, but in passenger cars and two wheelers, expect a long haul. Maruti’s iconic small car is burned deeply into memory; did it make the brand’s journey to larger models that much harder? The sales of Swift Dzire, a very compact sedan, overtook its little Alto to become a top seller only in 2014.

Physique need not be only visual: sound and smell can be exploited. Iodex (of old) and Dettol are two great brands whose signature smells signal their potency. Dettol retained a not identical, but clinical smell, and successfully extended into bathing soap. Iodex has sacrificed its smell (was it iodine, we wondered?), its dark, stain-prone unguent and thus its mystique; it has lost itself in a sea of similarity.

Louis Cheskin, Sensation Transference

In the 1940s, the pioneering researcher Louis Cheskin famously demonstrated in an experiment that housewives liked a meal cooked with margarine (then considered to not taste like butter), but coloured yellow, as much as one cooked in butter. Cheskin called this phenomenon ‘sensation transference’. An early proponent of the unconscious influence of form and colour, Cheskin’s elaborate empirical methods had wide success, from packaging to cars (such as predicting the failure of Ford’s Edsel on the basis of design alone).

Personal and Commercial Packaging

Naked form trumps clothes, but clothes can matter. Gandhi and Castro are two popular leaders whose clothes became part of their physique, and defined them: one pacifist, one militaristic. It helped build an aura that proved hard for detractors to attack, and seems to have given supporters the faith to ignore disconfirming evidence.

The commercial form of clothes, of course, packaging. Packaging research is starting to accept that the structural shape is as important as colour (the default no 1 in packaging). Consumers rely on it to perceive hard-to-spot product attributes, more than graphics. But the influence of physique on packaging should not be understood as simple differentiation or attractiveness. This is not to discount the effect of physique on those two parameters: surely the success of Toblerone chocolate owes much to its unique physique, especially for children.

Similarly, elongated packs look bigger than their more squat equivalents even when they pack the same volume of product, and consumers tend to prefer the taller ones even after they know that they aren’t getting more for their money. Natural cork stoppers on wine bottles ‘improve’ the wine, as does the correct glassware for reasons real and imaginary. Yet that’s not the true, subterranean power of physique.

Eventually, physique in packaging unlocks the clue to personality, that near-human relationship consumers can sense in the brands they love. Marmite’s round bottle tells a maternal tale more effectively than an advertisement. Its physique slips into your mind, unnoticed, to do its work.

physique in packaging unlocks the clue to personality, that near-human relationship consumers can sense in the brands they love.

The role of a brand’s ‘wear’ is to reinforce unalterable, favourable prior facts such as provenance and founding inspiration (which may have its own physique). Deep Design has discussed in an earlier column the success of Patanjali’s product line, underpinned by Baba Ramdev, who brings a unalterable, unfakeable physique to bear on his personal brand. Several consumers I talked to saw Patanjali’s gauche packaging as signalling an economical price. Others saw in it a lack of artifice, “not being an MNC” and by inference, a sort of authenticity.

Physique matters. Paradoxically, the more we take it for granted, or somehow look past it, the more insidious its power.

Physique matters. Paradoxically, the more we take it for granted, or somehow look past it, the more insidious its power. When we think we see it, we may talk about its attractiveness or lack thereof, rather than its primacy and the power of its imprint. We need to look deep.

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“I refuse to add to the chorus,” said DOPE, as the the Designer Of Practically Everything was known to his colleagues, “dissing the Rs 2000 note’s design. Instead, let’s treat it as an occasion to ask explore what design means.”

I looked sadly at the new Rs 2000 note my newspaper had sent for the interview. We sat in a bare, brightly daylit room, whose walls were covered with a jungle of cardboard shapes, and unrecognisable sketches made with fat markers.

There are as many definitions of design as there are animals, he insisted, and it’s continually evolving. And as with natural evolution, all definitions of design co-exist, said the DOPE, watching a linear drawing of something come to life on his laptop screen. Just as bacteria, fish and humans coexist, and even feed off each other. None is superior: all thrive.

There are as many definitions of design as there are animals, and it’s continually evolving. And as with natural evolution, all definitions of design co-exist.

Let’s use this Rs 2000 note, he said, much to my relief, to illustrate how design has evolved. He held it up to the table lamp and peered at it through a small lens.

For many people, design is decoration. This was its dominant 19th century meaning, produced by artists, artisans and ‘makers’ of all kinds in two or three dimensions. This note has several kinds of ornamentation, as though different artists were at play; older notes show a more grace and coherence.

Design is persuasion. The market and media explosions of the 20th century created design as persuasion, to sell goods, lifestyles and even ideas (join the war effort, for example).

Design is product. Industrial design extended desire to appliances and automobiles. It also made us conscious of progress, of how things work, and introduced new materials into our lives. A currency note, said, DOPE, must be durable and easy to handle, especially by ATMs (and not need lakhs of them to be re-calibrated, unless there’s a devious design there). It must be difficult to manufacture, on budget, and include an array of visible and hidden security features.

Design is discourse. As Art began to respond more consciously to the changed world of the 20th century, and ideology became the bridge between the arts and design. Constructivism, futurism and and other intellectual movements left their impress on design, unleashing a series of assertions on what design ought to be, for the first time.

International modernism, a mid 20th century bloom, called for a universal, rational approach to form. A doctrinaire modernist might give primacy to the universality of the banking function, with a clear, highly legible (in all light conditions) design, equally at home in India, or Germany. Even the Rs 2000 note could have done with numerals positioned and sized consistently with older notes, or provided a better way for the future.

Post-modernists might see a kind of imperialism in this ‘narrative’ of universal functionality. They might also argue that Gandhi’s image is a fraud perpetrated by power, advertising morality in the face of a corruption: off with his portrait.

Design is brand. In this age of commercial symbolism, this Rs 2000 note design under-represents the national brand; and second, offers an out-of-touch, backward projection of India. The Mangalyaan may have replaced dams and kisans, but the note’s design hardly projects capability or confidence. It suffers from all the gaudy, verbose clutter that we have come to expect, so what’s new?

In this age of commercial symbolism, this Rs 2000 note design under-represents the national brand; and second, offers an out-of-touch, backward projection of India.

These perspectives, said DOPE, sneaking a quick look at a dancing line on his laptop, are overlapping and simultaneous. They are not exhaustive: we can see design as culture, for example. But note that each of these is concerned with form, physical or visual.

Two relatively recent perspectives promise to transform that.

Design is experience. Experience designers (like UX designers) seek to map money’s journey from bank branch to wallet to exit, from the user’s point of view. But beyond this, she may muse on the experience of payment, physically or electronically, making it smoother. She might even ponder the ATM, and collaborate with a product designer to re-work it. Demonetisation as an experience? Sure, though her compulsion to prototype solutions with real users might be the deal breaker! DOPE chuckled for a minute at this.

Finally, design is thinking. Attracting interest lately is the designer’s ability to deal with incomplete information, and tackle complex situations by creative experimentation, and learning from failures. It aims to think beyond products, about systems, creating a pure problem solving process.

If such a designer thought about a cashless future, she might muse that electronic payments might not reach remote areas for some years. In the interim, imagine local-area cash, valid only in a specific off-network area and bankable in designated machines.

Perhaps the sheer mobility of cash makes it king. Networks fail unpredictably; a small bribe needs to be paid to a cop; a pushcart vegetable seller might have lost his card terminal. Maybe ATMs could dispense ‘temporary’ cash with 3-day validity, introducing friction as a solution to discourage cash.

Could this friction could be physical, giving cash a less convenient form? Maybe notes should occupy space proportional to their value. Imagine a 10,000 rupee note as thick as a sandwich, or as big as a tabloid page.

Psychological issues may obstruct a perfectly electronic world. Cash is a natural, visual means of relating to money; dashboards are not. Alternative visualisations of money may be needed to counter cognitive blindness.

Psychological issues may obstruct a perfectly electronic world. Cash is a natural, visual means of relating to money; dashboards are not.

Such apparently whacky alternatives frame the problem in productive ways, break the rut of the past, and eventually lead to previously unimaginable, working solutions that move us from an existing situation to a preferred one.

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The election symbols of India, part of the democratic tumult since 1952, provide a fascinating view into this process. Their special circumstances, at first glance, seem quite hostile to symbols becoming brand elements.

Political parties do not design symbols, or truly own them. Eligible parties choose them (or apply to do so) from a library of hundreds of simplistic linear drawings of everyday household objects and animals, under conditions set by the Election Commission (EC). Its purely functional aim is to ensure that illiterate voters can identify their party on an EVM button, and in this sense an election symbol is more like an icon than an expression of identity.

we read into the symbol what we read of the organisation, and vice-versa, in a meaning-making cycle.

The paramountcy of these functional considerations turns these crude drawings into de facto party symbols, for the national parties who are allowed to reserve them (unlike state parties, which share them with parties in other states).

Yet, even in this allotment raj, meanings form. Eventually, we read into the symbol what we read of the organisation, and vice-versa, in a meaning-making cycle. Symbol and party make each other. National parties exercise choice at the time of adoption, and learn to manage and even exploit their symbols in different ways. How?

Symbol and party make each other

Even EC’s everyday-objects regime has sensible exceptions. The Communist Party of India (CPI) and Communist Party of India-Marxist CPI(M) have internationally-derived communist symbols, acknowledging their pre-existence and distinctive politics. Highly recognisable, but easy to mix up, so presumably it takes committed voters or cadres to get the right buttons pressed. The CPI(M) symbol has less detail, but it restores the hammer and the star, the latter perhaps a nod to its internationalism and a further left position than the CPI’s.

In 1977, the Congress chose its third symbol: the open hand. It is the only body part allowed by EC and was first used, with a different rendering (left), by the All India Forward Bloc (Ruikar) in 1952 and thus allows comparative comment.

As a sign, the hand has great antiquity. And extreme generality

As a sign, the hand has great antiquity. And extreme generality: to connote, it must combine with either an object (such as a hammer) or a gesture (a fist, for example) to trigger a code (proletarian protest, in this example). Its current rendering, with fingers pressed together, may evoke the blessing gesture seen in representations of gods and holy men.

Barring this faint signal, the hand’s open-endedness is its most important property. Its pre-eminence from 1947 to 1977 meant that it did not have to specify its distinctiveness. Its flexibility can, in losing times, make it look like it’s being positioned by the competition. The Congress idea, whatever it is at the time, is visible mainly by contrast, like its secularism stands out most against Sangh/Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Hindutva.

In ways subtle and unsubtle, the symbols of the Bahujan Samaj Party and BJP have more religious content.

Like the hand, the lotus also has antiquity and multiple associations within specifically Asian traditions; BJP ownership makes it more overtly religious. It is pitch-perfect for BJP formulation of “cultural nationalism”, as it can foster a broadly Hindu air while averting the charge of overt religiosity (how could it, as the national flower?).

In BSP’s hands the elephant connotes power over its other popular or ancient associations.

BSP’s elephant too has positive associations for Buddhists, its original constituency, and for the Hindus it now seeks to address. In BSP’s earlier, more aggressive days, the elephant coded a new, unrelenting demographic force, not the placid animal children love. But what marks it out is Mayawati’s investment in the symbol by shrewd, if blatant, assertion of power and Dalit pride, via the Elephant Park, a monument to herself, the founder, and a triumphal regiment of elephants. In BSP’s hands the elephant connotes power over its other popular or ancient associations.

At the state level, the Shiva Sena’s bow and arrow (shared by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha in Jharkhand) eerily mirrors its perpetual militancy against non Marathis, the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) broom has been rightly hailed as ingenious crusader branding. While both parties can only reserve them when EC recognises them as national, there’s more to being a national party.

National party symbols reflect their adoption of big, cloud-like ideas, with fuzzy edges.

National party symbols reflect their adoption of big, cloud-like ideas, with fuzzy edges. This is a necessity of national governance, the politics of which must balance a dizzyingly complex array of interests and constituents. Neither corruption, nor even local government can be AAP’s ticket to national government, nor can parochialism for the Sena. I predict that both these symbols will be dropped if these parties progress to being national contenders.

The world’s greatest election shows the strength of an ultimately human urge. Symbols may be born arbitrary, but with a little care, all but the sickliest will thrive, for we are meaning-making machines, as much as tool-making apes.

This article first appeared in the 2nd July issue of Business Standard under the column ‘Deep Design’ by Itu Chaudhuri.

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