Ahmedabad NID students make their own innovative kites

Ten students of the city's premier design school, the National Institute of Design (NID), including an exchange student from Germany, will make their own innovative kites for the Uttarayan this year.

According to Gayatri Menon, faculty and coordinator of the Toy and Game Design programme at NID's PG campus in Gandhinagar, the idea behind these kites was to show children that new forms of kites can be made in a non-expensive manner.

"All kites that you see at the International Kite festivals are beautiful, but also expensive," says Menon. Hence with the concept of cost-effectiveness, four groups of students had to come up with their own themes to execute their ideas.

One group came up with the idea of an optical illusion. They used transparent material to create their kites. Using the theme of Gujarat they made motifs inspired by Sidi Sayed ni Jali. Using transparent material means when the kite is flown, only the motif is visible and not the kite. Prateikshankar Dixit, one of the students from this group, said that they also had an idea of using a sequence of multiple kites to tell a story.

Another idea from one of the groups was to create kites using a parabolic structure. These students shaped their kites in the form of eyes so that when it was flown, it seemed like a lot of eyes were looking down on the flyer.

One more interesting concept was to use a small hot air balloon and create an ocean in the sky. The students shaped their kites like an octopus and jellyfish with tentacles hanging underneath. When these kites are flown, they seemed as if they are swimming in the sky.

"The basic idea was to bring together water and fire, which are two opposing elements. Also, to properly secure the kites, we are experimenting with weights so that one can manipulate theseto a certain extent," says Dixit. These have already been tested and will be flown from Paldi campus today.