POOL/ DesignIndia Editorial

The new year has become a time to make jokes about everyone’s resolutions. We tend to expect new year resolutions to fail, and most do. However, they usually fail because they are not the right resolutions. They are too vague, or someone tells you to change something, but you are not convinced, or you really don’t have a plan to execute the resolutions.

Though trust seems to be the foundation of being likeable, employable, awardable, and many other things in life, no one teaches us how to gain trust or become trustworthy. The internet, of course, is full of advice on how to build trust.

It is your response to winning or losing that makes you a winner or loser. Every award or competition will always have more winners than entries. This is so by design and this is what makes winning meaningful. This also raises the bar. Every year we see better work and presentations – more attention is paid to images and language. This was the main reason we started bringing out a dedicated winners’ issue. We also decided on a hardbound book format that can be retained as reference material. These books get read by many more people than an average DesignIndia issue.

Winners always respond in extreme ways – either a very confident “We knew we would win” or a disbelieving but ecstatic “We didn’t think we could win!”

I have been part of a business network for over a year now and have had the opportunity to observe hundreds of tiny businesses from very close. I’ve come to realize that business learnings from big companies could help these small businesses grow. One significant difference between big and small businesses is planning. Big businesses always plan and invest huge resources in getting ready for business. Most small businesses are acts of daring, and they start on the back of confidence and encouragement and not much else. Some of them succeed, but most remain small. It is like jumping into water because you are confident that you will get through to the other side.

Having lost a recent society election, I felt horrible and was surprised to notice how my reaction was similar to losing a project in the studio. So, I started wondering if there was a way to learn from losing, and this is what I figured out…

Frankly, I am thrilled to be working from home. Work from home for designers is not an alien concept. It starts during our hostel life, where more work gets done in your room than in your studio. More work happens at night than in the day.

We have decided to work from home for as long as possible. However, some of us do visit the studio for meetings or presentations once in a while. I feel some discipline, some planning, and some tools make DFH an absolute pleasure.

It is becoming more and more apparent that any startup needs to have designers on board to be successful. Irrespective of what the startup is about or which domain it concerns, the design perspective of empathy helps them focus, differentiate, and build a transparent business model. Besides designing the product and service, professional designers offer many other benefits.

No matter how young you are or how small your design practice, you can always vie for a design award. There are many different kinds of design awards, from local to national and international; some are very specific awards, while others are very inclusive.

We are passing through a crisis yet again, or maybe it is just changing. While we are used to systemic jumps in our digital lives and conveniences, we still like our physical world to stay largely unaltered. In that sense, this change seems like a crisis. What can design as an activity do in such a situation? While the crisis is making us adapt to a new way of life, new social behavior in almost all spheres, the way we work, the way we travel, the way we get our food or coffee, I believe it is the designers, innovators, and thinkers (creative people) who have to help people normalize and adapt to change. That’s a big responsibility.

Institutes and colleges need to focus hard on building the design attitude amongst their students. Young designers need to believe that they can change the world. They need to aim higher, and attempt the impossible with confidence because that is the only way the impossible does become possible. Students would start questioning early on: what does it mean to be a designer? How does a designer behave? How are designers different from other social beings? What does it mean to be a professional designer? How is being a designer different from being an engineer or an artist? These are great questions that need introspection at a very early age.