Healthy Planet website: play at work

We are designing a website for Healthy Planet, a group of schools in Noida and Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh.  In a world where education is being increasingly commercialised, compartmentalised and regimentalised, Healthy Planet schools stand out.  The approach is unhurried and mindful. They look for the individual in each child and guide their learning using proven… Continue reading Healthy Planet website: play at work

rungta’s food packaging: grabbing eyeballs in a crowded category

Long-time client Rungta’s wants to enter the packaged foods category. We have been asked to design packs for three products—namkeen, pasta and dry fruits. The category is crowded with a diverse range of pack designs. It’s an all-out fight for share of eye. When it comes to pack architecture, there seem to be multiple approaches… Continue reading rungta’s food packaging: grabbing eyeballs in a crowded category

Innovation and all that

If there’s a bigger darling than design these days, it’s innovation. We’re seeing a tendency to link, or in geo-political jargon, hyphenate them; in academese, conflate the two; at any rate, we’re &-ing them.  Most will agree that It’s a Batman and Robin thing, and innovation is the caped crusader. Design belongs downstream. An enabler,… Continue reading Innovation and all that

Distress Signals

First, a recipe. Find some lettering, carefully painted or printed on something solid, like wood or metal, an old nameplate, maybe, Then get to work on it with sandpaper, until the edges of the letters vanish here and there, and the entire surface is pitted, scratched and otherwise damaged. Now dust it off and step… Continue reading Distress Signals

Experiment and Reason

The 2019 economics Nobel Prize for Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer (hereafter, BDK) offers much to celebrate for Indians, Bengalis and Frenchwomen among others. Designers, in their modern role as global problem solvers, should join in. They have much to be inspired by.  The practices of economics and design appear to have little in common. But they share common ground when… Continue reading Experiment and Reason

Design and the future

Design, as a thinking style, is starting to be recognised for its contribution to tackling today’s most complex problems. Its role maybe even more important in the future, or the Future, that permanently fascinating horizon which occupies our dreams and fantasies. But not just in making the products and services of tomorrow.  Design is practical… Continue reading Design and the future

Now Trending

Every year, in late December, as the solstices approach—winter or summer, depending on your hemisphere—the design-trends-for-the-next-year articles appear, as if to beat the new year deadline. This false urgency exaggerates their significance: these aren’t catastrophic, black-swan events (wholly unpredictable—until they happen!) but slow processes already in motion. These ‘trends’ are tendentious and exist only in… Continue reading Now Trending