We have had a great induction week-2011 so far. We have had some of the best visiting faculty who have graciously shared their valuable knowledge with our students. One such gentleman was Mr. Prasad Boradkar.He is an associate professor and coordinator of the Industrial Design program at Arizona State University in Tempe, USA. He was at DYPDC to talk to our students during their induction week.
Click below to watch the interview:
We have had a great induction week-2011 so far. We have had some of the best visiting faculty who have graciously shared their valuable knowledge with our students. One such gentleman was Mr. Partho Guha,
Founder Director and Principal Designer, Elephant Design, who was at DYPDC Campus to talk to our students. Click on the link below to watch the interview.
Honestly, not many people have seen my new passion and so any venue is welcome. My art is all about cultivating intrigue and putting my views across from an artistic point of view. My view is that my art should have the ability to stop you. While walking by, you should step back and say wow! My work has a strong form and use of colour. It is automobile inspired art, my hallmark,” says Chhabria.
So, how did he turn to art? “My customers liked my cars and so I thought I would also paint.” He adds, “I was drawn to art decades ago when I started my career and used to go abroad for work. I would visit art galleries in those cities and an interest was created. When I looked more intensely, I realised that what I saw could be recreated in other ways. For example, Mona Lisa which could be copied thanks to technology. Art as I saw it lost its absolute intrigue. I wanted create original 3D art which cannot be copied.
Thus the 3D aspect was born. Also, success comes to you when others keep away. My knowledge of auto designing could be used for art — it is unique and difficult to create. You can call automobiles my muse.” Practising art also helped him to be sensitive towards automobile designing and vice versa. He also realised that despite the canvas being small, it was not bound by regulations.
When asked about his automobile designing business, Chhabria reveals, “The list of my clients in Pune is growing. Though this city has a big market, most of my business is done in north India.
I have a showroom in Delhi.” According to Chhabria, “When someone works on a car design, it is an asset and one is expected to give money for this asset. If the design does not go right, the money goes down the drain. You might see it as a glamourous field, but it requires high skills. Many Indian auto companies do not get the design right and go abroad for it. Also, the best designers do not want to work for anyone.
I was a designer for a company abroad and then worked on my own. If my work was good, I got the benefit and it gave me an impetus to work on my own. In my company, we have no attrition rate. If you enjoy your work, others enjoy your work too and the customers want to flaunt your work, how is there a competition?” What next? “I work on 20-30 cars in a year. I am always asked by people ‘why can we not buy what our company designs for the celebrities?’ I am working on this. In two-three years, I can come out with a Ferrari-like car for the common man.”
• Dilip Chhabria’s works will be displayed at Atelier, ITI Road, Aundh from August 13-23
SOURCE:
http://www.punemirror.in/article/63/2011081220110812053053420ea70e903/Amused-by-cars.html
When you were little and sketching cars on every available surface and pleaded with your parents to get the new alloys you saw in a magazine, did you ever think that these would be the kind of skills that would someday be in demand? You can finally put that energy and passion to use and make a career out of it. In our attempt to give you the best available options in car designing, we realised no one does it better than the India’s car design guru himself, Dilip Chhabria (DC). Using design as a differentiator, DC has made true the mantra, ‘good design is good business’, by establishing a design-based company in 1993 in Mumbai. In 2010, he established DYP-DC in Pune, a design school to lead talented and interested students in his path.
The industry
India is the second fastest growing automobile market in the world. Competitiveness between brands and an increasing presence of global brands in India is the key to this demand. The auto manufacturing industry is also witnessing robust growth — 25-30 per cent annually which is what is creating a demand for talented designers. In 2010, India produced more than 3.5 million automobiles (an increase of 33.9 per cent from 2009).
The beginning
Car designing has emerged as a new and dynamic field in India and is still in its nascent stage. Design helps you make radical or instrumental changes. Automobile design implies taking into account several elements: function of the car, market, production, distribution, promotion, price reduction and increase in safety, ergonomics and environmental concerns. “In the last ten years, I have received queries from youngsters on where they can learn to design cars and what they need to do. Parents come up to me and say, ‘My son wants to be you.’ Cars signify glamour, power and sex appeal and very few products compete on a desirability point of view. We have the requirement, but no history of education in car design,” says Chhabria.
This thought led to an idea five years ago, which was then pursued by Chhabria and Ajeenkya Patil of DY Patil University, Pune. This culminated in the establishment of DYP-DC Centre for Automotive Research and Studies.
The campus
Located in the 100-acre DY Patil Knowledge City in Pune, amidst hills and farmland, there couldn’t be a better location for creativity to kick in. They offer undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in automobile design, which is residential in nature. Basic requirements in students are the skills to visualise and sketch and an ability to think and create something new.
The course
The three-year UG course costs `5 lakh per annum and the two-year PG programme would come up to `7 lakh per annum. This includes the cost of materials required, which will in many ways prevent any kind of disparity among students. Scholarships are given on a case-to-case basis. Each batch would comprise only 20-30 students because a course like this requires personal attention from teachers and more practical work.
The courses include study of design fundamentals, automobile design studios and digital tools along with basic design, colour theory, drawing and digital 3D modelling. The subjects in the curriculum are basic automotive engineering, basic aerodynamics, vehicle architecture, automotive product planning, vehicle structures, vehicle packaging, materials and processes.
Eligibility
There is a common misconception that automobile engineers are better suited for designing. “It is not so,” says Hrridaysh Deshpande, director, DYP-DC. “In fact, engineering graduates have to be made to unlearn what they’ve already learned to be more in tune with designing needs,” he adds.
Automotive designing is restricted and regulated for the most part, because of engineering limitations, cost issues and strict automotive regulations to adhere to. With the remaining freedom, one has to create something new that doesn’t resemble the past, cater to the brand needs and create something that will be wanted by both client and customer.
The DC factor
Chhabria is hands-on in terms of curriculum and interaction with students. They have designed the campus to have wood and metal workshops for students where they will work on models, a library, and state-of-the-art computer labs with interactive displays, prototyping machinery and 3D printers. They have a design critique session every week, with Chhabria as the moderator and they discuss the pros and cons of a car model, with insights from him. The concept of examinations has been modified to include assignments and juries, which will help build a student’s portfolio.
Mentors
They have eight full-time faculty members from prestigious institutions with industry experience. They also have four faculty members from abroad — Emanuele Nicosia, has worked with Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Jaguar, Peugeot and Cadillac, and Mizuho Tomita Nicosia, design planner and conceptor, has collaborated with big brands like Subaru, Nissan, Honda and Daihatsu. Their visiting faculty includes Sang Koo from the School of Industrial Design, Hanbat National University in South Korea, Patrick Roupin, MD of Kovent Infotech, Vikas Satwalekar, former director of National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, Henri Christaans from Delft University of Technology, only to name a few.
“I believe that DYP-DC has set very ambitious goals for the institution. We are talking of a school that will become a reference in car design in India. This is a fascinating dream and I would be pleased to be part of it. I am putting my competence, knowledge and enthusiasm as contribution to this programme,” says Nicola Crea, who teaches automobile designing at University of Chieti, Politecnico di Milano and University of Genoa and is a guest faculty at DYP-DC.
Industrial connections
Students get a chance to work with Chevrolet and DC Designs, only to name a couple. “Students can earn `25,000-`1 lakh per month as starting salary, depending on the company and skills,” says Abhijeet Bhoge, faculty at DYP-DC. They are working towards arranging placements with some of the prestigious design houses and companies, since their second batch will only begin in August 2011. Admissions are still open. For details, log on to www.dypdc.com
The auto industry, being an organised sector offers a vertical growth path. So you not only have a job, but also a career when you step out of DYP-DC. It will merely be an extension of your passion, which you get paid for, with no monotony whatsoever.
What makes DYP-DC different from schools abroad? Deshpande explains, “Firstly, it is too early for a comparison. Secondly, this is a unique programme which has been enhanced by the DC factor. There are no stake holders in other schools with content knowledge. DC is a brand himself, therefore it is important to uphold that. Thirdly, it is solely for car designing, whereas the focus is dissipated in other schools. Fourthly, we provide a feasible, practical and balanced approach to design, technology and business, which are all factors to be considered while designing a car. And lastly, students here will be envisioning, researching and creating a car from scratch to present their finished product in their last year.”
Interaction with students keeps 56-year-old DC in touch with the young and fresh minds, which are always brimming with ideas. “There is a lot of talent, curiosity, growth and hunger in the youth of India. They are incredibly networked and well travelled. They have the same hunger to do what they want as their compatriots. The
problem is not them, but they need to be led. A hard mentality and regulations will go nowhere in moulding youngsters,” says Chhabria. He believes research is exceedingly important and to envision or produce a car that is required by the country in the next ten years. It is important to subject students to that intensity.
Dilip Chhabria — The Auto Guru
“As far back as my memory takes me, I’ve been crazy about cars, drawing on walls, tissue and whatever I could lay my hands on. It was and still is an obsessive interest,” says Chhabria.
After finishing his bachelor’s in commerce from Bombay University, he stumbled across an ad from a foreign varsity that invited applicants for car designing course. That is when he realised that car designing was a possibility. He went to Art Center of Design, Pasadena, USA, in 1974 for four years. He worked another year at General Motors, USA. He realised he could never work in a stifling environment, where you could only design a part of the vehicle. He returned to India, with no pressure from family and started a car accessory business mainly for Fiat and Ambassador cars, which was hugely successful, especially among the affluent.
In 1993, when he had made enough money, he established DC Designs in Mumbai, with the sole aim of offering design and prototyping services to the Indian OEM (original equipment manufacturer) industry as well as customized one-off solutions to the independent buyer.
He tells us, “In hindsight, I don’t believe you can succeed if you don’t put your back to the wall. If you have choices, you don’t succeed.” He is motivated to leave behind a legacy for his children. He strongly believes that it is no longer enough to be creative; one needs to have a business sense and a keen marketing sense so that you can think of niches to exploit. In a competitive environment, design is the only thing that sells. Design speaks for the brand.
Source: Article on DYPDC on the New Indian express website: http://expressbuzz.com/topic/dyp-dc
This interactive workshop, through short lectures and assignments, case studies, and practical work sessions, helped organizations take their retailing strategy to a whole new level. The workshop provided participants with core principles, tools, models, and techniques of Automotive Retail, and in the process enabled them to apply their learning in their own organizations.
The workshop was led by world renowned name in the field of Retail Strategy, Sir Rodney Fitch. Some other internationally acclaimed experts included Prof. Henri Christiaans (Associate Professor, Industrial Design at TU Delft), James Woudhuysen (Professor of Forecasting and Innovation at De Montfort University, Leicester,) Elmer van Grondelle (Head of the Automotive Design Department at Delft University), and Emanuele Nicosia (Professor, Automotive Design, DYP-DC Center for Automotive Research and Studies).
Participants learned how to create a viable retail strategy for their business, generate and implement ideas to develop or improve services and customer experience. They also received a clear understanding of retail strategy process, and learned practical innovation techniques and the confidence to use them immediately. By the end of the workshop participants had an understanding of implicit strategic challenges, and most importantly, a foundation for addressing them in the future.
Visit http://puneevents.in/index.html for more details
“Bangle is arguably the most influential auto designer of his generation.” – Phil Patton, New York Times, February 20, 2006.
And one look at Bangle’s work is enough to conclude that Patton isn’t exaggerating. Bangle is and will continue to be one of the icons in the automotive industry, for no one else has had the kind of impact he has had in the field of automobile design. Bangle started his career at Opel after graduating from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. His next stop was Fiat, where he designed the Coupe Fiat. In 1992, BMW named him Chief of Design. He was the first American to be offered this position. It is his excellent, fearless work with BMW is what he is known for the most.
Some of the faculty members of DYPDC Center for Automotive Research and Studies caught up with Chris Bangle when he was in India recently, and had the great fortune of indulging in chit-chat about design and his philosophy, amongst other things.
Mentioned below is the transcribed version of their interaction.
According to Chris there are quite a few elements that make a design stand apart, that make it distinct, unique in comparison to others. It has to have an element of brilliance. Jaws should drop. It should be the first one to solve an existing problem. So in that sense, it has to be futuristic. The design should be timeless and distinct. It should be so awe-inspiring that it shifts paradigms, in the bargain, inspiring others. It should have this quality that makes others want to be “it”.
Chris said to be a successful designer one needs to learn to challenge everyday doing; to respect convention but not be bound by it. He said culture does play an extremely important part in shaping a person. It plays a crucial role in design as well, he said. He advised designers to be aware of it; to be courageous most of all and not be afraid to do what you really want to do.
He also spoke about the things a designer should keep in mind while designing a car. He said he would like to discourage in designers the thought that there’s something called a “women’s” car, and that if you make one, no one will buy it. He advised designers to never fall in this mindset or be racist against small cars. Also designers should always follow proportions surface detail while designing, he added.
When it came to his design strategy, he said he followed 10 steps, which are as follows:
Step 1: Understanding the dogmas: i.e. what I am, what I am not
Step 2: Finding the metaphor
Step 3: Re-thinking the metaphor
Step 4:
(a): Just thinking…a lot
(b): Thinking what culture can do
(c): USP
Step 5: Making a bold Conclusion (here he talked about 7 series, Bangle Butt)
Step 6: Evolving Metaphor
Step 7: Defining in action
Step 8: Preparing to take heat (talked about the job of a design head)
Step 9: Leveraging my resources
Step 10: Empowering my team
The faculty of DYPDC Center for Automotive Research and Studies are absolutely thrilled that they got to spend time with one of the greats of automobile design and are already looking forward to meeting Bangle the next time he’s in town.
He was gracious enough to answer some of our questions when he was at our campus.
Tell us a bit about your background. What you’ve been doing? What you intend to do in the future?
I was born in 1957, I am a car design manager, expert in industrial product development. I am also a university design teacher.
In 1982 I graduated from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California (U.S.A.), in transportation design. The same year I moved to Turin, in Italy, where I started working as a designer for “Pininfarina Studi & Ricerche”.
From 1983 to 1986 I worked as a senior designer at “I.DE.A. Institute”.
In 1986 I was hired by Fiat Auto as design manager and studio chief in charge of exterior design of Fiat cars. Later and until 1992, I worked as manager of exterior design of Lancia cars at Centro Stile Lancia in Orbassano. One remarkable result of this engagement was the development of the Lancia Delta Integrale.
In 1992 I started my collaboration with “Giannini Automobili”. I was engaged as director of design and in charge of the development of new products. In only four years, I achieved the task to qualify Giannini as “carrozzeria” in ANFIA, Italian national association of coachbuilders.
In 1996, at the Turin International Auto Show, Giannini, in parallel with all the major Italian coachbuilders, has been invited by Fiat Auto to develop a show car based on the new Brava. Giannini presents Windsurf, a coupé with very advanced aerodynamic concept, which I entirely conceived and developed.
Meantime, since 1992, I widened my professional interest to the design of boats and motorcycles. I started consultancies with “Victory design”, engineering studio devoted to yacht design based in Naples, and “Majestic Auto”, Indian industry producer of motorcycle and mopeds. In both cases I had the opportunity to transfer my specific knowledge and the development technologies in use in the automotive field to these other product sectors.
From 1996 to 1998, I moved to Germany to work for “Daimler-Chrysler” at the Mercedes-Benz Advanced Design studio in Sindelfingen (Stuttgart).
From 1999 on, my engagements are shared between consultancies and teaching. In fact in the following years I’ve been involved with the Universities of Pescara, Genoa and the Polytechnic of Milan as a teacher in their courses of studies.
During this period of time I developed projects with several companies such as Tecnema, Picchio, Bizzarrini and Tasso (now Italcar) in many cases creating a synergy between industry and the academic world. I organized my research activity by creating, with prof. Michele Platania, CISME (Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi sulla Mobilità Ecosostenibile), a center of studies on sustainable mobility. In 2006, I became director of the research center. Meanwhile, I became member of the scientific committee as well as coordinator of all design activities of Tulton, company specialized in new products development.
Since 2007, I’ve been with the Politecnico di Milano, where I teach and perform my research activity and tutorship of the master on Automobile Design organized with Alfa Romeo. I am now member of the research unit of Advanced design (UDR ADD). I am also member of the commission for evaluation of new patents of the Facoltà del Design of the Politecnico di Milano. I am also project leader of interdisciplinary projects for the Alta Scuola Politecnica (Politecnico di Milano and Politecnico di Torino).
I am in charge of Strategic Design course at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Genova.
Since 2009, I’ve been with the Scientific Committee of Milano car design, in the capacity of President. It’s a company devoted to research, design and production of prototypes and special vehicles and in charge of design development and consultant for D.EA. srl (Design and Architecture).
The ambition for the future is to do always better in my work and try to achieve something remarkable in terms of new products, as well as in my academic activity.
What does design mean to you?
Design is one of the most complex human activities. It is a mix of technology, art and social science. The core is innovation. Innovation has the peculiarity of being interdisciplinary. This requires the contribution of other competences. With the wide range of knowledge involved, coordination and organization of projects plays a fundamental role. Moreover, any project must be the development of a new idea, it cannot be the execution of some acquired know-how, as in case of some other disciplines. Design, also, is a way of expression, a communication mean. Design is the practice that allows dreams to come through. Man will always desire. This is why design practice will never stop.
How did you get interested in Automobile Design?
I started to read numbers on car plates, I recognized cars by looking at their wheels, I started to recognize sound hearing the noise of different cars, at school all my notebooks were full of car sketches. I started to play with cars, use them, take them apart, paint them, modify them. I could recognize cars anywhere. I could tell the date of first registration of a car by reading the number on the license plate. At 18 years old, I started to race cars and I had parts all over in my bedroom. I started buying, selling, exchanging and collecting cars. In my life I’ve owned about 90 cars, with a maximum of 15 at the same time. I used to believe that each one of them had a different spirit.
What’s the scope of automobile design in India?
Mobility allows a better life quality. Mostly saves you time, so you can have a more intense life. In developed countries people spends a lot of time inside their automobiles, which has become a sort of prosthesis of our ego. For this reason cars have a representative function which has to be coherent with the culture of the owner. The scope of automobile design is to conceive complex products to supply population with tools and services that people expects. The most interesting challenge it would be to understand exactly what an automobile means to Indian population and its culture and to do our best to design it.
Tell us a bit about your role as visiting faculty at DYPDC
I am offering my experience as a teacher and car designer to the development of DYPDC
What are your thoughts about DYPDC? About what it is trying to achieve?
I believe that DYPDC has set very ambitious goals for its institution. We are talking of the vision of a school that becomes a reference in car design in India and, why not, that spreads its reputation all over the world. This is a fascinating dream and I would be pleased to be part of it. I am putting my competence, my knowledge and my enthusiasm as contribution to this program.
What advice would you give to upcoming designers?
To be a designer is a very special job. It needs a lot of knowledge and a lot of competences. To become a designer takes time and patience, but when you got there, in my opinion, it is one of the most rewarding professions (not necessarily from an economical point of view). So, if you have that special spark inside, it’s worth working hard for it.
Mr. Patrick Roupin is an award winning Belgium designer. He holds a Masters degree in product engineering design from the ISD – Supinfocom Group, Valenciennes / Pune. He won the Designer for Real World – Victor PAPANECK Prize in 2004. Patrick formerly worked as a usability specialist for one of the world’s leading usability companies in India. He has also worked as a product designer with companies such as Decathlon and Faurecia in France. He did some very interesting workshops with our students, which were mainly focused on social experiments.
The following is an interview of Patrick Roupin conducted by the communications team at DYPDC College:
Tell us a bit about your background. What you’ve been doing? What you intend to do in the future?
I grew up in Belgium and studied at the Institut Superieur de Design – Supinfocom in France, where I did my Masters in Product Design Management. Like my colleagues I was ready to live and work the States, but for some reason, I decided a short trip to India first. Of course, I ended up staying here for good. I worked with HFI – India. The experience was very rich from a professional perspective. For more than 3 years I was working on international projects for the world’s leading usability company. This is when I thought I must do something for India and hence opened my own company, Kovent (www.kovent.com). My objective is simple. Creating innovation that would possibly change the lives of millions of people. Today’s designers have the real chance of changing people’s lives, without compromising on profitability.
What does design mean to you?
At the time I was studying at the Institut Superieur de Design, all projects were ending up with an industrial product or transportation design solution. Today’s user needs end up with hybrid needs that include industrial design solution but also a variety of other needs like communication, knowledge, social interaction. Industrial design has become a part of a whole business design process and is no more the central object.
As design focus shifts to user experience it becomes a truly multi-disciplinary field. The reason is simple: people’s life experience is not only about material satisfaction but emotional, political, social and cultural commitments as well. People are not machines to swallow industrial mass production. They are all different and aspire to different things.
Some would argue that people need value for money and we must answer their basic needs before thinking about emotional design and social commitment. That’s true, but you must also remember that we are in India. India is a country of social experiment where religion, family or social identity often sweeps the whole attention to the detriment of basic necessity. Value for money is good, but then we must redefine what values are more important and this is based on user research. This is what I am trying to do with More & More consumer trends reports (www.kovent.com/more). To redefine design values for the Indian market. This approach has been widely explored in western countries and it would take a much larger way in India where social diversity in more important.
I no more believe in industrial design and take the pledge that business design is the future of design. Business design is the only way we have to reorganize businesses based on user experiences. Business design is about understanding people’s user experience and fulfill this experience simultaneously from multiple channels such as industrial design, information technology, social and cultural ventures, media, etc. That looks conceptual but it has become an economical reality. For example: If Nokia doesn’t do well today in the market, it is not because they are not able to design value for money mobile phones. It is because they neglected the devices compatibility with the million of applications available on the market. They stuck to the mobile phone manufacturing when people were actually seeking software compatibility, networkability and social interaction. Industrial design helps differentiate one mobile phone from the other, but that’s all it does. Business design on the other hand works on the relationship that customers share with their devices. In the automobile industry too this is happening, and will soon happen on a larger scale.
What’s the scope of automobile design in India?
India is where the future of automobile design will be and for two reasons: Innovation comes from the younger generation — the average population in India is pretty young compared with the rest of the world. Second, the context of mega-cities and urban development in India is unique and would require very specific transportation systems.
The scope of automobile design in India lies in “system integration”.
Being in Bangalore I keep hearing, “I will login from home today”. What does it mean? There’s so much traffic on the road that companies prefer to have their employees work from home. Now if we analyze this from a transportation perspective, you’ll find that the real competitor for a brand of car, bus or airline, is not another means of transportation, but the Internet.
System integration in transportation is not only about optimizing all transportation systems, but also optimizing the compatibility with non-transportation systems as such as the Internet, media, mobile phones, GPS, drive-in services, hardware and software etc. This means we don’t need to create cars that do everything but to create cars that are compatible with everything. That would be a wonderful challenge for Indian designers.
Tell us a bit about your role as visiting faculty at DYPDC?
My role was to expose the students to the skills of user research. Basically interact with users to gather information for re-designing or creating innovations from scratch. They went through the complete user research process, whereby they could understand each and every step of design analysis to conceptualization through practical exercises. It is quiet frustrating for a young designer to think about research when creating a design. They often prefer to think they just need to be creative and that would help sell the product. However, industries don’t work that way today.
The students realized the benefits of user research when they applied it to their own projects at the end of the week. Few of the teams presented design concepts that were very much focused and refined from the user’s perspective. Their design directions were presented with user observation, videos and interviews they captured in the city. I believe that DYPDC will make a difference to automobile user research in India.
What are your thoughts about DYPDC? About what it is trying to achieve?
The success of DYPDC would depend on their ability to change the way we consider automobile design and create something new in the market. I have been working in France and in India under typical Indian and American management. I have seen what are the strengths and weakness of these different cultures.
Let me tell you what the biggest challenge in India is today. Indian designers can understand users better than anyone. The reason is simple: India is so diverse in terms of culture, behaviour and needs that most Indians have developed this natural ability of adapting to others and accepting their logic of functioning.
However, creativity and implementation is a constant issue. Firstly there is always this fear of creating something new or hydrid. Creating something new has the consequence of shadowing something less new. Indirectly innovation leads to the destruction of our tradition. It is an ethnical issue. Indians are rightly concerned about that, and need to be fixed with new design values. Secondly, Indians have the Sufism of life. They love to experience intellectual uncertainty, explore knowledge and possibilities. But design has to become a reality if we want to reach the excellence of innovation.
European designers have mastered this approach of opening all doors to the “unseen” and quickly coming back to a commercial reality with concrete design solutions. This approach of creativity has to mature and become routine in India too.
With respect to all cultures today, the world’s best design firms are multicultural and students of DYPDC College will naturally find their place to express the best of their Indian cultural identity, competencies and knowledge.
I wish them all the best.
These are good times at DYPDC Center for Automotive Research and Studies. A lot is happening and it is happening quickly. It’s only been a fortnight since the undergraduate and postgraduate program in automobile design began and we’ve already had some of the best in the field of design interacting with our students.
First up was Prof. Mahendra Patel, who spent two days with our students teaching Visual Order. He covered topics like Harmony, Rhythm, Balance and Contrast. The time he spent with the students helped them immensely in understanding visual order and its extremely important role in design. A little about him : Prof. Patel is one of the finest teachers of Design today. He has been a faculty with National institute of Design, Ahmedabad for the past 39 years. He also conducts workshops and training programs at Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda; Srishti College of Arts and Design, Bangalore, Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad, Industrial Design Center, IIT Mumbai, and Indian Institute of Crafts, Jaipur. 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, he is serving as adjunct faculty member at the Symbiosis Institute of Design (SID) and MIT Institute of Design, both of which are in Pune. He recently won the Gutenberg International Award for his contribution in font designing for Indian scripts, and map design and signage design for Indian cities.
We also have on our campus Mr. Patrick Roupin and Mr. Nicola Crea.
Mr. Patrick Roupin is an award winning Belgium designer. He holds a Masters degree in product engineering design from the ISD – Supinfocom Group, Valenciennes / Pune. He won the Designer for Real World – Victor PAPANECK Prize in 2004. Patrick formerly worked as a usability specialist for one of the world’s leading usability companies in India. He has also worked as a product designer with companies such as Decathlon and Faurecia in France. He’s doing some very interesting workshops with our students, which are mainly focused on social experiments.
Mr. Nicola Crea is a design manager and consultant for product development, who has worked with great automobile companies like Pininfarina Concept Institute, Fiat, Mercedes-Benz cars and Giannini. In 1992, he ventured into designing of boats and motorcycles and started his own consultancy, “Victory design”, which is an engineering studio devoted to yacht design. From 2006 to 2008, he headed CISME (Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi sulla Mobilità Ecosostenibile), research center of studies on sustainable mobility. He is also the coordinator for all design activities for Tulton, a company that specializes in development of new products. He is a professor at the University of Chieti, and regularly collaborates with the Politecnico di Milano and University of Genoa.
To be among such luminaries has truly been exhilarating for our students, who have eagerly absorbed all that these greats had to offer. Rest assured, it is only going to get bigger, better, and brighter from this point on.
Mr. Patel has won several awards, amongst which the most recent is the highly respected Gutenberg International Award for his contribution in font designing for Indian scripts, and map design and signage design for Indian cities. He was also recognized as the Grand Master of design in 2007 by the Industrial Design Centre of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai. He has worked on font design of six Indian scriptures – Devanagari, Gujarati, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Bengali – and is planning to work on more.
He was gracious enough to answer some of our questions when he was in our campus.
What led you to become a designer?
I was good at drawing right from my childhood. My teachers always encouraged me, which helped me immensely. It helped me gain confidence. And at the advice of a good friend I took fine arts and landed in Baroda to study the same.
When or why did you shift to graphic design?
I finished my graduation and went to join my father’s business. I thought I will help him in his business and pursue painting on the side. However, I soon realized, it wasn’t my cup of tea. I was confused as to what to do in life. So I went to my professor K.G. Subramaniam seeking advice. He said I had two options: either to become an art teacher (which I didn’t want to) or go meet Gera Sarabai, who he said, was looking for people like me. I figured I had nothing to lose so I went to meet her. I gave the interview and showed my portfolio. She really liked my work. She asked me if I would like to join as a graphic design consultant at the National Institute of Design. Although I had no idea what graphic design was, I agreed. Gradually, I turned to letter design and typography. Around that time, Adrien Frutiger from Paris was visiting India. He was interested in exploring Type Design and its opportunities. I had this idea of working with Indian scripts. When I suggested it to him, he appreciated my idea and invited me to work with him in Paris. I learned a lot while working with him.
What is it that you like most about DYPDC?
I appreciate your sharp focus on Automobile Design. There is also a heavy emphasis on research and development, which is evident from your workshop, prototyping and testing facilities. I am also very impressed by the approach towards education, the way it is so practical in nature.
What according to you is the best design?
The best design is the one where the designer goes unnoticed. It should have a strong service focus, user purpose, and functional design. Design should provide uniqueness and an individual identity to businesses. One thing that bothers me is that we are still imitating the West when it comes to design, but we don’t understand that there design has become an art form, while here it still needs to be functional first.
What’s your one advice to aspiring designers?
My advice to them would be learn the fundamentals first and then experiment. And always keep your eyes open to all the changes taking place around you.
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