Codesign is like an airport terminal!

Rajesh-dahiya-forweb

Rajesh Dahiya, founder of Codesign, believes in being a “many-handed” designer. While other designers have sleepless nights trying to carve out their “original” style, Rajesh will have sleepless nights if someone brands him in a particular style.

Chatting with DezineConnect, Rajesh recalls his NID days fondly. “NID is the most recallable 6 years of my life. I always felt I have come to NID with a large bag… large enough to collect things that I could learn. It’s like collecting fruits and interesting artifacts in a jungle.” And that’s what Rajesh did all his six years at NID – be it digging up information in the library or trying to catch up on technical know how of photography or working hard to get a repeat (sometimes)!

“I was lucky to do my final project with Itu Chaudhuri design studio (It’s the most sought after design studio). I learned 3 important things from Itu— Design, Systems thinking, Integrity. I dont know how to explain this… but I learnt how to think right.” He continued to work there for 2 years before being lured by the dot com boom in Bangalore. “I joined a health care portal and then Infosys soon after.” “Infosys was a nice place but I could not figure out what to do with my spare time. In the exit interview, they asked me why I was leaving, and I replied that my hands and mind were not occupied for 8 to 9 hours a day.”

His next destination was HFI as a usability specialist. “Honestly, I didn’t know much about Usability.” Here he realized that more technical knowledge he acquired, his vocabulary became insanely difficult to understand (at least by his friends), and eventually he moved away from the common man’s world. Fortunately, during this time, he received an email from professor MP Ranjan of NID about a new institute— INteraction Design Institute, Ivrea, Italy. “I applied and was lucky to get a scholarship as well. That’s how Ivrea happened.” He fondly remembers the small town in Italy where he spent 2 years doing his masters. “It gave me good time to think who I was… I actually felt younger after I did my masters.”

Soon NID asked him to re-design the graphic design curriculum for the undergraduate program. He spent a year at NID talking to professors and students with all the user centric design knowledge that he had gathered in his bag of knowledge.

At this point, Rajesh had two options – a position with Volkswagen’s design division called ‘Future of Dashboard Design’ and the other more tempting one was to start his own design studio. “All I had was a laptop and nothing else.” One fine day an architect friend called. There was a project from Levis interactive studio, but it had a catch. “Levis wanted to see my studio before they give me that project!”

Rajesh got going. A senior from NID offered to rent out a part of his studio. “All I had was 17000 rupees! He bought fine curtains that Rani no hajro, offered in Ahmadabad, 6 good coffee mugs and 9 plants. He wanted more designers for the project and that was easy to find within NID alumni network. Soon it was a 6 people studio, with PCs, finally when the client visited, the design team was ready. Rajesh had a good wine bottle that he got from Italy, he ordered pizza, and floored the client with his hospitality. “That’s how we got the project!” They completed the entire project in 4.5 months and ended up with 25000 rupees each at the end of the project. “I’m really thankful to all the people, nobody did that for money. It was really crazy… we had literally lived in the studio for the duration of the project! It was also one of our most covered project in the media.” That’s how Codesign was born. It was never planned! SInce its inception, two original members of team still remain— I and Mohor Ray.

Codesign name stood for “come together and design” (and also code+design). Whoever is a specialist in a particular project comes on board and stays over if they like. “It’s like an airport terminal.”

Codesign has 6 graphic designers, 2 diploma students, 2 electronic engineers, 1 programmer.

What is the relation between Codesign and Quicksand?
We worked with Quicksand on a project in 2007 and realized we had common interest in design and innovation and our definition of design had good overlaps. We decided to co-locate in 2009 and now we work on projects as one team. Both the studios have common people on board.

Quicksand started in 2005 as a collective of business, design and art – with a strong conviction that at the intersection of these disciplines lie more holistic & hence sustainable solutions. Since its inception, Quicksand has grown to accommodate more diverse disciplines of social development, research and technology and continues to champion the cause of multi-disciplinary collaborations as the way for more meaningful and sustainable work.. They wanted to do interaction design and collaborated with us. While working on a project we realized that we had similar thoughts, then we started working together with an new entity called BOX.

So is it Quicksand, Codesign & Box?
“We go to clients as BOX.” We take up projects based on each entity’s specialization. For example, Quicksand takes on user research related projects and Codesign focusses on branding and communication design projects. I am slowly moving somewhere in the middle of two entities to support Ayush Chauhan (one of Quicksand’s founders) while Mohor Ray, my partner, looks after branding projects in Codesign.

What does BOX do?
“Box is some kind of a frame work… a mental model for internal stakeholders and clients to understand us better.
Talking about seeing collaboration as the future of Indian Design, Rajesh says “In our case, we dated Quicksand for 2 years before getting ‘married’. I am not wise enough to say anything about future of Indian Design and will not believe a single word from anyone who claims he/she can predict it. Whatever is generally predicted is boringly obvious (or obviously boring)…. Someone stating ‘Indian industry will need more designers by by so and so year’ or any such outrageously obvious and unimaginative statement should be kept away from media or any form of exposure.” “Coming back to the question of collaboration… well, if two or more studios have unique skills then their collaboration can result in a truly multi-dsciplinary studio.”

Explaining the need for collaboration, Rajesh explains that it is nearly impossible to have excellent multi-disciplinary skills under one studio. Good designers need space, freedom and ownership after working for a few years as an ‘employee’ in a studio. As studio should be able to incubate such deserving people. In BOX’s current model, they have their own freedom, and everyone gets his or her own compartments of specialization. “So if we have to open one more entity we should be able to give the person the freedom to do that.”

Outside the studio space, our other initiatives are:

MOCHA ARTHOUSE provides a platform to emerging artists and new arts and questions existing elitist attitudes to art consumption. We intend to deviate from the gloss magazines’ idea of art galleries cordoning out everyone apart from the créme-de-la-créme.
www.mochaarthouse.com/wordpress/

BLOT (Basic Love Of Things) is an established platform for independent content created by our studios across electronic music, art, film and artifacts. 
www.blottin.blogspot.com

BLIND BOYS is a ‘photocommune’ – envisioned by Kapil Das as a collective of photographers that are ready to challenge the status quo of the creation and presentation of photography today. BlindBoys is responsible for the growing cult of ‘BlowUps’ – guerilla street exhibitions in India and abroad. 
www.blindboys.org

GREEN HOUSE is a new space at the intersection of retail, education and creative work. It is a gallery, shop, café, school and cinema all rolled into one exciting entity. 

METAGOOD A not for profit social innovation platform that is currently incubating a crowdfunding platform called “Good Crowds”. Good Crowds will fund social innovation in the spheres of journalism, art, technology and legal action.
www.metagood.org

So what does Codesign+Quicksand specialize in?
This is best answered by listing down what we are doing right now…

  • We are designing Hindi font for a TV channel right now
  • We are studying sanitation in low-income household clusters in large cities.
  • Study on perception of drinking water in low-income groups
  • We are branding a retail space at the new Terminal 3 of Delhi airport.
  • We are helping technology startups with branding.
  • We are going to brand a group of farmers co-operative.
  • We are curators for an art gallery right now.
  • Germany is celebrating 60th diplomatic year in India. They invited 21 studios from across India to present visual identity design for this event (German Year in India 2011-12). We won :)

We are eager to do anything that makes us travel outside our studio and have a design discussion with a good listener.

Why do clients come to you?
A) We are very good at what we do.
B) We work hard.

Lot of firms get acquired or collaborate to become big. What do you think we should do to make collaboration grow in India?
Collaborate with someone who is good at something other than your own skills.

We cannot be acquired… how can you acquire a firm that has a fluid form and you always see it in a motion blur!

JAM (just a minute…)

What is the best moment of the day?
Lunch time – We serve lunch in the studio and that’s when everyone is at the lunch table and not in front of their computer.

If there is one person for whom you would like to design a thing. Who is the person and what would you design?
I would hate to design for an individual. But I have a clever answer for this… It’s R.K Lakshman’s Common man. He is an individual for you and a common man for me.
One word that would define your design or style…

I’ll have sleepless nights if someone says that ‘this is your style.’ So… No Style.

As a designer, what is one thing that you would like to change in the present system?
What disturbs me on a daily basis is the general lack of respect and sensitivity for your neighbor. If I can deploy some design to change this, it would be ideal. There is a general distress in people…sensitivity and respect is missing.

If you were a typeface, which one would it be?
I am Akzidenz-Grotesk. Purists in late 19th century classified it as a ‘grotesk’ drawing as they were not used to sans-serif letterforms… and slowly it became a widely used font family. Luckily it has a quirky form and hence it did not become overused like Helvetica and therefore remains special.

If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title should be?
I think biographies have to be reserved for people who have super cool achievements. I have not even started thinking on what I have to do in life. One has to have a direction to have a biography. I can’t have direction in life. I would rather celebrate the many-handed designer position. Maybe I will have one in 60 years.

What are you afraid of regarding the future?
Nothing at all. I am super-kicked about the future. I don’t think yesterday was good enough.

What are the challenges you face in the present context?
Getting my furniture made according to the drawings I submitted, asking pizza guy to get the pizza right (as ordered)… or a vendor to match the colour with a swatch I provided. These are far deeper problems than pollution and other stuff. Basically, it means that people are not listening, not reading their mails… bottom line is that people seem to be reluctant to do things right. That is a big problem!

One aspect of design you give the highest priority to?
Its actually 33.3 – 33.3 – 33.3 % of Design thinking, design skills, and sincerity.

Who are your heroes?
M.P Ranjan and Aditi Ranjan as my academic heroes.

My all time favorite graphic designer is – Wolfgang Weingart. I was very lucky to visit him and lucky to have him in my studio a couple of years back. His capacity to work and drink at his age are very impressive.

Itu Chaudhuri. First half of my design education was at NID and second half was completed by Itu.

One design-related book you highly recommend to read?
Lonely planet – Italy. That’s the best book I have read, and I highly recommend it.

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