foreign [Music] thank you [Music] good afternoon foreign 75 just one and a half months ago and when rigved asked me to talk about my journey through design I thought there will be no better way than to thank everybody who has helped me in this journey so I'm calling my presentation Thanksgiving Thanksgiving I checked the dictionary definition it's the act of giving thanks especially to God to gratefully acknowledge to favors and benefits we got and I can truly say when I look back at my life the time listening this is my earliest picture the baby you see in the picture is me when I was four months old and sitting next to me is Maria Montessori then start up the Montessori movement that's my father my mother my father education minister of madhya Bharat at that time I was surrounded by gandhiji and gandhijan values ever since I can remember so there she is tell gandhiji's prayer in the morning and the evening in my house and they are like embedded me they are hardwired in me through all my life my father he was a sarvodaya worker he taught me Integrity respecting everybody and he was a writer I used to transcribe for him when he used to say things find attention to detail to every comma and may be full stops so that I learned from my father my mother she taught me the value of taking correct decision based on intuition whether she is cooking but 20 people or whether she is cooking for one person she knew exactly how much salt to put without having to measure it so this ability to take correct decisions without data I learned from my mother my first school was my eldest brother he was first metic student of gandhiji's Italian training school for teachers and this was my first year school a village school he taught all his life in tribal schools and I learned from him how to fully engage with his students I did mechanical engineering from a college in Indore gsti it was called Institute technology and those four years I learned how to be infinitely patient sitting in a class when you understand nothing because IDC actually which changed my life first time I began to enjoy my learning it was the place where we were engaged 24 hours the place was open then I went to Royal College of Art I had no money the scholarship was very very small yet to live on one pound a day I got no haircut in those two years but that made me look like the look which was the look of England at the time I looked like a hippie I had a good fortune at that time sir Misha Blake was the head of the industrial design Department he was the father of British industrial design and Professor Frank height he especially encouraged me Misha Blake was the head of design Research Unit and this symbol is the is which he designed for British Railways is the most copied transport system symbol in the world everybody has copied this idea and created their versions I also learned to design methodology and Innovation from Dr Bruce Archer himself when he conducted a course for us design is not is what you do and not what you have done there was David Herman Powell get industrial designer he used to say don't in design you know nothing till you are 35. this was the same time when the hippies used to say don't trust anybody over 30s so alcohol had a great office department and it is a culture of Freedom so even though you're in industrial design school you could take process courses from other schools and so I chose to learn graphic design from Professor Luke line it was a former art director of Time Magazine any great professor he was conducting a crit for the graphic design students and that time an exhibition of Swiss design was going on so he says this design you do when you get no ideas the great thing in communication design is the power of the idea you must have an idea then you need to communicate these are the projects I did as a student under Professor Loop line is the perfume bottle and a package for color sketch pens if Britain I also learned one-upmanship which is one of the great qualities of British people I always know how to put other people down so when I designed this iron one of my British student friends said it looks like a fish and I could say so what's wrong with the fish yeah Mike natal and John stodart who went on to sound Ideo where my classmates our drawing boards were together for two years continuously we check together Mike Natale designed a lamp and he painted it pink so I just told them come on Mike pink he didn't say anything that time but next day I found he had changed the color so I think his self-confidence were dented somehow but they started this whole momentum of design thinking that comes from for the best design project and that put my search and British integrity because I was just an Indian poor Indian student they could have given me the third or consolation prize also and I would have been happy but they had honesty enough to give the best project the best price it was I was in London from 72 to 74 that was the best time to be in England it was the age of Beatles King's Road was the most fashionable Street in the world it was only five minutes away from Evelyn Gardens where my hostel was so my weekends used to be on King's Road it was the time of Mary quanth who created the manuscript which was a fashion sensation it was the time Bieber was on Kensington High Street Royal College was on Kingston Gore so it's like five minutes walk where these revolutions happened habitat inaugurated in front of me these were new ideas in retail and creating spaces Terence conrum started the corner shop I have seen the inauguration of the first condom shop and arranging retail environments as Living Spaces discussed the first time these ideas were suggested professor natkarni actually took IDC to its greatest Heights through a undp assistance program we invited great designers from throughout the world to IDC and also we were sent upload and for me this was a great opportunity to be in touch with the greatest of the great Professor Arthur poulos was the director of the undp program and from here I among many other things we used to have long talks I learned how to deal with the chairman at the top management of the company because he used to give very valuable tips about it was a design superstar in our time when we were in RCA and students every time a new Hollywood the typewriter came designed by two resources we used to look at every detail about the Perfection and actually because of undp program he came to India for two weeks and I was his counterpart so I took him all around India we went to ujjain when the srivast Mela was going on all the time he was clicking pictures and the truck Graphics The Many Colors the way they are juxtaposed we took like a picture after they came they launched a movement called Memphis and you could see it very clearly the influence of graphics on Memphis so on the left hand side is a Memphis product and right hand side I also tried my hand designing Memphis style so those back side designs they got published internationally everywhere everywhere I never did Memphis style projects afterwards because I spent only 10 days doing those bags and they got published everywhere got so much publicity friends serious design projects require a lot of attention so it's very easy to do trivial session oriented design but to do great design it requires great efforts again the great Japanese designer whose butterfly stole is stole is an icon he runs also I mean he was his father was the founder of meningosaka The Craft Center and in his book The Unknown Craftsman he is written it's impossible to create Beauty and this was first great statements because we are taught in design school to create beautiful objects he said it's impossible to create Beauty because according to Zain philosophy the act of wanting to create something beautiful itself creates condition that no Beauty can be created it brings an artificiality to your creation and finally again I am deeply grateful to Professor for introducing me to Professor sugiura who changed my life and not a single day goes when I don't think about it properly person unless you actually meet him you won't believe it's the greatest designer in the history of mankind ever I've checked on various parameters there is nobody like him so from Deep intuition philosophy to the latest of the latest whatever is happening he has done it again he had his retrospective exhibition 50 years of his book design and another exhibition 50 years of his magazine design and they are like some five five thousand books he has designed and more than 5000 magazines you can imagine with a staff of two in his office and you can imagine the quality of creative output he introduced to me the idea of fractal geometry which led to my deep research on a Hindu temple such factor and some of my most important research Publications have been on Hindu temple such models of a fractal universe and we still remain in touch and discuss very many topics he published a book on conversation with Asian designers accepted so I I published English translation of the book of conversation book letter forms and design in Asia those of you who have not seen it it's a it's a very deep book there's a group of us design teachers who are very concerned that the Asian way of design should grow again in Western design a much inferior idea has taken over the design tradition of our culture and we need to restore the balance introduced me to another great designer and a Lifeline friend Helmut Schmidt the typographer we've been ever since from 1983 we've been good friends helmet's most famous product is this hotel it's a sports drink and whenever he used to come from Osaka to Tokyo in shinkansen used to keep this pokarikin on the window so when I am waiting on the platform to receive him I will immediately find out where helmet is sitting we did workshops with him in IDC also one batch benefited from this Workshop I did an exhibition of his work in Singapore when I was in ADM but for me the greatest honor was when Helmut asked him for the fourth edition of his book typography today he asked me to write the forward and that's for my practice honor so actually I never learned graphic design I'm a mechanical engineer and Industrial designer but I had a great Fortune to learn typography from two of the world's best typographers then I met professori and musashino Art University it's the one who carried he was a student enrolled and he carried the tradition of olme school by opening a department called science of design which showed how industrial design education can be because this institute creates thought leaders for design not design practitioners and he also introduced the idea of visual poetry to me I also meta in Japan I went to Japan for my University scholarship so he was a award winner in brown design competition when I was in Royal College and when I went to Japan I reached out to him and we became good friends he was the overest part of the original Memphis team he created this wrestling ring for sumo wrestling in my classes before ever knowing that masaharia Mori was the designer I used to show what his examples in my design plus on what is good design and when I finally got to meet him in Japan it was a great pleasure so he showed the beauty of Simplicity and how completely new forms can be generated and beautiful visual play in design the play of transparency in them design and I've seen his journey from completely geometric to extremely organic forms as he has progressed also I met Kenji Akon I worked in GK industrial design which was the world's largest design office said that was in a GK office in ikebukuro used to take every Monday a meeting of all GK staff members and I remember one meeting for half an hour he only talked about how to answer a phone if your phone in GK rings so half an hour he only talked about what's the paper when you answer your phone and we can understand the great service culture of Japan so his company designed the airport takes place in Tokyo next and the Yamaha was their standard client motorcycles and pianos and these are some sketches I had done in for Yamaha while working in GK we had great colleagues in design office somebody is spotted we were making a color gradient one day and they are lined up to take a picture then I worked in shark Corporation Osaka corporate Design Center their theme was to be original we should make products others want to publish here is me working on a design project I was finalized in a proposal for camera of the future in which I had proposed that it's not necessary for lens and the viewfinder to be in the same axis because the viewfinder image is now digital and is not created by the lens and this idea actually led to the first camcorder being built based on the same idea which led where the Museum of Technology in Osaka Professor kg iwatha actually Professor sobera introduced me to the cream of the Japan and I spent three months here in their collection this is the Museum of mankind and here the collection of entire Mankind's objectives come and I used to just walk around every day being object designer amongst the words object collection and I learned to see the power of the object I could actually feel objects which are very powerful and which are not the original objects will be very powerful the replica of the same the museum shop had no power at all so I learned to sense this after coming back we started India's first master of design program in visual communication and I asked Professor RK Joshi to leave and come to IDC to spend time teaching and Survey great experience from me his calligraphy inspired us a lot we did hundreds of I mean we did hundreds of activity including regularly every year workshops and seminars which used to be the most software even this is akshar yoga a collection of calligraphy thing we did many projects also together arcade design the typeface for the new vidhan Sabha in Bhopal based on inscriptions and of course there was yesud Chaudhary I've met nobody like him he had taught us logo design when I was a student in IDC but I never met somebody a perfectionist designer in India like yashwant we used to work and work and then every symbol he designed he would put in a mathematical bridge that I only seen yashwan Chaudhary death he was the Envy of commercial artist and graphic designers working in advertising agencies because all those people were not considered good enough to present their work themselves account Executives used to present work of designers designers the back room boys but Esurance used to present to the chairman himself and nobody could imagine ethical designer can talk to the chairman so that's yesterday many projects and great I mean this is icon of the graphic design of an era with the students we did many interesting projects this project a personalized chair you could wear became internationally famous got published in every design Journal in my own life I am deeply influenced by the old people so if Professor Nat Karne was a student and he followed the same methodology in IDC and many of the people who are in one became personal friends I sought out and met them Professor guy Solutions and the founder of the visual communication program at all we had many conversations about how to take design forward in developing countries Professor William Hum he created most of the assignments in Foundation program in visual communication and we discussed the he told me the main difference between bahas and old whose office is now where the old Miss building was and a great designer is spectro chair and his street stairs are best in the world I also did a seminar on readings of Tyrone design education old man after I also got the Fellowship of the old Foundation to do a one-year program on cultural identity and Design because of being in IIT I got to visit many conferences this is Professor jorgeous and he invited me to give the keynote address at the conference in nice and I presented the graphic design of unknown Indians as people who do more creative work than rent graphic designers do and this was like a big shop to the design community so I used Graphics of Auto rickshaws and trucks to make this fine and on song TSU Works vice president of recogna he created the in 2000 in Seoul so I was part of the drafting committee but I also ensured it was published in many languages and I answered that Hindi should also get it page so Echo character agriculture was there I will included in the who is who in graphic design ah in red presses among the 100 typographers in the world to participate in typo Junction the binallay of graphic design member of the international jury of computex a it show in Taiwan helmet Langer asked me to participate in the first interactive International calendar project where great designers each had to create one page of the calendar and those pages interacted with the page before and the page after so I got in a very good company it was called people to people prefer units so before me was David Gentlemen The Great British illustrator this is his image and through the hole in His image you can see the painting I created with ghanshyam Sharma from and within that image what you can see through the image is an image by April grayman so here I was sandwiched between David gentleman and April Raymond that's our image I did this exhibition on forms of everyday Asia where I collected parts from Asian countries and presented them in Singapore after coming back from Japan I got involved in book design and designed for many companies over 200 books and interactive educational content and Publications I found that design office this is the office design company in Bombay I did many logos for all their products and also for another group and for oceans which was the client for many many years I had the fortune to have the most beautiful plants ever who totally trusted me I never had to present my ideas or sell my ideas to him I will just discuss and I will agree with me so Mr Hari shankaran who listened to my idea for Tien for five minutes and told me to go ahead and this was his power he could see the power of a idea he could see where an idea would go and that led to chaon world's first Community Design Center which is now transformed by school education all over India and used thousands of government schools and got published internationally everywhere Mrs firada godrej was another client we'd worked nearly three years on their book on the Parsi history the jaroski and tapestry I designed for many years for more Publications all their books and all their magazines and never Tuli oceans this was the first group I designed and then I designed continuously for them for many years Mallika sarabhai and bipin Shah I was a regular design for their mapping company this book on handmade paper tradition on an award for best design and I had the most wonderful colleagues to work on many of these projects we started doing software for km language independent software because teachers did not learn computer before using computer tools and he was the person who who made all my wishes possible so in 2004 we designed an auto generating software which will take Word files and put them on a bookshelf according to the thickness of the book and we created this bookshelf and it was six years before Steve just presented iBooks and it looked like he nearly copied our idea we created interact uh applications for teachers to make their software and even for children to make their own presentation these were all language independent unit software another of my colleagues a former student gaurav mathur helped bring my ideas on Creative software for children so we developed many this is my best work according to my own judgment on software for creativity my model maker for 40 years none of my product design ideas would have been possible if ankush was not there if this ability to make unbelievable things by hand no machine many times client when computers became all the rage and 3D printing came clients used to ask me what software you use then how do you design I say directly on 3D because we I don't know any 3D software we directly think in 3D then great students SK mohanty the most prolific font designer we are honoring him in a function in avantika University later this month Hashem who changed the phone design scene in Malayalam all the eight newspapers uses a young designer who did this handwritten phone is now settled in Germany doing new work is Neha who runs a studio called dig Design Studio as a student she did a brilliant project on vidyathai patil ishma Patel's mother and her work with valvari children Fortune to have great students who kept energizing me all my life also in Taiwan where I had the chance to teach students in ntnu and also in Beijing at Cinema University I am particularly grateful to Pune I to make this is a special mention not because this conference is happening in Pune but so many of my great foreign my first public talk was in Pune about in 2016. and I was so nervous I was not sure I will be able to talk in front of an audience and sudeep was there right in the front and he kept on nodding and encouraging me we became very close friends and his typographic magazine motif is a collector's item now the work she produced Dr PP update he was the editor of the Sanskrit dictionary project we got to know each other and we created he was a regular visiting faculty in IDC we created these mandalas from Oscar swamita which is a text from second century Eddie and these images were lost for 2000 years before they became visible again so it was a great project and Declan college and one darker Oriental Institute and vedics and Southern mandal where I could go and look at the manuscripts who gave me grant for doing a what a one year program on creativity for children I designed the visual identity and the way finding for IUPUI in Pune arvind Gupta was like a younger brother even on each other for 40 years and His Brilliant work on Science for children he led me to many gandhian and vinova projects the Gandhi exhibition in Singapore was because of him Ram Krishna Bajaj led to some of my main exhibition design project ashram so the summer my life is my message and the vinova exhibition in gopuri Dr Ms swaminathan of the message and the father of Green Revolution was very kind with me and for them I designed an integrated PC for India in Indian languages you would use in sitting down position I am grateful to God for keeping praying having me in the world at the same time as Pandit bhims and Yoshi to be able to hear his Divine voice and Pandit jasraj Infinity I had the fortune to meet her and be with her for three days in dharwar and hopefully when I designed the event identity foreign the great teacher I fully understand now what he used to say about education since I had the fortune to learn with mishana directly from him and Gotham Buddha is the biggest problem solver in human history I know we took the most important of human problems the problem of human misery and found a solution for it and when Obama who came slogan victory of the world and Mahatma Gandhi is so I had the opportunity to be the head of the national creative team which designed this Monument and which was again the work of many people working together I collected sculptors from all over the world to make these 18 statues in IIT Bombay which are now part of the permanent Memorial and we conceived of this solar trees which provide the power to the whole complex I always thought that Asian design will be direction for tomorrow and that's why I conducted the exhibition and the seminar in Singapore and now my when I thought all my projects were done my life is over suddenly an opportunity has come to develop a school of Digital Arts for the first time in India at the vanshika University when I proposed the idea the big question was where will the faculty for this come from and fortunately we want this to be a place where Future Leaders of Indian creativity will come unfortunately my former students have these are the areas Digital Arts environmental Arts interactive Arts motion Arts projection art sound art like that my former students have become great talents themselves and they all very happily agreed to join this effort so they search I I met him when he was a smart child I had actually I knew his father he had done the paintings for the Gandhi Museum and Professor Narendra the co-founder of para details ruchisha who's the student and a wall artist in Bangalore Aditi Babel who is a book artist sitting right here and bijuti a special effects person and Kabir Monti and somnath Par an internationally professor in a commodity of ADM and jaswind Europe again of ADM a great designer and a great human being Professor Takashi Matsumoto great inventor of the new era activist and co-creator and Professor Kasper shobe is a great geometric designer they all agreed to help so I'd Express The Hope in my Asian design seminar that we had to Delight the world for many centuries India has remained dormant people have not seen the full effect of Indian creativity and where to Delight the world again with Indian positivity and here is this opportunity to do something and with God's help I hope we will be able to achieve that goal so I thank you everybody for having me here to share this jury especially at a weight-based one day I just I just asked him one week before and he had me here changing his program so thank you everybody thank you thank you very much Professor that's truly an astonishing presentation you've taken us you left us all breathless so Professor tell me a mechanical engineer studied design became somebody who looked like a rock star in London went on to do some of the greatest typographic projects in the world how are you juggling so many different streams of design because today either you're a game designer an automobile designer a type designer we are specialized today how did you work across these disciplines I I will answer indirectly I believe every human being is God's Own project every payment being is kept for some purpose because to make a change in the physical world we require physical human beings so God directs your destiny and if you do well if it seems like you will do what you were created for then God helps so it's with God's grace that I was able to do everything if you remember right from the beginning he has been showering the best of the possibilities for me putting them in direct contact and I thought my life was over but apparently God has other plans and how do you stay in touch with so many people it seems like you know everybody in the world of design and you stay in touch with them well before emails share this to make people live because people think I boast a lot and I do name dropping not at all in GK is it come to give a talk to him Tokyo and I told my colleagues oh it resources he's my friend and they are loved how to need to resources be your friend he is such a big shot but for God's grace all the big shots of my friends they just happen okay today you are the big shot I'm proud to have you as my friend all right questions from the audience we have a few minutes for Professor Trivedi under astonishing body of work that he showed us any questions everybody's left stunned no questions thank you Professor thank you very much thank you very much my great honor to be here thank you