Design is in

The aspect of wit in communication is missing in many commercials. The latest commercials for GE's Smart Grid reminds us that wit exists and can be effective in communicating messages. How does one convince citizens to use renewable energy?

GE believes that reducing their environmental impact is good for business. Their latest equation between environment and business — ecomagination — is significant to their growth. To balance operational performance with real environmental benefits, GE is developing products with a high degree of integrity and self established standards.

Under the ecomagination initiative, the conventional power grid is upgraded with new technology, which they call the Smart Grid. The commercials for the Smart Grid were produced to raise the visibility of smart grid technologies. The problem with alternative energy is that politicians make policies and spend big bucks, but the public doesn't accept it. The Smart Grid reduces transmission losses by a significant amount.

The ads above carry messages with supreme wit and some country guitar tunes. The ads do not explain how they make power grids efficient. GE has spend $100,000-a-second to position itself as a leader in Smart Grid technologies. My favorites are Pluck and Birds, Pluck is featured at the beginning of this post. 

My personal favorite is the commercial titled Birds, which I couldn't find on YouTube. Watch that Video here on GE's site.

By Sanjay Basavaraju

Most people remember Saul Bass for his title sequences in many great films such as The Man with the Golden Arm, North by North West, Psycho, West Side Storyand Vertigo, among many others. Saul Bass was an American graphic designer, especially known for the AT&T ‘globe’ logo, and he was also an Academy Award-winning film-maker. 

Most of us don’t know, however, of his short film on solar power. The film was produced by Saul Bass, and was commissioned by Robert Redford in 1980. Eames Demetrios, grandson of Charles and Ray Eames, introduces the film. It’s a film that was definitely ahead of its time, for in 1980 they had realized the need to switch to more sustainable sources of energy. A wonderful way to introduce people to the power of solar energy. 

By Armeen Kapadia

Education needs experiments. In India, especially, we need something entirely different. Digital StudyHall (DSH) is on an experimental trail. They describe their approach as an education equivalent of Netflix + YouTube + Kazaa.

Live classes by the best grassroots teachers are recorded on video and then stored on computer discs, which are distributed to rural schools. Education experts are working in tandem with computer scientists to explore pedagogic approaches in the rural context. 

Firstly, DSH is focusing on creating a video database of everything. (usually in the local language) Going a step ahead, they have structured the sequencing of these videos to fit into the current state board curriculums so that any school can use it. Some of the best teachers have recorded their discourses. What they have done here is go beyond the flash-ware and slide-ware kind of modules. This approach believes that teachers are still a prime agent in the learning environment. Although the output is aligned to the syllabus, the teachers have re-interpreted the syllabus in terms of interactivity.

Secondly, DSH adopts a decentralized network. Although content is produced and disseminated for local use, it is shared with the other towns and cities. The videos are recorded in the contextual learning environment instead of recording it in schools in cities. The relevance of content is key in creating this database.

Thirdly, the school needs a tv, dvd player and an inverter. They know that children can't learn by just watching videos. They have adopted mediation-based pedagogy. It means that there is a mediator, usually a teacher, between the students and the TV. The mediator pauses the video and engages children in activities, games, even a q&a session.

Lastly, the web2.0 application that they have developed doesn't require physcial infrastructure. The computer discs are transported by the postal system.

Digital StudyHall works best in the Indian context. It is striving to break new ground in schools across India.

By Sanjay Basavaraju

www.beyondgoodintentions.com

Often, a large amount of international aid is available, but yet does not benefit communities that need it the most. Beyond Good Intentions is a movement focusing on discovering more innovative and effective approaches to international aid.

The movement includes a series of ten short films, which cover the travels of Tori Hogan as she travels around the world, investigating how international aid can be made more effective. Tori herself spent several years working in international aid projects worldwide. She realized that sometimes, even initiatives with the best intentions were not creating the difference they ideally should. This is a first of its kind film series, which focuses on positive change in the aid industry. It also asks some questions that haven’t been raised till now, but definitely need to be answered.

You can read about Beyond Good Intentions on their blog Tall Orders. You can join the dialogue where many interesting issues are being discussed such as can international volunteers make a positive difference abroad?

You can share your own story of volunteering or providing aid, and read about others’ experiences as well. The site is also a resource base to learn more about international aid. And most significantly, there are five simple steps to be the change. 

As discussed in the first film, foreign aid workers cannot have the kind of insights that the local workers in the community will. Communities themselves know what they really need, and may need technical assistance, or legal advice, but not an entire transplant of western methodologies. Episode 5, shot in India, discusses how aid is not just about dumping money, but also about seeing it through proper implementation.

Ultimately, international aid is the catalyst for bigger change; change that cannot be ‘imported’ blindly into communities, but change that has to come from within communities. The best way to help people is to empower them to help themselves.

By Armeen Kapadia and Sanjay Basavaraju

What if diseases like measles, dysentery and tuberculosis could speak to us? What would they say? According to this Amnesty ad, they have a lot to complain about. After all, we humans aren’t helping them much are we? We have a whole bunch of vaccines that don’t allow them to get a grip on us anymore. And worse still, we humans have taken over their job by killing each other in bomb blasts and terror attacks. Gone are the days when we ran screaming from measles.

As measles says, we humans have “gone all hoity-toity on them,” we “don’t want to die organically, but want to be shot in the head.” In 2010 more people are going to be killed by armed conflict than by diseases. This, as measles rightly puts it, “is just not on!” To control diseases we have vaccines, doctors and hospitals. To control the arms trade? Nothing. “Double bloody standards, that’s what it is”.

The message of the ad, as told to us by good ol’ TB is ‘control small arms and light weapons’. This ad uses wit and irony to get across its message, and it does so brilliantly well. A great way to talk about the arms trade without having to show anything to do with the arms trade.

Also have a look at the other Amnesty ad, ‘Audition’, a plea against domestic violence. It is an audition for the ‘poster boy of painful abuse’. The most shocking fact is on an average, you can beat a woman 35 times before she calls the police. If you don’t believe me, wait till you see Mr. Fistface in the ad.

These ads keep you interested till the end, and also give a unique perspective on a much discussed issue. There are so many ads on such social issues, that we have become pretty much ‘immune’ to them. You see hundreds of no-smoking ads, but maybe only a couple of them actually gets any kind of reaction from you, only one will probably make you at least stop to think about smoking, even for a moment. The challenge in any kind of ‘social communication’ is how do you know your message has got across, how can you be certain that your piece of communication is having any kind of impact? It shouldn’t end up being just a good looking ad on a wall. It should be able to change the way some people think. Ideally, it should be able to change human behavior for the better.

By Armeen Kapadia and Sanjay Basavaraju

When a storyteller weaves the strands of art, personal life experience, and ancient culture together, the resulting tapestry can be a catastrophic lump, or mind-bogglingly brilliant. Nina Palay is one such brilliant storyteller, whose art and personal narrative weave in and out with the Ramayana and the songs of Annette Hanshaw.

This may seem a really unlikely combination. The Ramayana is India’s ancient Sanskrit epic of 24,000 verses in seven books, depicting human relationships, power, and the struggle between good and evil. Annette Hanshaw was one of the first great female jazz singers in the 1920s in the United States. Nina Paley had her own personal experience of a heart-breaking relationship. She saw a parallel between her own life, and that of Sita in the Ramayana. The lines between the two women, one from ancient India, the other from present day USA, constantly blur, especially in the emotional spectrum, and in their relationship with the man in their life. The songs of Annette Hanshaw give voice to Sita’s, and Nina’s own joy and anguish, through the lyrics, which are very apt for each circumstance, and the mood, which swings between joyful, flirty, and soulful.

This is a two-hour animation film, which explores three unique styles for the different narratives, and has extremely entertaining, and sometimes irreverent commentary from three shadow puppets. The movie is available online, and free for all to enjoy, screen and distribute. Nina is a believer of the free culture movement, so there is no excuse to miss such a fantastic film. ‘Sita Sings the Blues’ received the Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature at the Indian Film Festival in Los Angeles.

So go ahead, don’t hesitate to watch this film, and share it with others, because Sita rarely sings. That too the blues.

By Armeen Kapadia and Sanjay Basavaraju