Chapters and more chapters

A chapter is nearing its close. And another is about to begin.

Unfinished stories have totally different charm. Perhaps that’s the secret of sad stories too…. Impact is about a lingering feeling, something that stays with you. Happy ending don’t leave lingering thoughts, incomplete stories do, and the final proof that we are all intrinsically optimistic is that sad stories linger in us for long. Cause perhaps we all try to find think and restructure the story to see all the ‘could be’ endings

Unfinished stories… may be this chapter will be an incomplete chapter.

Incompleteness is perhaps a formula for creativity.
I learnt the rules in design school, gestaults laws: give a person an incomplete visual, and the mind attempts to complete it
I saw the same in my research on humor in products where just a part of a product is all that’s needed to convey the form.
Questions… are incomplete by themselves, they need answers, and thus questions too, remain the base of creativity.

In life does incompleteness spin the same magic?

Needed to write this down.

After a particularly bad presentation the other day, my mentor came upto me and said:

" You had many sketches, perhaps too many. you see, if you imagine that there is a target in front of you, what you have done is shoot many many arrows in the periphery, i want you to shoot fewer arrows, but as close to the target as possible"

I felt bad, but it got me thinking.

In design, can/ do we ever 'aim and fire'? i mean, unlike the board exams, or a sales number, a new design is not a perceivable target, so one has to shoot blind. We shoot many arrows hoping one may accidentaly hit the right target. The target sometimes, if we are lucky, appears before us in the form of a mirage or 'inspiration' and we can only hope to catch that glipse of the mirage for long enough to be able to aim and fire!

...

There are two kinds of people in this world:

Those who sketch

And those who can't.

and this time it CARS!

Yesterday was a day dedicated to cars!

I had dropped over at a friends place for breakfast... though this time it was breakfast with sketching classes! So while my friend busily sketched car after car explaining the importance of contrast, variation in line pressure, and using perspetive rather than isometry... i was completely distrated by the TV in front of us cause 'Too Fast Too Furious' was playing...and though its not really MY type of movie, my dratted cousin has managed to condition me to like it!... so between looking at a car being sketched, and seeing some mad car chases on TV, we both realized that we were getting late for the 'Seoul Motor Show' !

So now we set off for the one hour long journey to 'Kintex' where the motor show was being held.
Reached Kintex, and after a long walk though the parking area ( which incientally was also like a motor show for me - except without the crowd and model!) ... soon ... we reached inside. It was ONE big hall as opposed to our Indian multiple hall Expo.

Well to be honest, going to a motor show ( for me) is a bit like visiting a zoo. Only that perhaps in a zoo i'm more familair with the creatures on displaywhile in an auto expo, i am a little more at sea! But on the whole, people behave pretty similarly in both these places!! so as we moved from cage to cage ( read 'brand to brand') i was really trying to get a fix on the design identity of the various brands and how they differenciated themselves from each other. I heard a lot about 'wheel arches', super-cars, hydrogen fule cell cars missing 'b' pillars from my friend, and also managed to notice a lot of whacky rear view mirrors and LED experiments with headlights... quite a mind swim!

All in all, it turned out to be a far better experiance than i had expected. Some cars actually caught my attention and amazement,like:

'Altica' Renault-Samsung concept car
http://aving.net/usa/Exhibition/default.asp?mode=read&c_num=41606&SP_Num=73&mn_name=exhi&BTB_Num=136

the hyundai QarmaQ - a full plastic body concept car in association with GE plastics
http://news.windingroad.com/concept-cars/geneva-motor-show-hyundai-qarmaq-concept-goes-for-whalebones-safety/

and of course... the mini cooper ( one of the few cars with a MALE model!)

Came back home feeling good and tired. So maybe cars arn't that boring after all!

Patterns

One of the scariest feelings is realizing how similar you are to your parents!

And whats even scarier is that one can never see this similarity until its too late! Similar mistakes, similar triumphs, and lives led almost on that invisible line of fate.

Fate? i NEVER believed in it. And who am i kidding, i still don't. But i think we are all programmed to see patterns,we love it when we detect a pattern in anything... differnt people do differnt things with the patterns they see... 'scientififc people' notice patterns in an accurate manner and turn their onservations into scientific theories, artists tweek and exaggerate the patterns they see in life so that they communicate better... and some of us see patterns and start forseeing the future... we take the pattern to its next predictable level, and know exactly
whats about to happen... or at least we would like to think so!

'markers' of time!

Been some time again since i wrote...
I did something yesterday which i had spared myself from doing for a long time... ironing clothes... i had left the jeans for the end bit... and while ironing then i noticed how much thier color had changed since i had bought the pair.. i could see around the seams how much darker they used to be... and how with all the fading i liked the pair more and more...
nostalgia...
perhaps 'markers' of time...are more valuable than we admit..
There are so many little things we look at, that are just affirmations that 'yes time has past'... like sandal tans.... faded scars... length of hair... white hairs...
This reminds me that while doing research on bicycle customisation... it suprised me how much a flaw like a dent or a scratch made people know thier bike more than any other means of personalisation! slowely i noticed that Many people actually know thier products by the product's flaw, a flaw that occuered by a mistake, or through some funny incident... anyhow, that flaw becomes a 'marker' of time.. and something 'of your own'... in a world of mass production, and identical pieces... perhaps the few things that we still have control over are flaws, and those flaws make things our own!

Season of Lurve !

Everything intertwined…

Ever noticed that while talking to someone with music playing in the background, at a moment of pause in the conversation, the song playing mysteriously says a line that seems to be in continuation with the conversation you were just having? well, when it happens one tends to just laugh it off.

This happens to me more often with books. Sometimes when I read it feels like the book is telling my own story in an allegorical manner!.. When I had just entered Design School, I had also just begun reading Harry Potter. And the similarities were eerie! While Harry Potter had the strangest course material buying list, I too had to go out, and buy A3 sunlit bond paper, French curves, half imperial ivory sheets….things I had not even heard of! The whole struggle between the ‘muggles’ and the witches, and the children of muggles Vs the children of witches…. I too was noticing that some people were from artist/ creative families while some were from families who still could not understand WHAT their child was paying good money to ‘study’! So, by crazy association, I fashioned all of us to be witches and wizards of sorts!

And now its happening again… I’m reading a book with three stories intertwined. One a fairy tale, one of the past, and one in the present ( the past of the auther now!) and I can’t help but feel that there is a fourth ! My present, my Right Now! I read every chapter with baited breath, read the three stories and almost and feel my own building itself alongside!
Scared to reach the end of this book!

Flowers for a change!

Really liked these images.

they are actually Xrays! Never thought a rose could look so good!

You can see more images at www.bmyersphoto.com

Scrappy sketching

Needed to sketch a dragon.

And this is the first ridiculous sketch i made. I made many more dragons after this sketch, but this scruffy guy remained the favourite!

Its strange, most often things that happen without intent turn out better than when the things that happen with huge effort and intent! 

color sound and light

I decided NOT to listen to music today..

So it was a strangly silent day..... Except, I heard some sounds that i had never heard before! Like after I got myself a cup of coffee, Ii was holding against my cheek to warm my face, and I could hear a sound like shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I realized that it was the sound of the little froth bubbles bursting!

Color, Sound and Light define ones mood. Primerily.
Around 20 minutes after midnight this new year i felt close to magic. The colors then were deep blue, warm orange.. no maybe glowing yellow, and brown.... there was the distant sound of waves, the creaking of weak floorboards, faraway music and sparse conversation. I was at a beach, and a friend had found a creaky old wodden plank bridge over a small riverett. The bridge was lined with star-shaped lanterns that were glowing deep yellow. I had just stepped out of the water after a crazy midnight swim... slightly cold, but the light was so warm.
That half an hour was pure magic.

And all these little moments when one sees a brilliant color, hears a soft sound, feel a little cold, and then warm again.... make up for all the rest of the loud keyboard sounds, high heel clatter, cell phone brauls, 2 degrees delhi winter, a grey and off-white office, a blue tinted glass that kills all golden light.

and then magic happens again. 

Years

Maybe its just my mood...
but in choosing an appropriate font for 'years' for some work.... first i just went on reading 'years' as 'tears'... and then after looking at many many font options, the word itself looked alien! all judgement went out the window... How do graphic designers deal with this... or do they never face this problem!

Well then i thought its the year end .. and maybe my last post this year, so i could leave the image here and see if ANYbody else sees 'years' as 'tears' and if they after a point are convinced that the spelling's all wrong!

My mood...
Why are these years just bliping by? years used to be so much longer before!And now like my company, even i have begun thinking in 2-3 year blocks... a year is too short!Maybe my new year resolutions/ and goals too can span out over a couple of years.... that would be good seeing that none of this years goals came through really!.... so i can start this 'carryover' of dreams... like in a multiplication sum!

But if i can have my way... i'd like my next year to be like the '7th year in the 2nd row' its normal... but in a dyslexic way!

Happy New Year! 

brr

yup, and now i'm back into my sweaters and cold hands and cold feet and pink nose... 

Many ghosts

I have finally begun to believe in ghosts.

Memories are ghosts.
And they really are like what fantasy and myth say they are like - they fade in and fade out, they are transluscent, they sometimes haunt us when we are awake, and even more when we are asleep.

dreams ARE a really crazy place... its perhaps the only place where we arn't bound by time!

Memory of a previous life

Its amazing how TIME plays a central role in humor. Humor presupposes the knowledge of a past, or the knowledge of the expected consequence. Since humor is derived out of something unexpected it is obvious that there IS something expected to begin with!

In this context, i find that Re-Use products add an entirely new category to humor in products.
This is because we relate to certain forms in a set context. When that same product is used in a COMPLETELY different context, the memory of it's ..shall we say 'previous life' adds a smile!

Humor in Products

Back to my pet topic - product-humor.

The plan is categorize and understand different ways in which products create humor, and how product-humor plays a role ( if any) in today’s world.

Been thinking-thinking about how to go about my research for some time... been collecting images too, and with every new product-humor' image that I find, I am able to find more basis for categorization.Studying and understanding humor is a lot like studying and understanding art... there's limitless categorization, a lot of subjective judgment, and a lot of personal bias, - and lastly a lot of that scary question " so what?"

I realize what I am doing is a lot of 'translation' is I may call it that. I’m looking at techniques of humor in other mediums such as language, and film, (such as puns, paradox, parody etc) and seeing how that technique is used in products to result in humor.

Like a paradox in a product is perhaps when the product presents an impossible situation…. (Courtesy 100% design)











A pun… a Time-Table (courtesy Juanico)



















And like wise… The search is getting more exciting.
So anyone out there, if you ever come across a product that makes you smile/ laugh/ or just tilt your head…. Please do pass it on!

traffic jam

its pretty strange how weather can effect EVERYTHING!

i was stuck in a traffic jam today for the first time on my way to work.
Background:
i travel by a rickety bus for around one hour to reach office. The usual scenario is like this...
70% of the people are catching up on their last bits of sleep before another dreary day at work
20% are trying to read the newspaper
8% just listen to the radio
2% think about various things, like what they should have said when so-snd-so said that, how the dinner was yesterday, what work is lined up today, methods of poisoning the whole RnD dept etc...
but by and large 100% of the people are in a semi crabby state of mind.

So today when we settled into what looked like a never ending traffic jam, i was curious to see what would everybody do....
but the weather was more than perfect, - it was a little clowdy, a slight cool late october breeze, and the whole world looked light blue....

and the bus transformed!
people jumped out of the bus to go for a walk, smoke a bit, a few started making plans for the bus to take a detour and never reach office, a few bumped up the volume of the radio... jokes about delhi traffic etiquette

Everybody was almost disappointed when the traffic cleared, and the day was back to normal again!

Nightmares

Time and again one realizes that 'abstract associations' are the crux of design. In design one is constantly searching for abstract associations/ metaphors that are very close to being universal so that the product's semantics are communicative.

Now, why I've named this blog 'nighmares' is because I have been having too many of them for the past five nights. And I usually tend to remember my dreams... So, what's skriking me, now that I am forced to think about it, is the amount of abstract association that plays in dreams. When one sits to analyze a dream... It actually often makes sense, and it astounds ME that it was MY mind that conjured up THAT mix of metaphors and story... and it actually HAS meaning!

Since fear has been central in my dreams lately... I've been trying to read the metaphors like:
losing teeth - fear of aging?
losing clothes - vulnerability?
losing hair - fear of loss of beauty?
snakes...

well there's more... But the point here being that perhaps dreams HAVE a higher connect with 'reality'. Ones OWN reality. Storyteller have understood this connect between 'dream' and 'reality' since time... What I was wondering was that can this have any value while 'storytelling through products'?

creativity and honesty - a link

Also i wonder why i can't keep my blogs clear of personal angst.
I almost feel jealose of the very interesting and purely 'idea oriented' blogs that i see.

but then a thought stuck me... a strange thought...

... that 'creativity' is the highest form of 'honesty'... ok, iknow that sounds outrageous.. but let me see if i can put my thoughts across... that creative people use their freedom with honesty or lack of inhibitions as their fuel... and thats whats different about them,.... musicians write about love, heartbreak, protest etc... its very bare emotion centric... artists make paintings about normal people and snippets of their life.. or pour their love for god, onto the canvas... film makers..( some) rely on telling 'honest' stories... either illustrating crazily real and quirky people, or about honest magical dreams... but whats the common person about creative thought is that it reveals a nakedness of emotion, and truth, that even they don't show to themselves......

makes any sense?

another chapter

my fear actually is that i have forgotten how to write.

its been too long. in fact the fear is that everything will sound the way it is sounding... very vague, too self consious... and utterly boring.

but there is so much to say... a whole new chapter ( if i can call it that) has written itself..., life had become so incredebly dull ... that i think i dove into a ready plot of tragidy!

Its strange how hungry people can sense each other... by hungry here i mean nothing explicit.... i mean people with intricate fault.. people who need people.. people who mess things up, people who can help each other, people who end up just doing again, what they were trying to run away from.... patterns do repeat. And everytime they do, i wonder if it was cause i was running away from it, or was it cause i was running towards it...

One thing i like about now, is that this is perhaps the first time i am walking away with no albatros of guilt.