Today with strong resolve of not letting posting on FN slip down the bottom of my priority list- I have emerged from the dark!

So lots has happened these past few weeks!

I am officially in London now. This is it. I am going to set aside my stick and bundle and make this my home for the coming few years!

I am officially a Designer at Seren Partners Ltd here.

I have hence officially moved out of Nokia Research Center.

My time at NRC was amazing! I grew so much as a designer and researcher and I am only beginning to see that now. So good times then! and good times now at Seren!

Seren is lovely design studio with  a force of about 30+creative brains. We have a gorgeous office in Old Street and we are doing incredible work for some of the biggest companies in the world such as Vodafone.

Things have been a bit crazy since the time I landed in London, about two weeks back. I literally landed running. Finding an apartment, packing, unpacking, starting work and now I am beginning to feel a bit more settled- which is an amazing feeling!

I am going to post pictures of things around me this weekend so come back! But for now I am leaving you with some noon inspiration- to snap those brain cells shrouded in the post lunch laziness!

Check out Stacy Rozich’s blog and work!

I do a lot of illustration work inspired my mythology, strong clear lines and her work really resonated with my sense of aesthetics. I love her illustrations, the humor and the diversity!

Enjoy!

The Bhasha design competition finally ended! And not to sound too big headed but it was a brilliant success. I have just finished sending the last set of journalists material and now I can sit back, take a deep breath and call it a wrap!

To give you a brief overview

Every year Nokia collaborates with universities and colleges across the world to nurture innovative ideas from the talented young minds that will shape our future. Sponsored by Nokia Research Center Growth Economies Lab and a part of Nokia’s Open Innovation activities, this year’s offering is Bhasha.

Bhasha is a platform that stimulates the collaboration between Nokia Research Center and India’s key design institutions to explore and develop innovation in design.

‘Bhasha’ aims to identify ideas and designs that will encourage the use of Indian languages on mobile phones, and as the result possibly make users more literate in their native language through casual learning.

Mobile technology truly holds a great potential to make a difference in people’s lives. While there are numerous attempts to introduce new information services through mobile phones, especially in domains such as agriculture, entrepreneurship and healthcare, there is one critical barrier in adopting such mobile services in India: Language.
India is a unique country with many languages. There are 22 official languages in the country and over 2000 spoken dialects. Needless to say, a lot of cultural experiences, entertainment and news are absorbed in local or vernacular languages.

Ironically, digital tools have not caught up with Indian languages very well despite India’s growing reputation as the world’s hub for information technology. English is still considered as the de facto language of use. An increasing number of educated Indians are becoming less literate in their own mother tongue: this is an outcome of reduced opportunities in writing, partially contributed by the contemporary education system putting more emphasis on English learning.

Given the current state of local language use, literacy and perception, Bhasha design competition challenged the participating design students to come up with a solution to promote the use of vernacular Indian languages on mobile phones, to promote increase in the level of literacy and in turn preserve Indian heritage and its cultural identity.

Bhasha design competition invited students from the following four premier design institutes in India:

1. NID (National Institute of Design), Ahemdabad

2. SID (Symbiosis Institute of Design), Pune

3. Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore

4. IIT (Indian Institute of Technology), Kanpur

The project was lead by yours truly along with Dhaval Joshi  along with inputs from Younghee Jung. We mentored the students through the duration of this competition, to ensure that all the concepts were thought in a holistic manner. It was important to also guide the participants to ensure that the ideas had a good business model and could be developed in the near future.

The final event was held in Bangalore where 9 finalist teams presented their ideas.

The competition was judged by Mahendra Bhai Patel and Sugata Mitra.

Mahendra Bhai Patel is one of the greatest type and graphic designers today. Mahendra Patel (21.02.1943) is a retired Principal Designer from the National Institute of Design (NID),Ahmedabad, in 2003.

In 2000, he has designed Signage Design System for Tirumala and Tirupati Devasthanam, India’s most busy privilege place.

In 2002 He has designed the Signage Design System for Hyderabad City. In 2010 He received the most prestigious Gutenberg International Award for his contribution in Type Design Development of Indian Scripts.

He has taught and practiced for 39 years at NID since 1964. He has also taught at Rhode Island School of Design, USA; Nova Scotia College of Arts, Canada; Christchurch College of Arts, New Zealand and Indus Valley School of Arts and Architecture, Pakistan.

Presently after retiring from NID, he is busy designing matching fonts for all Indian scripts, including English.
He is a Senior Adjunct Faculty at Symbiosis Institute of Design from 2007 and also a Senior Adjunct Faculty at MIT Institute of Design from 2009, both at Pune.

Website: http://patelmc.wordpress.com/

Sugata Mitra: Sugata Mitra also needs no introduction.

Professor. Sugata Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK. He is also Chief Scientist, Emeritus, at NIIT and since his Hole in the Wall experiment has been one of the most invited keynote speakers on education in the world.

In 1999, Sugata Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). What they saw was kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other.
Prof. Mitra is a leading proponent of Minimally Invasive Education. He has a PhD in Physics and is credited with more than 25 inventions in the area of cognitive science and education technology. He was amongst the first people in the world to invent Voluntary Perception Recording (a continuously variable voting machine) and a hyperlinked computing environment, several years ahead of the Internet. He was conferred the prestigious Dewang Mehta Award for Innovation in Information Technology in the year 2005.

Srishti school of Art, design and technology walked away with the top prizes. Kaccha Limbu a game that helps migrant students to learn local languages and manage their daily chores won the top prize. Pitara, a project that archives stories passed orally won the second prize. The third position was shared by IIT Kanpur and NID for mobile games which both promoted learning local script and phrases.

You can read and view all the concepts here.

Bhasha I am happy to say has been covered national wide by leading magazines and newspapers. The winning teams will have the opportunity of connecting with developers to develop their concepts!

Here are 3 links of many from some of the online coverage we got!

IIFL

VarIndia

LivenewsIndia

That’s all from me till next week!

Enjoy your weekend everyone!

Screen printed gold on cream white silk paper, the cards are held together by a butter paper, gold cover. Here is what they look like! Nothing compared to the real thing, of course. I will post more images here once I receive my personal copy of the card!

The visual theme of the card was inspired by symbols in Indian mathematics and mythology representing perfect symmetry and harmony. The yantra geometrical form of the lotus which represents union, harmony, beauty and the heart has been used to create patterns in this card.

The main wedding card is always very  religious in its representation. In South India it is marked with turmeric on all 4 edges. The Elephant God Ganesha is also placed on the card as a mark of divine blessings. Ganesha is worshiped before the start of anything new and hence it is a common and essential practice to place Him at the very beginning of the card.

Congratulations Ruhi and Bharath!

This time I have been terrible! Just God awful. I have no excuses, but to hang my head in shame! I do have many (colorful variety) of reasons for not posting much the last few weeks! Though I would like to thank all the people who were reading and writing to me during this crazy busy time!

There has been a lot going on in life and work. I am currently busy designing and conceptualizing interaction models for an exciting service along with another lovely designer Shama! Very exciting! I wish I could share it with you guys but, hopefully when it is launched you shall see it splashed all over framing narratives and the virtual world (fingers crossed!)

I was also traveling. I went to London for a week. Went to Bath. Both were am-a-zing!! There might be some more exciting updates on that front soon. Will keep you all posted.

Another super duper highlight of my Aug-Sept month has been the wedding card that I am designing for a friend of mine! It should go to the printer this week so you guys will see photographs of what it actually looks like!

I am blowing wonderful, beautiful life into ‘framing narratives’ by posting things that I have read and liked in the last month.

Enjoy and see you guys back here! I will be waiting…pining

1. Medha Khosla, a super talented fashion and textile designer from NY and one of my closest friends is now designing some really gorgeous textiles. She started a blog called ‘All things printed’. Take a look here and subscribe!

2. Quirk box- Another game changer in the design industry in India. QurikBox started by Jayesh Sachdev and Rixi Bhatia, has got people quirking wildly with excitement! From fashion to accessories, from Mumbai to Chennai these guys are off to a great start! They were also recently featured in India’s list for game changers under the age of 35.

3. I love this ‘love stamp’ that Jessica Hische has designed! Every time I read her blog and this pops up it makes me happy! I love the lettering and the playfulness on the word ‘forever’.

4. I am signing off with the latest update on ‘The Viewspaper’ started by entrepreneur ShivBhaskar Dravid. The Viewspaper has recently won the World Youth Summit Award (WYS). The WYS festival is due to be held in Austria this November! Very very proud moment for everyone who is  part of this platform. ‘The Viewspaper’ was also featured in ‘The Asian age’. I have been working with him for years now and it is one of the best online platform available in the country today. Take a look on page 23  of the Asian age here.

This weekend is going to be a craz-heee one! I have to drive down towards Mysore (which btw is an amazing city!) to drop off my cousin. And I am taking a break from blogging, mail checking, random browsing etc.

But next week onwards I will have some exciting updates for you! If you recall one of my previous posts, Nokia Research Center is organizing a design competition called ‘Bhasha2011’.

This competition is now drawing to an end on the 22^nd of July. Since I am heading this project I am quite excited to see how it all ends!

I will also be the master of ceremonies of the final event! So quite a lot of preparation to do the following week.

Leaving you with a few more photographs from the House, Home, Family series

Hope you all have a Friday of awesomeness that trickles into your weekend!

1. In Indiranagar over brunch
2. A Leila’s cafe- one of my favorite sunday breakfast places in Shoreditch, London
3. When Sunny came home- dont be fooled by the innocent face. This boy is a brat!

I am sharing some photographs, ‘family and homes’ that I dug out recently. More might follow.

I hope you all had an equally nice weekend filled with awesomeness.

1. Low cost
2. Effective
3. Easy to make
4. Made of easily available materials
5. Easy to dispose
6. Eco-friendly

Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

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