Design is in

Billboard made out of Zimbabwe currency

Zimbabwe currency as flyers

We know that there is a crisis in Zimbabwe because of one man's stubbornness. That man is Robert Mugabe. The Zimbabwean, a national daily, commissioned the the Trillion Dollar campaign which communicates Mugabe's effect on Zimbabwe's economy. Recently, Zimbabwe launched a 50 billion dollar note, which bought its bearer two loaves of bread. By March 2009, the price for two loaves of bread had jumped to 7.5 trillion Zimbabwe dollars.

This is a major economic catastrophe of insane proportions in the history of any nation in this world. 1 Zimbabwe dollar = 0.00000003 US dollars. An inflated ego (Mugabe's) at work. More than 25% of Zimbabwe's population live outside Zimbabwe because of the economic instability. The Zimbabwean, an exile London-based daily, offers alternative news coverage of the crisis in the country. The Zimbabwean doesn't reach many ordinary Zimbabweans because it is subject to 55% luxury import duty. You know when something is wrong in a country, when newspapers become luxury items for its citizens.

To spread awareness about the crisis, the South African advertising agency TBWAHuntLascaris created an award-winning Trillion Dollars campaign for The Zimbabwean. In an attempt to increase the readership of The Zimbabwean, the agency devised a campaign that uses Zimbabwe's currency based on Marshall McLuhan's theory. The Zimbabwean has turned the money into their advertising, hoping to raise awareness of the country, which is in dire straits. The money becomes both the medium and the message. 

The outdoor advertising campaign used a tangible symbol of country's collapse, the currency notes itself, as flyers. As part of the campaign, bundles of cash were mailed to media personalities. After the campaign was launched, the Zimbabwean's website logged more than two million hits.

The campaign won numerous Cannes Lions: so far three Gold, one Silver and one Grand Prix.

By Sanjay Basavaraju

Cover: Wet Apples, White Blood

Cover: One of the books from Space Opera Series

Cover: UK version of Sea of Poppies

What makes one pick up a book and even think of reading it? Apart from the format, the cover of the book plays an important role in attracting attention. If one were to buy a shirt, one can try it before buying. When we are buying a book, the cover has to speak to the eyes. 

David Drummond's body of work is what I think of, when I am talking of book covers. The cover of the Naomi Guttman's 'Wet Apples, White Blood' book should explain why I am fond of his work. I have set of five criteria to judge any work done by a graphic designer — instant likability, message, relevance, character and potential. This is one book cover that gets a yes for all five. The cover is matt laminated with a spot UV varnish on the descending drop of milk. Fascinating.

If one had to apply the set of five criteria, I think of designer Sanda Zahirovic's Space Opera Series, which is art directed by Luci Stericker. Sanda designed these series of book covers in reaction to the Student D&AD brief, for which she won a pencil. She knew that she could create a relationship between the high tech content of the books and the low tech materials used for them. The end result is both simple and striking.

I am quite kicked about UK version of the Sea of Poppies. You should check out Faceout Books, which is a decent collection of contemporary book designs. The best part of the collection is that designers are speaking about their work and that may give design students insights on book design.

A lot of you have been asking where do we find links to write about. This post was triggered off from a search in google that directed me to How Magazine site. Then in that list, I got all excited seeing this link that records the top ten sites that all designers should visit. In there, I met David and Sanda. And many faces I uncovered.

Have a great week, all of you.
By Sanjay Basavaraju

Fixing Braille printing plates

Languages are one of the oldest forms of abstraction, and ‘design’. Culture, society, and the available tools have designed every language collectively. Languages have developed and changed over hundreds, or thousands of years. One unique language, developed around 200 years ago, for a very specific need, is Braille. 

Braille was developed by Louis Braille, in the 1820s, in Paris. He had turned blind at 3, and developed a unique system while teaching at the blind school in Paris. Braille developed a code using one or more raised dots in a cell three dots high, and two dots wide. He was also an accomplished musician, and developed an application of his system for musical notation. In 1916 schools for the blind in the USA officially adopted Braille. In the 1960s, Braille seemed to be declining in popularity, as many people saw it as ‘old-fashioned’. However, children who had been trained in Braille, had much better chances of getting employment later on. The 1990s saw a revivial of Braille, partly due to computer devices and software, which enabled many blind people to read and write. 

The design of Braille is such that it appears big. Braille shortens many word and letter combinations by a system of rules called ‘grades’. One page of printed material will give 2-3 pages of Braille. Braille uses a lot of white space around letters. For this reason, the size of Braille paper is large, 11 x 11.5 inches, a standard paragraph indent is only two pages, and lines are not left between paragraphs. Braille requires unique rules of typography. 

There are no photocopy machines for Braille, but there are Braille embossers, ruggedly built to punch thousands of dots accurately in sheets of paper. Braille is embossed on both sides of paper simultaneously, aligned so that both sides are readable. 

When printing Braille documents, the challenge lies in representing illustrations, maps and images, which need tactile representation. Sight absorbs images as a whole, but touch acquires information in pieces. Most drawings and graphs have to carefully re-design for fingertips. The main principle is simplicity; all unnecessary details must be eliminated. Consistency is crucial, the appropriate symbols to represent rivers, boundaries, graph curves etc, must follow consistent guidelines. 

In India, the National Association for the Blind produces and prints books in English and the state languages. In India, Braille has been adapted for the numerous local languages. Indian languages are essentially phonetic in nature, which further enables Braille to be used as a script for writing text in different Indian languages. India has made a recommendation to UNESCO to consider a standard universal system for Braille, based on a phonetic representation of sounds using the six-dot system. Read more on standard English Braille. 

Producing Braille materials is essential, as having information when you want, at your choice of speed, and in a format you can write in, makes anyone feel more at home in the world. 

By Armeen Kapadia

Richard Smith's dollar redesign project

The design of currency notes have always fascinated me. Richard Smith, a creative strategy consultant has taken upon himself to redesign the US dollar. He believes that designers have a prominent role to play when it comes to rebranding the economy.

The intentions of Richard may seem ambitious at first, but when you look at the work that he has done with the Dollar Redesign Project, it seems it can be reality. If you are interested in seeing scans of currencies, you can snoop around this exhaustive database.

The American Dollar has not truly been redesigned since the 1930s. Switzerland is known for redesigning their bank notes on a regular basis. Not every bank note deviates from the convention. There seems to be a herd mentality when it comes to designing currency. There is one project that I remember that must be featured in this post, the Netherland banknotes that were designed by Ootje Oxenaar. This is the most beautiful money in the world.

In an interview with the Creative Review, Ootje confesses that he hid his fingerprint in a 1000 guilder note and to make it worse for the authorities he hid names of his grand-daughter, his girlfriend at that time and a secret friend in a 250 guilder note. His act of mystery created quite an uproar which he is proud of. In fact, he jokes saying that those names act as symbols make the banknotes more secure.

Banknotes and postal stamps are a brilliant opportunity for a country or an economy to brand itself. To actually miss that opportunity by adhering to convention is quite disappointing. Designing banknotes is an art that only a few have mastered. I am yet to see Indian banknotes move away from colonial sensibilities.

By Sanjay Basavaraju

Ootje Oxenaar's design of Netherlands' banknotes

Wppt Contraceptives

If a contraceptive is named Wptt, one wonders who would be buying it. But it sells in China. For the first time I see a communication that radically shifts its focus from the cliched messages such as pleasure, safety and fear.

I always come back to wit in graphic design and how important it is to attain a witty communicative messages. The packaging of Wptt condoms have portraits of national leaders who have an image of trouble makers. And it carries a message, "Such tragedy could have been easily avoided." The Wptt packaging is both loved and hated. Loved because of its novelty and hated because one of the portraits used is of Mao. The other portraits are of Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussain and Geroge W Bush.

Although the intention was to communicate that having sex without a condom can have painful consequences, the trouble maker approach works. After the new packaging was introduced, more than one lakh people have bought the condoms and the sales increased by more than 20%. The packaging also won a Yellow Pencil in the 2009 D&AD awards.

What I acknowledge here is the wholeheartedness of taking an idea forward even it it is not what one would expect it to look like. Graphically, it is engaging and many buyers may be saving it because they like the packaging a lot.

Do see the credits here on D&AD site. You should also see this, a coin design project, which one a Black Pencil. Brilliant.

By Sanjay Basavaraju

Local radio broadcasting farming information

In 1970, a Canadian journalist George Atkins visited Africa and he found that Africa's farmers had ideas, but couldn't communicate those ideas because of barriers such as distance, language and literacy. He believed that radio could break those barrier.

While the Internet is being considered as the medium to spur revolutions, many have forgotten radio. The Internet is for not everyone since most of the content is either in English, Spanish or French. Many Africans don't have access to Internet. In this context, sharing information through radio is cheap and effective. Radio is often considered to be a one-way medium, but African Farm Radio Research Initiative (AFRRI) is  combining radio and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to gather content and to share information among farming communities throughout rural africa.

More than half of Africa's population is dependent on agriculture. Farmers in Africa are in need of information on farming. For instance, they want to know where they can buy improved seeds for the next season, where to sell their crops or how to keep the soil fertile.

Many farmers in Africa often share information through formal networks such as cooperatives and associations. The information shared here is limited. Outside the community, farmers depend on local radio. Over the recent years, the radio stations across Africa have grown rapidly. There are more than 500 radio stations in Mali, Ghana and Uganda put together. At the same time, the use of mobile phones throughout Africa is growing too. This has helped the radio presenter to encourage listeners to send in text messages requesting answers to their queries. 

Most farmers now know that Cayenne pepper discourages elephants from grazing on farm fields or the fact that placing a lit candle in a container of grain before sealing it deprives pests of oxygen. Such insights could not be shared easily until radio became a mainstream medium in Africa.

By Sanjay Basavaraju

IdeaPaint Kit

A paint that transforms surfaces into a dry-erase board: IdeaPaint. The very fact that such a product encourages instinct and decreases resistance to express openly is fascinating. It can become a brainstorming canvas in offices or expressive canvas for kids in playrooms.

Applications can be many for this patent pending product. IdeaPaint is planning to increase its presence in schools, serving as a low-cost solution. The spaces within schools can now evoke creativity. If I were to take IdeaPaint back in time when I was growing up, my mother could have written down how many clothes went for laundry on the wall, marked how many days the milkman didn't deliver the milk, reminded my father of paying electricity bills or didn't have to bother what I was scribbling on the wall. 

It is perfect to jot down things. You could coat an entire room and go berserk. The possibilities are endless. It costs $4 per square foot. IdeaPaint claims that it is environmentally free too. This post on apartmentherapy.com features 8-ways to use IdeaPaint in your home.

IdeaPaint has the potential to transform traditional classroom into 360 degree dynamic learning environments. Target uses it in volunteers school libraries. The product is gaining momentum in the education sector. Many investors are funding IdeaPaint because they see tremendous market potential in the product. IdeaPaint has taken $5 million in its first venture funding from Breakaway Ventures.

IdeaPaint is certified as the most environmentally friendly dry-erase product available.

By Sanjay Basavaraju