‘Seeding’ done on Day 1 of NID’s Vision Plus

Vision Plus 2010, the three-day seminar at NID, commenced on Friday and had 'seeding' as its first topic.

Vision Plus was conceptualised nearly two years ago by Prof Rupesh Vyas and came into being in 2010 with the advent of Andreas Schneider from the Institute for Information Design.

Twelve speakers on Friday spoke about design concepts which are simpler for people to understand, are adapted from people's daily lives and most importantly, are not just concise but also precise in the information the design intends to convey to its audience.

The significance of design and its pros and cons relating to the subject under consideration, they said, are the basic deciding factors for a good design concept and model.

Yukio Ota from the design department of Tama Art University, Japan, flagged off the keynote panel on 'Seeding, Breeding and Cultivating'. He said that, "Visual language was of utmost importance in the formation of a design concept and this language depends a lot on situational significance. In fact, the basic approach towards any design should start from people's everyday life."

For MP Ranjan, who has been teaching at NID for four decades, design intervention into rural pockets of society is of prime importance in current times as well as the future. He said: "Design is actually intentions driven by actions. And when these intentions are put to right use, especially in the rural sector, outcomes are magnificent and dynamic. While design is a seed that needs to multiply, we need to sow millions of such seeds in order to bring a change. Currently, there is a gap between the designer's vision and what needs to be actually implemented on practical approach. However, this can slowly be filled if an end-to-end solution is achieved by the designer."

Talking about the difference made by the first ever Design for Change contest, Kiran Sethi, founder and director of Riverside School, Ahmedabad, said that design was very relevant for social change and hence she had started the contest. She said, "I wanted children to feel that they can bring about a change in society. We asked school children to take one idea, work on it for a week and help change billions of lives. We had also asked them to share their ideas with other schools and friends as only then can design or change be made sustainable. Through this contest, we were able to cover 250,000 children across 24 countries. Design has to feel good besides just being important."

However, what Prof Kirti Trivedi, from Industrial Design Centre of IIT-Mumbai, spoke got students pretty much intrigued. Prof Trivedi talked about 'Data Traps'.

He said that, "While researching, too much of information gets accumulated on a single topic and one is unable to understand which information is relevant and which is not. Hence, it is important to form hierarchy of information. Don't find data if you can do without it."