Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Practices of design have cultural-historical influence in context to India; where twenty-two official languages are written in thirteen scripts, with over 720 dialects spoken within the country. Design here is used as a diverse tool to convey messages of communication. There is a vast archive of (design) art forms-traditional and folk, which remain unknown or forgotten today because of modernity. Present day students apply principles of modern and western design to Indian context. This creates modern visual impact but the challenge lies in making them aware of the Indian traditional culture. Moreover, students rarely find ‘traditional reading’ interesting today. With advent of technology, even the book-reading experience is converted to digital reading one. There is a need to develop creative (cultural) awareness amongst current generations. The paper discusses a well thought design assignment that challenges the capacity of making ‘reading’ a book or story an interesting affair. Through research, developing an understanding of ‘seeing’ and ‘reading’ a story, exploring various folk art forms from India to identifying and applying these art forms into a suitable design in context to the ‘reading’ material (folktales); students learn to appreciate and value cultural legacy they possess in spite of modernity. The experimental results accomplish the purpose of telling a tale, but moreover design results are beautiful to the eye!