They picture: a bicycle; a hand pulled rickshaw; an Ambassador car; and, that most beloved of urban symbols, a three-wheeler scooter rickshaw (TSR in sarkari bhasha; to some foreign tourists, a tuk-tuk). Visitors usually register them with micro-smiles, given with faintly amused approval and without comment.

Deep Design settles in to the soft cushions and runs a speculative eye on the road travelled by these variously-wheeled vehicles. How did these objects of everyday utility turn into what we may call figures of fun?

Visit an appropriately tony gift shop and note that these images are commonplace, reprised repeatedly by designers, named or anonymous. The bicycle is a popular street toy in wire. The Amby, as the Ambassador is affectionately known, appears as a toy, has served as muse to many nameless designers, also to eminent photographer Raghubir Singh who shot a documentary book around it, and celebrated contemporary sculptor Subodh Gupta who cast one in metal. (Gupta’s work frequently references quotidian objects, revealing a grotesque comedy of class manners). The TSR is a curio favourite, and the illustrator’s pet..

There are more such: the little bronze miniatures of coal-heated irons, the massive istri your presswala (the Delhi term for ironing man) flattens your clothes with (pictured); the ‘bhopu’ or air claxon that served as a horn on the TSR long after cars went entirely electric.

The ubiquity of these images, and the certitude of their interpretation, is the reason that my typical guest gets the image, without comment. You could say these images are in the ‘popular culture’ (itself a pop culture term) except that the term ‘popular’ assumes that we know who is or isn’t included.

An American, as a first time visitor, for example, would not warm to the TSR or the Ambassador in the way ‘we’ do. Without the shared reference, the image does not travel from us to him in the manner it travels amongst ourselves. This sort of generally westernised, English-speaking Indian visitors to my drawing room can be expected the access the encoded meaning of the images; the American cannot. We say that these images form an index, a code that is shared by a specific group.

But shared reference is not enough to enter an object in the index; nor is the property of antiqueness, or ordinariness, sufficient. A Honda car may feature as a toy car, but has zero status as an image for consumption.

To be indexed for enjoyment, the property that an image/object needs is what I call distance, a degree of separation from the object, so that it is taken out of our everyday, our present. Thus, the TSR driver and the ironing man cannot be expected to share in our jollity on their everyday tools being picturised, as innocent, glorious or fun.

The meaning is created not by the shared reference of the coal iron or TSR as objects, but by the distance from them, shared by members of a class that is characterising the other. By imaging and framing these objects, a class further distances and separates itself from the other (in this example, the dhobi and rickshawala class) by emphasising the object’s foreign-ness, and viewing it with a ironic, if affectionate gaze.

a class further distances and separates itself from the other by emphasising the object’s foreign-ness, and viewing it with a ironic, if affectionate gaze.

So the shared meaning is in the gaze, not in the object.

Class is thus a fecund source of image codes. Image and identity make each other. The objects both indicate and sustain a kind of intra-class signalling, making the mundane exotic, and the adjacent foreign. The result is the creation of a vernacular.

Meanings can also be reinforced by members of powerful outside groups. The westerner’s fascination with the TSR signals or reinforces its value; the class that can access and align itself westwards, now finds redoubled enjoyment in it. A kind of inter-class signalling.

Not just objects but styles and aesthetic themes can emerge from class or group signalling. Businesses can appropriate the codes thus created.

Not just objects but styles and aesthetic themes can emerge from class or group signalling. Businesses can appropriate the codes thus created.

In India, we recognise as a kind of kitsch the styles that emerged from Hindi cinema posters, now lost, as we do the swaggering (or swooning) dialogue that we parody. The use of polychrome gods on a notebook as a kind of urban chic (pictured), and the instructional “Ideal Boy Charts” (pictured) that now have meme status depend on this class-located gaze. The ironic enjoyment of these is for those at whom the original images were not aimed, in order: the not-filmy-at heart, the well-schooled, and dare I say it, the ungodly, to whom the notebook might be a mild sacrilege, or attract devotion, not a wink.

What’s in all of this for design? Design’s first task may well be the creation of better outcomes or adding value to a client situation, but it cannot be left at that. A residual task of design is to contribute to the visual world, leaving it better. We remember whether products were beautiful or ugly long after we took for granted that they worked, or didn’t. To do this, and perhaps even to be effective in her primary task, the designer needs a heightened awareness of how things come to mean something, and especially, to whom.

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First published in a slightly modified form ‘A Class Apart’ in Business Standard, 31 March, in Deep Design, a fortnightly column by Itu Chaudhuri.

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This is a recipe for eggnog, the ‘traditional’ holiday drink, at any rate in the English-speaking world. Downing a glass induces the kind of warm torpor so suited to reflection, which, with celebration, is part of the deep design of all festivals, especially those that mark a new year. A good place to start is the quote marks on ‘traditional’.

Festival traditions are in a permanent state of slow flux, subject to the processes of evolution, cross-breeding, mergers and a myriad of social and economic currents. So Christmas has several origins, as does Diwali, often referred to as India’s equivalent of Christmas. No single myth governs them. Diwali is a convergence of practice among different faiths, not a consensus of meaning.

This suggests that most festivals that are part of religious traditions, are also connected to older folk traditions. Thus Christmas is eventually Christian, but its traditions and origins were several before they became singular. Christmas lore is an amalgam of the traditions of several countries; even Yule (Yuletide, remember?) is a Germanic, pre-christian festival, and the long-bearded appearance of Father Christmas/Santa Claus/Sinterklaas may wind back to the Norse Odin (or later derivations thereof). And so on and on.

Festivals are co-opted into newer religions as a part of an embrace-and-extend strategy adopted by religious leaders since religions also collaborate with power. (Though differences in degree may distinguish Semitic religions from, say, the Hindu faith).

The point is that since these festivals are neither non-religious nor explicitly liturgical, they are much freer to evolve or invent themselves than religious rituals. The co-opting of festivals by larger, powerful religious movements, or by different communities may lead to a certain uniformity of performance.

In modernity, though, commerce and media are likely the most powerful forces that both stimulate re-invention and crystallise festival tradition. India is not a stranger to these newly synthesised ‘traditions’. The Santoshi Mata cult appeared spontaneously in the 1960s, spread by lore and word of mouth. But an iconography (appearance, dress, texts) are products of print capitalism (posters) and, to coin a phrase, entertainment capitalism, with the 1975 blockbuster film Jai Santoshi Ma.

In modernity, though, commerce and media are likely the most powerful forces that both stimulate re-invention and crystallise festival tradition.

And so it is with eggnog (the recipe above is Jamie Oliver’s, one of the 13.5 million pages answering to ‘eggnog recipes’ on Google). The recent, often commercial origins of many Christmas rituals is common knowledge. The figure of Santa (as a fat man) is said to be a Coca Cola creation, and the current uniform, the ‘Santa Suit’ dates to Henry Nast’s work for Harper’s magazine. A newspaper illustration of Queen Victoria with a Christmas tree is said to have ignited the popularity of the craze, with artificial trees (1930) being introduced by a toothbrush manufacturer putting a spare machine to profitable use. Christmas cards date to Sir Henry Cole who had the first set printed with a common message, and so on and on to every detail.

Consumer media culture has created an exact, and universally agreed set of symbols with which we celebrate, and especially, consume the festival. Design, through media’s power of multiplication facilitates the creation of these symbols. They are born from other, older imagery, by repeating, and re-using them and fixing their shape in specific ways.

Consumer media culture has created an exact, and universally agreed set of symbols with which we celebrate, and especially, consume the festival.

The examples above, (to which add flying reindeer sled, gifts, holly and mistletoe, all drawn from various traditions) are the work of a legion of illustrators, advertisers, songwriters and tunesmiths who have fashioned a commercialised, consistent and largely transnational festival. A red, green and white palette in certain proportions instantly spells Christmas, if it is a certain time of the year. Gradually, less and less figurative detail is needed.

The deity Ganesha similarly is an all-weather icon, made compact, portable and viral. Ganesha transcends affiliations. Even minimally religious people collect Ganesha figurines as showpieces, or they might jostle for space on the pooja rack: no theological specificity applies. A painter down on his luck can survive by churning out a few. Again, his popularity allows the elimination of detail and extravagant simplification of form. Fittingly, communist China supplies both Ganeshas and Christmas decorations. One village, says BBC, has 600 factories that account for 60% of the world’s supply of the latter.

But the graphic plane is not the sole site of simplification. Festivals themselves are radically simplified into a precise choreography of symbols and rituals, driven by commerce, not by community. This objectifies it in two senses. A symbolic code with a set of visual, physical (even edible!) objects; and in the sense of making it objective—tick these boxes (wear the Santa Cap, stuff a stocking) to satisfy the conditions of performance.

In this setting it’s hard to achieve an authentic connection with the festival without escaping into the arms of the Mass or the mandir. A Diwali tied to crackers or a Christmas marked by a sad mall Santa sweating under his cotton beard, picture the world that the communications industry—and designers, too—have helped fabricate.

It’s something to consider when we sit down to design. Our profession fits in the framework of creating value for our clients. Our output, though, becomes a part of the pool of images and artefacts, that we call culture, and therefore can and should be seen outside that frame. Every now and then, we are criticised for our part in creating an ugly world, just as those who see Gurgaon’s commercial district as monstrosities must surely pass some of the blame to architects. But with these images and artefacts, we facilitate changes in practice and traditions. Perhaps we’ll take some of the blame for creating a shinier, prettier, easier world, and in so doing, a trivialised and arguably impoverished experience of this thing called the festival.

Our output, though, becomes a part of the pool of images and artefacts, that we call culture, and therefore can and should be seen outside that frame.

The symbols increasingly substitute the thing, inserting the gaudy, trivial and universally-unrejected in place of the personal, fulfilling but effortful. A bit like an eggnog powder (just add water).

Season’s greetings anyway.

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First published in a slightly modified form ‘A brand new Christmas’ in Business Standard, 23 December, in Deep Design, a monthly column by Itu Chaudhuri.

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In the popular mind, for longer than we can remember, the role of designers has been to make beautiful things.

Understandably so. Up until the 19th century, the word design meant a ‘pattern’, to decorate, or manufacture utilitarian objects, such as a Wedgwood china teapot or a brass surahi from a ‘manufactory’ in Moradabad. Even today, the qualifier ‘designer’, applied to, say, a water faucet, promises us a sleeker or otherwise more beautiful version of its ‘undesigned’ poor cousin.

Up until the 19th century, the word design meant a ‘pattern’, to decorate, or manufacture utilitarian objects

For much of the 20th century, too, design was tasked with the higher-order concern of influencing our visual culture with manufactured objects, communications and spaces. Of course designers always did much more crucial, often invisible, work than this. But the role given to it was not always resisted: and even if not always concerned specifically with beauty, an aesthetic frame was how design talked to the rest of us.

But towards the century’s end, certainly by the 21st, buttressed by decades of being a university-level discipline, the profession gave itself a new discourse. Now design was ‘problem-solving’ and its superior 21st century analogue, ‘design thinking’ (a tautology? An oxymoron? Depends on whether you are a sceptic or a paid-up member).

But towards the century’s end, the profession gave itself a new discourse. Now design was ‘problem-solving’ and its superior 21st century analogue, ‘design thinking’

Both these new formulations posit core design ability that has gone ‘demat’, or divorced from its manual or visual forebears. It’s seen as transferable to any domain, and to hear some tell it, capable of taking on any knotty problem from poverty to parking. Graphic designers, for example, no longer serve just the publishing or communication industries but think up ways in which ordering a taxi on a mobile phone can be intuitive and efficient. They are designers of user experience, or UX.

The subtle effect of all this is a uber-rational discourse, in which beauty (looks good!) is pitted against performance (achieves an objective), to be somehow balanced or traded off. Lost is the point that beauty and the other sorts of value are not independent variables but co-dependent ones. Don Norman is a seminal figure in the field of field of usability. The following examples and some of the discussion we owe to him.

beauty is pitted against performance, to be somehow traded off. Lost is the point that beauty and the other sorts of value are not independent variables but co-dependent ones

Research shows that beauty, and even the lack of it, can be harnessed to improve the performance of the product. It’s easy to see that attractive things are preferred, but less easy to see that they can work better. In one case, an attractively laid out bank ATM was ‘perceived to be easier to use’ than otherwise identical ATMs. Such a perception is profoundly self-fulfilling: perceived to be easier is easier.

But other profound effects may be at work. When I chop onions with a knife I really like, I experience a feeling of control. This leads me to relax; it actually causes a dilation of my pupils, a tiny decrease in my skin’s perspiration rate and my breathing (lie detectors work on this principle). I am more open to cutting onions, more open to help, more trusting and able to absorb stress. I will likely feel more skilful, which will translate into a more skilful performance. This process needs a little more unpacking.

First, we must widen our conception of beauty to include the entire experience. I loved the design of the knife when I saw it, for a number of reasons. Its weight and balance in my hand felt just right. The motion of cutting was rewarding in the way the steel went through the onion, and rested on the solid board below. The grip remained firm and comfortable and completing the task produced no fatigue. This led to feelings of control, skill, and perhaps pride. The resulting flows of dopamine, (the brain’s hormone of reward, among other things) enhanced memory formation, making sure that a repeat experience is anticipated pleasurably, reinforcing the cycle and etching the the grooves of a behaviour. Anyone familiar with the creative life understands the effect of positive mood on performance.

We must widen our conception of beauty to include the entire experience

When we say, therefore, that the performance of the knife depended to a degree on its appeal, we incorporate the human using the knife. It’s futile to measure the knife’s sharpness, because the knife isn’t designed to chop onions of its own accord.

This attraction has two parts. The first, relates to an object’s physicality, or what Deep Design has frequently discussed as physique. This form of liking (or disliking) is automatic, instantaneous and is what psychologists call an affect: a sense, before the act of labelling takes place, and before the associative processes of memory and judgement can be brought into play. The term ‘pre-personal’ is used to describe this unstructured, but potent sensation. Some theorise that ‘physiqual’ affects relate to primal sensory abilities that helped us sense safety or danger.

But physique is also being simultaneously evaluated and processed, in a continuous flux, not as boxed stages. In the knife example, ‘control’ is a feeling, or a label I give the affect (the sensations of seeing, holding and cutting). The label is a product of my learned experiences, such as culture, and associations. Pride, and the projection of it, are further maturations, and all these are born of realisation. Realisation is both cognition and emotion, both personal and social. I use the word because it connotes a process, by which emotions are formed and recognised. A coming to know, rather than a destination.

The most used model to structure, and thus to synthesise attraction is personality, or the use of the human being as both as a metaphor for organising and occasionally, expressing, elements of physique and realisation into an understandable whole. Without human beings, there are no stories; but that story must be left for 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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