Demand good designers!

The first batch of students at JKLU’s Institute of Design have graduated. They would be given their certificates in their first ever convocation on 23rd Nov at the JKLU campus at Jaipur. 20 hand-picked students just out of school joined JKLU’s design school that was just starting off. But JKLU ‘s reputation for providing an honest education with a new current curriculum, that is fresh and robust had travelled through the grapevine, by word of mouth. Otherwise, how do you explain 20 students from as far flung places like Kalyani and Rajnandgaon place their faith on a brand new institute at Jaipur?

While most of them have taken up full time jobs, most employers have just begun to see that the quality of graduates are different from any of the other schools. What is different about our graduates? Many things.

Our graduates are critical thinkers.

No university gives Communication and critical thinking inputs to all their design students, amounting to 6 credits. Three years of continuous inputs, make them sensible, sensitive, discerning designers! Our Centre for Communication and Critical thinking prepares our students for the big bad world. And they become experts in applying Systems thinking to projects that go beyond making pretty products and graphics.

Our graduates are empathetic.

When confronted with a situation, our graduates are quick to understand the user and their ways of using products and systems. This is well illustrated by projects done in the area of visually impaired, products and apps for the elderly for medications, safe toys for children and sustainable solutions for packaging. They understand people.

Our graduates are versatile.

Do you go to a product designer for design and engineer for production? Do you like traditional printing systems but love contemporary design? Do you have to explain back-end and front-end in two different ways to an engineer and a designer. Not any more, with classes shared with the students in Technology and Management schools, students understand dealing with the unknown. The inter-disciplinary courses help different professionals to understand each other.

They are fresh, but experienced.

True. Our graduates have gone through 6 to 8 weeks of intense internship in an industry or a design firm at the end of 6th semester. They worked on a systems design project for 10. weeks on site for an industry spread over three locations in the country to prescribe solutions for niggling problems. Following that a 4 to 6 months of a graduation project, where they work almost independently on a real life project. Besides , some work on their own and design projects for clients. They come with fresh ideas but also with real life experience.

How many designers do you go to?

You get your product designed by a product designer and packaging by a packaging designer, graphics by a graphic designer and a website by a web designer. Or you come to JKLu’s Interdisciplinary designers, from the first and the only truly interdisciplinary design programme. Our students have done documentation of history, branding for a start up, exhibition for jewellery brand, showrooms for a store and super graphics for a space. Can you beat that?

Not just pencils, pixels too.

We respect and worship the analog. Hand drawn type design, hand bound publication, are some of the projects done by our Integrated communication design students. They also work on shooting, editing and presenting videos for communication, design fonts on a software and develop online publication. ” Integrated” , the pencil with the pixel, the analog with the digital.

Everyone’s invited

Come visit our campus. Feel the energy. Meet our students. You will be pleasantly surprised. Want a good designer? Look no further. Or else demand this from the other schools as well. It is the only way for design to go.

India’s seat at the World Design table

The election of Prof Pradyumna Vyas as President-elect of the newly constituted board of the World Design Organisation (WDO) is a historic moment for Indian Design. Winning along with him as a member of the Board is the designer from Bangalore, Sonia Manchanda. Both are deserving candidates. Candidates, who spend considerable time in influencing international bodies. This brings design in India to the centre stage of the world design phenomenon. India is slowly but surely coming on its own after years of following western concepts of what design is all about.

Pradyumna with his years of experience as a designer and then as the Director of the famed National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad has been seen to influence policies while heading different design committees in the CII (Confederation of Indian Industries). He has been promoting the use of Design amongst Indian industries thereby getting more opportunities for the designers his institute trained them for. His passion for international design grew as he fanned out to participating and judging international design competitions, world over. His education experience as NID’s Director makes him an ideal choice for the role.

Sonia is a designer from Bangalore heads SPREAD, a design firm with a difference. While working on commercial graphic design work, her team also spent considerable time in promoting design amongst the influencers and decision makers. A assiduous foot soldier, she is the face of new design professional in India : ready and raring to go.

Pradyumna Vyas and for that matter, Sonia Manchanda as well, are representatives of the new emergent India. The one that demands its seat at the table, so as to influence policies and influence agendas of different governments. The India that brings a lot of professionalism to their work. The India that demands good design . The India that goes beyond the brief when it comes to making things better.

They have task set for themselves. To be able to use their positions to bring Indian design to the global fore. Showcase India’s design work in developing crafts, not just manufacturing industries, as our strength. To promote use of design amongst social milieu and beyond businesses. To make projects be planet-centric, not just people-centric. To project quality education of designers, and not quantity. To bring the world to our doorsteps and to get foot-at-the door of the world’s design bodies. To do all these we need to meet and impress upon the world as to what we are capable of.

Indian designers have to work along with Pradyumna and Sonia to see them succeed in bringing Indian design to the world stage and bring the world to our table. ADI, the apex body of design professionals that I head as President, is committing to work with both of them to build the Indian design ecosystem.. To be able to suggest alternative design idioms, to influence industries for good sustainable practices and products, to give design education a boost it deserves and to usher in a welcome change to the society at large.

WDO is invited to join the celebration of Design in India. Let the festivities begin!

Design Policy 2.0 for India.

Another upgraded version of the India Design Policy is scheduled to be released on the next Independence Day. What should it aim at? What should it have? Who will benefit from this? I have put together a few bullet points just as ADI, the professional body of Designers, is putting together details. I would be happy to present this to the ministry as President of ADI-NEC, but there are some personal favourites of mine which may not reflect the majority view. So, here goes my wish list:

1. Promoting the value of design. 
2. Creating a more supportive environment for design. 
3. Empowering designers. 
4. Promoting design entrepreneurship. 
5. Celebrating design excellence. 
6. Connecting designers with businesses and projects.

1. The India Design Policy announced in 2011 was good for a profession getting up on its feet. But it has become mostly dated and needs a fresh look at the definition of Design itself. Design has moved on from being just a profession making pretty products and communication and we need to define the description and the impact as to what Design can do.
2. The India Design Council is now practically defunct and needs new infusion of people. and finance. It should be also given teeth and muscle. This will come only if the council has relevant, well-meaning design professionals are given an opportunity to serve in it.
3. There is a need to promote the value of design in India. Many businesses and organizations still do not understand the importance of design, and this can hinder the growth of the design industry. Design needs to be seen as a strategic investment that can help businesses to improve their products, services, and bottom line.
4. The new NIDs that have come up as a result of the recommendations from the DESIGN POLICY 1.0 need to be upgraded and must be brought to par with NID Ahmedabad. A revamp of course contents and new programme disciplines should be advised to NID Ahmedabad.De
5. The profusion of Design schools in Universities all over the country is a case for celebration and doubt. The reason why it’s professing is because it is being seen as the ‘flavour of the season” and it does not have any regulators. Getting a new regulator is like shooting on your foot. You are exposing yourself to interference and inspection. It will be like returning to the license Raj’. How about a self -regulating body of educators, professionals and officials from the ministry who will rule on them? It will have the blessings of the admission-seeking aspirants.
6. Govt of India needs to invest more in design education and research in order to produce a skilled and innovative workforce. This could be done by establishing research centres in design institutes like Atal Incubation Centres and by providing financial support for design projects.
7. The Good-Design Mark should have more new categories and expanded, qualified and sensible. It should have a budget for publisizing the event.
8. The policy should mention the fact that there should be an autonomous body or a ministry of design that would contribute to the projects and strategies that the government proposes. Just as the environmental ministry is a consultative minitysry that sanctions clearances for mega projects.
9. Designers should be able to negotiate a better tax regime for design consultancies. A reduced GST for professional design projects, a tax-break for design-led industries and a mega fund for subsidising design projects.
10. The govt must encourage international collaborations in Design and make it easier for designers to get global connections through the offices of the external affairs ministry and help in visas and work permits.
11. The government could create platforms that connect designers with businesses. This would help to ensure that designers have the opportunity to showcase their work and get their ideas into the marketplace.
12. Design for industry and economy cannot be the only yardstick for measuring the success of design intervention. Social impact through design must be included as well.
13. The government must encourage creating Indian designer brands that can go global, Potential brands / designers must be identified and encouraged by subsidising exports etc,,
14. Designers should be called upon to work on global issues like climate change, sustainability, waste management, health, etc., and should be ably supported by the government.
15. The government could create design awards and other initiatives to celebrate design excellence. The Padma awards need to consider designers for thisThis would help to raise the profile of design in India and encourage more people to pursue careers in the field.
16. Industries that produce products that contribute to pollution should be mandated to take on designers on their payrolls and make changes in the design and manufacturing.

These are from my own Wishlist in no particular order, as they should have been. But this will hopefully reach the right corridors of power to be considered when putting together a brand new policy document.

Design students as Corporate Change Makers

Can Corporate changes be brought about by Design? To be precise, by students of design? A few days ago when my students of Design from the Institute of Design presented their ideas to the top leadership of JK Organisation, it felt like a small step for the organisation but it’s a big leap for the students of Design at JK Lakshmipat University at Jaipur.

It doesn’t get bigger than this for our Design students. JKLU’s final year’s students of Interaction Design, Product Design and Interdisciplinary Design got together in their penultimate semester for a Systems Design project to do a joint assignment. Fortunately, at the same time, JK Paper was approaching the Institute of Design for offering an assignment on design thinking.

One thing led to another, and all the 21 students were organised to visit to all three processing plants located in Telangana, Orissa and Gujarat by the top management.

Students began to understand the mega system of the plants and the business, mapped the complex components and their interrelationships by observation, conversations with all the stake holders of the system, documented the processes and listed out the opportunities for design intervention. All the students came back to form groups to organise the massive information they had collected from all the actors in the system.

Photos and documentation by batch of 2019-23, Institute of Design, JKLU, Jaipur, India

They then went on to identify short-comings in the system and focussed on parts of the system, if designed better, will have a ripple effect throughout the plants.

Opportunities were mapped and ideations were done to make the systemic improvements by design. A 150-page document was prepared which was a collection of opportunities mapped and the concepts explained.

The identified opportunities were of an extended range. From giving strategic suggestions for dealing with waste, to designing multi-purpose identity cards, from designing safety shoes to developing  communication devices, from developing better signage systems to color-coding uniforms for staff, the students had a smorgasbord of ideas that are important, creative and implementable.

Some examples:

Students identified the challenge of dealing with waste and suggested a systemic solution of starting a non-profit which will develop paper maché products by hand by the local populace.

Inter-office communication was improved with the design of an IOT-based device.

Signages were designed for clarity and communication to prevent mishaps and mis-directions.

Employees were made to feel safer by incorporating a first-aid kit into their shoes for immediate action.

Employee morale was boosted by organising better systems for storage of personal belongings and better redesign of the canteen space. An app was designed for ordering at the desk from the canteen, avoiding long queues at the eating places.

Employees were identified as to which group they belong colour-coded helmets and uniforms.

A place for giving anonymous feedback was designed to give the employees to be more forth-coming. An experience centre was designed for display and better experience.

The ideas are all documented into a 150-page document and JK Paper’s top leadership are so  convinced about the output of the project, they are going to be implementing these soon.

There are several winners in this project. The JKO will benefit from these plethora of ideas. Students of Institute of Design have the confidence to use their systems thinking prowess in new job roles. JKLU has been able to prove once again, that the Institute of Design is doing cutting edge work. Design is relevant now in more ways than one. It is morphing from  design of artefacts to design of social good. Our students are now getting ready for their new role of Change makers by bringing their systems thinking prowess into newer projects.

Ashoke Chatterjee: Design Guru 2022

Last evening, Professor Ashoke Chatterjee spoke from his heart at the MP Ranjan Memorial Lecture, a design event where he was being felicitated by us as Design Guru 2022 at the JK Lakshmipat University ( JKLU), Jaipur.

Here is my introduction to the man, the event and the context.

DESIGN GURU DAY is an event that has grown from strength to strength. What started as an emotional reaction to Prof MP Ranjan’s passing, has now grown in stature and strength. It’s a day to remember Ranjan’s contribution to Design education and also to choose a design educator who has played a major role in it. Ever since I proposed this idea to the ProVC in 2019, JKLU has been consistent in honouring the heavy weights of Design education. The pandemic and the lockdown, did not deter us a for celebrating Ranjan and felicitating another senior member of the Design community  Professor Ashoke Chatterjee, who is here with us this evening..AC as he is fondly called, stands tall amongst his peers for teaching the design students the importance of empathy, the necessity to have a moral compass that will guide you in your decision-making and the bravado to call a spade a spade.

He believes in the value of Design, just like Ranjan did.  When we approached him for the celebration and his felicitation, he initially refused. He was not too sure about being a ‘guru, because he hardly taught Design. Several e-mail exchanges later, well into the wee hours of the night, he agreed.

I agreed with him, that the term Guru is overused and means different things to different people. However, to our design community, the definition of a Design Guru is not limited to someone who has taught ‘design’. It must, and it does include those people who have influenced design and design pedagogy in meaningful and visionary ways.  Like Ranjan did. Like AC continues to do. Both  have been promoting and evangelising design in all possible forums and conferences.

And AC introduced to us students that, design to our community is not restricted to contributing to business profits but also includes contribution made to the livelihoods of artisans, farmers, and the marginal populace. We have to deal with social issues, sustainability using strategic design management and communication.

There was a time in our country when design, leave alone design education, was hardly known. Sustainability was an emerging idea. In 1977, Prof Chatterjee got the UNIDO and ICSID members to agree to come to Ahmedabad for a 2-day symposium and designers and educators thinkers from world over camp to Ahmedabad to the NID campus and the symposium ended with the historic ‘Ahmedabad Declaration’ by members of UNIDO and ICSID.  The document was about Design’s role in development in India. Professor Ashok Chatterjee was  the person behind this announcement. He reminded everyone about the power of Design and it’s the force that can bring a better quality of life in the developing world. 40 years ago, advocated the idea of local solutions to local problems, which has become the mantra for sustainability today.

What was most needed besides demonstrations of what design can do, was evangelists who could convincingly make a case about the relevance of design and therefore the need to support design education and its graduates to Government and Industry. We are in no doubt at all that AC, you were that evangelist, and you continue to be so.

Your lifelong and single-minded commitment to design and its promotion at every level is very well known to us. You have been our voice. And we continue to count on that voice. Your anguish about the state of design education today undoubtedly stems from that, reminding us, as you have always done, that there is a crisis we must address urgently. Your influence on design education is legendary. Thanks, AC!

Wishing you good health and Godspeed ! Next stop: Padmashree ?

NID Alumni Association features my interview

This is a first for me. To be interviewed about my journey and being featured so prominently on the NIDAA website. Take a look : https://www.alumnid.org/newsroom/news/Gurutwakarshan-Interview-Balasubramaniam.dz

Ethical, enterprising & effective

This article was published today in all the editions of The Statesman: Kolkata, Delhi, Siliguri and Bhubaneswar. My take on where design education is headed.

These are uncertain times. The pandemic is raging, the planet is in crisis and the economy is badly hurt. Solving issues like these need a visionary mindset for long term strategies and beginner’s mindset for creative, immediate solutions. This requires a special kind of problem solving talent. A Designer.

Design is the chosen profession  that solves people’s problems and designers are increasingly seeing their role evolve from a form-giving activity and aesthetics to an involved, informed, problem-solving activity. All professional programmes are going through a churning, with priorities changing each passing day. Design is no different. The face of design is changing so fast that design education is trying to catch up with the requirements of the people and the evolution of this new role.

Design education has been primarily catering to the industry and is predominantly producing specialist professionals to create aesthetic artefacts that please customers and delight users. User-centric products and audience-centric communication are designed by professional designers who are trained to do that. Common design programmes in these institutions include Industrial Design, Graphic Design, Fashion Design and Lifestyle accessories design.

But all these trained professionals are asking themselves searching questions whether this planet needs this. Another chair, another shirt or another fancy object that pleases the eye but pollutes the planet. While conventional design education teaches this, several new institutions, world over are rethinking and repurposing the contents and the pedagogy of design education. New disciplines are emerging that is the need of the hour.

So fashion design is moving  towards sustainable fashion, where you are trained to re-think materials and production processes to see how eco-friendly can the products be. Industrial Design is moving towards environment friendly products that are helping in creating a circular economy.

When the pandemic struck us all, industrial designers applied their talent to produce inexpensive oxygen generators, designed mobile medical facilities, developed products using AI and IOT , re-purposed train compartments into mobile hospitals, thus creating functionally sound and easy to use products catering to people’s requirements.

In the same vein, communication designers dealt with the surfeit of data and visualised them into easy-to-understand graphics and published them to shock and awe. Quick fix videos were made for stitching your own masks, spreading the impact of the pandemic and spreading the idea of healthy living.

The web was crawling with fake news and rumours and technology-led designers found ways to block unwanted messages, show agility and give the users a holistic experience.

How does design education prepare designers for roles like these? Design education has risen to the challenge and has identified required skillsets and mindsets that are incorporated into it.

1. Product Design, not just objects of desire:

Product design education is turning it’s focus from making pretty objects of desire that contribute to the landfills and pollute the planet. Product design education now sits in the meeting point of society, culture and people. Social issues are tackled with equal ease using design thinking. Issues like battery-operated lamps for places without electricity and rollable tanks for providing drinking water to communities are just two examples what product designers are doing to make this earth a better place.

2. Interdisciplinary Design, not specialists but generalists:

Designers are now being trained to work in a variety of projects that showcase the plurality of the profession. They work with techies and managers, and grassroots artisans with equal ease, float new startup ideas and strategise, design a sustainable packaging for products, design campaigns for advertising and activism with same enthusiasm. There is a new discipline of Interdisciplinary Design that is evolved. It encourages a generalist approach rather than work in specialised silos.

3. Interaction Design, beyond UI design:

Designers are being engaged for User interface (UI) design for far too long and have been just pixel pushers. This is now changing to now developing complete experience design of interactions of people with devices, devices with devices like Internet of things, and people to people. Interaction Design is developing into a hot new design discipline.

4.  Communication that integrates the old with the new.

The erstwhile communication designers dealt with pencils and picas, type and colour. Much of these are now available as templates and apps. The new communication design discipline is emerging as a bridge between analogue design and digital design, dealing with effective communication that includes areas like data visualisation, writing and reporting. It includes the moving images like video and film as much as photography. Designers are visually literate and communicate using the written word as much as the image.

To stay relevant design institutes  are re-imagining the curriculum and pedagogy. New institutes of design in India have these new disciplines that are relevant and current. At JKLU, this is being addressed by sensitising the students in developing empathy, equip them with thinking tools like Systems thinking and Critical thinking, giving cross-disciplinary inputs, tech-embedded courses, liberal choice of courses, blended learning and emphasis on excellence.

Students are trained to show high level sense of ethics in developing safe products, responsible communication and immersive user experience and excellent end results. This may be the beginning of a new kind of designer, who will be ethical, enterprising and effective. 

Prof A Balasubramaniam is the Director of the Institute of Design at JK Lakshmipat University, Jaipur. At JKLU, he has put together robust, new-age, Design programmes for UG and PG

Zero to 120 in three years!

The JKLU campus

It was Nov 1st 2018, when I signed up for a role of a Dean who will put together a new Design Institute that would offer design programmes for school-leavers under the JK Lakshmipat University. The University had two institutes: Institute of Engineering & Technology and an Institute of Management already functional since 2011. 

An informal meeting with Pramath Raj Sinha in Ahmedabad at NID’s VIP guest house and Asheesh Gupta, Pro VC of JKLU was the beginning of this exciting journey.

 We recruited young change makers as faculty. Reimagined the disciplines. Created curriculums that are contemporary and were co-created with Industry and academic stalwarts. Three distinct disciplines were launched: Product Design, Interaction Design and Inter-disciplinary Design. The new menu of options caught the attention of aspiring students of Design. 

From zero in 2018, we have a hundred and twenty students on campus, chosen for admissions by a thorough process. Besides getting students from top cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore, we also have students from Dehradun, Nagpur, Pune, Bhopal, Guwahati and even smaller towns like Rajnandgoan, Kayankulam and Kalyani. We have three batches of satisfied students having come from some of the best schools across the country.

Our interdisciplinary approach has yielded very interesting and engaging results. Every student gets inputs in Communication and Critical Thinking. Design students get an opportunity to take elective courses in Technology and Business. Students are encouraged to participate in international competitions. Their work gets publicised.

An installation by students

We expanded our portfolio, this year to include another unique programme: Integrated Communication Design that has been reimagined  and co-created with industry stalwarts. The programme has been put together ground-up  for the digital era.  We also launched our unique M Des programmes in Product Design and Interaction Design with three optional exits. The modular approach has given our students the confidence in the programmes.

Helping them achieve their goals is a set of committed faculty members, who have been hand-picked for academia. All of them are from premium institutions like NID Ahmedabad and IDC, IIT Bombay and bring with them years of professional practice and academic rigour.

And the students get the benefit of senior professionals, star academics and international visiting faculty for specialised courses.

All this has helped in creating a unique institute offering unique programmes. Remember that we have had only 9 months of face-to-face classes and the rest during the pandemic as online classes! The faculty and the students rose to the challenge and in the process, we have mastered some noteworthy pedagogy. We had signature sessions with professionals online, coming from various parts of the world from Berlin to Baroda, Singapore to Seattle. This helped in bringing an international flavour to our programme.

Prof MP Ranjan, NID’s Design Guru holds a special place in my heart. We are proud to host the personal collection of Prof MP Ranjan’s books. Housed in our campus as a Design Resource Centre, it is open to all scholars and students for use.

We have also celebrated his birth anniversary as DESIGN GURU DAY and in the three years have honoured Prof Vikas Satwalekar, Prof Don Norman and Ms Judy Frater as Design Gurus. THis event that had humble beginnings is now an international event that celebrates design educators, starting with Prof MP Ranjan.

Now, we are headed for a gearing up for the next level. Raise the bar. Showcase our potential and attract more of people like us.

We are ready to change gears.

Devil in the Design Detail

This is the kind of mistake, we dread whenever you are filling up an online form. Especially on important websites, like online banking, passport office, Income Tax or admissions to prestigious national institutions.

Siddhanth Batra, a rank holder in the run-up to a prestigious seat at IIT Bombay was admitted, based on merit. Having received the course of his choice, he clicked on an innocent button on the site, which he was supposed to click, if he wants to withdraw from future consideration of seats. Having registered for a programme of his choice, he clicked on it, thinking he need not be considered for further programmes. He did not realise that he had rejected the offer by clicking on it.

A nightmare for every online customer, came true. A badly designed User interaction design led one to a disastrous consequence.

Each one of us have faced these circumstances. Personally, I am forever cursing bad UI designers whenever I am online. I am never sure, if I should click on Login or Sign in. Should I click on ‘Cancel’, if I am cancelling a subscription or ‘Agree’. My bank fills up details for payment automatically based on previous payments! Why will I repeat a payment? And the endless loops I get into, by clicking on ‘Forgot Password’.

But nothing comes close to what Siddhanth Batra is going through. I sent the link to Design Guru Don Norman, author of ‘ Design of Everyday Things’, Cognitive Scientist and the authority on Interaction Design. He writes:

“It is a violation of well-known design rules:

1. Never allow an irreversible action without checking.
2. Do not combine multiple items in a single yes/no question
3. User test.

Combining two different issues in one question led to the confusion.  
So had the person checked, the response should have been a popup explaining the implications and asking of the person wished to continue.
Someone should tell the lawyers that it was bad design that led to the problem — not the rules!”

Pic Courtesy: jnd.org

Clearly, the interaction designer is at fault. He probably skipped user testing. Or worse, thought of himself as the typical user. Or he doesn’t have the expertise.

But the damage the designer has done to Siddhanth Batra’s career is unforgivable. I hope that Siddhanth’s lawyers are reading this. This post can be reached to him, if you click on ‘ Share’. That’s a click that you would not regret.

Design Guru Day: Episode 5

It was a promise, I made myself in 2015. To celebrate M P Ranjan’s contribution to Design education as the Design Guru Day. I gathered around some friends and colleagues with whom the idea resonated. The rest, the universe conspired to give it to me.

When we honoured Mahendra Patel in 2016, he was available and gracious in accepting the honour. He was visiting the Sushant School of Design and their university’s premises was offered as location by it’s Dean Sreekrishna Kulkarni. Amit Krishn Gulati and his graphic designer wife Monika pitched in with resources for graphics and citations. Ayush Kasliwal made a quick trophy for the occasion. And it was done. Praveen Nahar came form Ahmedabad. So did Ishaan. People were reeling under the sudden announcement of demonetisation on Nov 8th at 8pm. But still the spirit was alive and well. Lots of friends came and thought that it was a good idea. We were all happy about the beginning, but melancholic about missing Ranjan.

There was a stickiness to the idea. In 2017, I approached the university again and was happy to celebrate Sudarshan Khanna’s legacy in toy design. He was the chosen Design Guru for 2017 and was again mounted by the usual gang of Ranjan’s fanboys. Sudarshan’s daughter Surabhi Khanna made a presentation of his work to the audience. The legend got his due.

In 2017, I also wrote to several institutions requesting them to celebrate Nov 9th as Design Guru Day. The World University of Design was the only one that responded., besides Sushant School of Design. The renowned architect AKG Menon was honoured by WUD.

WUD continued on the idea and honoured Architect & Design evangelist Prof Iftekar M Chisti in 2018 and Rajeev Sethi in 2019.

Meanwhile, I joined JK Lakshmipat University and founded the Institute of Design. In 2019, we honoured Prof Vikas Satwalekar at JKLU.

It is Episode V now.

In it’s 5th year, this celebration is going global. Dr Don Norman, Director- Design Lab, UC San Diego has kindly consented to be felicitated. The celebration includes Prof Praveen Nahar, who is now the Director of NID Ahmedabad. The celebrations include a series of presentations by JKLU’s design students. It will conclude with the MP Ranjan Memorial Lecture 2020 by Don Norman, ” To Create a Better Society”.

All are urged to register and join in. Ranjan will be so pleased!