India, through Mumbai

India looks so close from Mumbai! The first picture that comes to my mind, when I think about this city of cities, is how, people arrive at it’s doorstep, armed with virtually nothing, and carve out their long standing dreams at the heart of this city and what amazes me truly about Mumbai is that, it never fails to deliver. The potential, the indestructible spirit that Mumbai has always held and the virtually unputdownable enthusiasm is what has made Mumbai what it is today.

The bustling city is an enviable melting pot of cultures, practices, religions and dreams- the economic powerhouse of modern India. Mumbai is one city in India that can spark off your imagination sky high and fuel your ambitions; it can be this city of dreams. Anyone from sight seeing dwellers into the money making machine is welcome and not discriminated against.

Talking about Mumbai and how different it is from other cities, such as Delhi, is owing to the diversity that Mumbai holds up its skin. One thing I noticed about Mumbai that sets this city apart from other Indian states is, people don’t look for a Marathi surname, and they value your work instead of your Marathi-speaking credentials. Mumbai doesn’t dwell on useless issues of provincial details. The open mindedness of the unique work culture has made Mumbai what it is today, ‘The Financial capital of India’.

Mumbai lives through its transportation system. Traveling by train gives a stranger a first hand idea about lives of the people in Mumbai. For them, local trains are a lifeline. Without these trains, life in Mumbai becomes crippled. Everyday, half of Mumbai's population commutes from far-flung suburbs to downtown offices, banks, factories and mills for a living.

Forty percent of India's taxes come from this city alone, and half of India's international trade passes through its splendid natural harbor. In fact Mumbai is the very soul of human enterprise. At the city's Stock Exchange, millionaires and paupers are made overnight, and the sidewalks are crowded with vendors hawking everything from ballpoint pens to second hand mixies. Nearly thirteen million people live here - wealthy industrialists, flashy film stars, internationally acclaimed artists, workers, teachers and clerks - all existing cheek by jowl in soaring skyscrapers and sprawling slums.

Being the city of Bollywood, Mumbai allures thousands of aspirant actors and artists from all over the country. Experience its dazzling nightlife in bars, lounges, pubs, discotheques and beaches. Uncover the spiritual side of the magnificent city in its places of worship. Parks, gardens, museums, shopping malls, amusement parks, beaches and lakes define the charisma of this economic hub.

Mumbai, the biggest metropolis of India, is a city that virtually never sleeps. In this city of dreams, life never appears dull or boring, especially due to the presence of its interminable chaos and action.

As shobha de puts it in an article on Mumbai, being her home, “Its Mumbai, the city which stands tall, head high in the face of all adversity, whose resilience is egged on by a never-say-die spirit in the wake of floods and fire and fanatics who plague the streets in the name of religion and creed. But whose children reach out to assist each other in turbulent times. It is the city that churns out the Ambanis and the rags-to-riches stories, one a piece in every street. It is the city whose naked ambition is to become another Shanghai or Singapore is a talisman force by itself, not deterred by the size of its children or the destructive pride of its leaders. It is the city that gave the world Vada-Pav and six sigma rated lunch delivery services pioneered by the Dabbawallah's guild that is making the nation proud and putting Fed-Ex to shame. It is the city that houses some of your favorite people. It is the city that is beyond the rat race, a battle-ground for warriors where even a silent spectator watches history as it happens.”

malls

Malls – the call of the decade

Man behaves in a particular way responding to the environment he is in. he follows the rules that are laid out in front him by the society and culture. At a much immediate environment for example, in a posh restaurant, only a class or a type of people are invited, who have the code of conduct engraved in their body language, way of speaking as well as dressing. These are responses to the expectations from the society. Similarly in a military set up, a restricted behavior, presentable uniform, controlled verbal communication and a certain mannerism is acceptable.

A built environment can influence human behavior in two ways. The environment itself becomes a setting in which man is required to behave accordingly or the society spells out the rules of behavior.

Shopping malls are a recent development in the metropolitan cities of India, corresponding to the rise of suburbia and therefore associated with suburban sprawl, creating a so called “mall culture”.

The term “big box” given to the malls explains the large stand alone store that specializes in a single line of products. Coming up of malls has transformed the retail culture in India. From people from all classes of the society coming together on to the street, bargaining, carrying bag and baggage to smart, and clean shopping in a controlled formal environment of a mall.

Street shops are sporadic. You can have a luxurious shop and next to it a stand that sells popcorn. The user has to freedom of circulation and no behavioral restriction. He forms his own personal space and freely interacts with the sellers on a one to one relationship. As Michael shmarak puts it “Mayberry effect is when shoppers feel a closer connection to the merchants of a smaller, quainter atmosphere as opposed to the congestion in the malls.”

In the process of bringing the western culture closer, modernization has lead to changes in the pattern of our society. The established notions of the Indian cultural society are changing. The mall or a glass box with a strong organizational pattern forces a certain kind of movement and behavior. The established pathways distribute the users all over the place forcing an even exposure. The atrium creates an interaction zone as an indianized version of a verandah.The brand establishments are designed for self service, responding to the new do it yourself attitude, encouraging the buyer to get involved in the whole process of purchase, from seeing to choosing to buying. No more is the customer honored as he is in a street shop.

Malls evidently demand a code of conduct. A salesman dressed in his branded uniform demands respect as given to the brand he is representing. The signages and the pathways take away the freedom of the shopper leading them in cues and rows.

Modernization and influences form elsewhere has changed the behavior of otherwise free and ‘anti rules’ Indians. Once within a glass box, even a villager tends to walk in a certain way, talk in a certain way and certainly shop in the way he is expected to. He forgets the place where he belongs or the culture that is engraved in him. As the environment is defined, the user departs from his personal space to be overpowered by the built environment has brought himself into.

The built environment as influenced by the west encourages aculturalization, forcing its users to adapt to the uniform, defined and established rules of organization, circulation and human interaction.

Currently, the mall culture is thriving to survive. The malls are empty with no life and activity. People are no more overwhelmed by the way these function or seem from the outside. The users are searching for the freedom and choices that street fairs offer. These malls have to be a part of the existing Indian context to flourish. They have to transform their concept in accordance to the existing shopping interfaces in the Indian market. Currently the High Street Epping is crying out for activity and life, and what we are doing in response is to expand the centre with vast areas of open air car parking, instead of reinventing the centre to better integrate with the street. Malls have to respond to the behavior of its users and not try and change them. Perhaps this is the case where the big box is not the problem, but the manner in which it is laid out, designed and integrated into its context is.

advertisment of the vehicle on the vehicle using the graphical illusion technique.
the van offers to service and maintain cars. hence the illusion is an advertisement of the function and service offered by the van and hence the company.

the airlines advertise using their own planes. these are examples where the object to be promoted becomes the promotional vehicle.
school buses carry an identity of the specific school and the region. particular colour code as per the system is followed with basic regulatory signs and labels.
an example where a vehicle is developed specifically for promotion and advertisement.




graphics used for publicity and image making. information regarding the brand published on the vehicle.

from the Indian context,

Delhi transport cooperation follows a code of colors, signs and signals. the two images show the development of the buses for the same function. this modification was done to develop public transportation system in Delhi with reference to the common wealth games. along with government vehicles, there are other private buses running in the city, differentiated with colour coding. government buses are referred to as green line buses and the private ones white line or red line buses. a while ago, many incidents occurred involving red line buses over running people and being referred to as the accident vehicles. this lead to associations , red line buses called as the murder vehicles , forcing the government to change the colour coding of the buses from red to blue.
auto rickshaws , buses, horse carts, larris and other traditional vehicles adorn regional graphics. a truck from kashmir will represent kashmiri art skills and craft and an auto from bengal with have bengali graphics and writing.

Publicity... As we see it.
Publicity … as it is.



Introduction of technology in today’s culture has lead to mass production and standardization, making advertising and publicity the most sought profession. Developments all over the world have lead to intermingling of cultures, thereby confusing the producers as well as consumers. The age of bewilderment stipulates competition. Competition within the production field as well as the consumer market commands baseless publicity increasing groundless consumerism.

The world has become a smaller place, well connected with a strong information database. The world now adorns a larger consumer base with higher buying powers. The economies are developing faster than before.
India being a developing country, its economy is growing rapidly. As India is closing in on the established superpowers, Indian consumers too want to be at par with its capitalist counterparts. With egoistic approaches, India now feels the need to “possess” and hence has the “willingness” to pay for the goods.

Publicity or advertisement sector involves three types of users. The manufacturers of luxury goods including the film industry, automobile as well foreign consumer products, publicize to ‘temp’ the consumer. Exploiting the ‘feel good’ factor, they aim at selling products that people actually don’t need. The western influences help the Indian market to exploit the weakness of its consumers. ‘To ape the west’ as they call it, to be at par with the rest of the world.

Low end producers increase appeal to the masses by spreading their market base at the place they belong. They aim at a particular sector of the society and hence their publicity stunts confine to regional, religious as well as social aspects of the segment they most cater to.

Social organizations as well as NGOs publicize their work to popularize their activities generating support, common opinions and charity through rallies, published literature as well as one to one interaction.

Publicity utilizes various methods of implication. Electronic media and print media both have expanded in a big way. Interactive hoardings, internet television, radio including the movie industry often leads to constant convincing through bombardment of advertisements even whilst day to day activities. For e.g. a person spends more time watching ads than those serials the television portrays.

Products after being established in the market, themselves become publicity names. For example Xerox, a photocopy machine has become a household name world over. Whisper, Google and Volvo are other such brands that have become activity, product representatives.

Advertisement or promotion is not just restricted to where the user chooses to see. Sometimes the consumer is brought to the product via publicity stunts of showcases and events by famous brand ambassadors. This is referred to as the ‘carrot and stick’ approach, which evidently persuades the ‘obsessive’ consumer to get attracted.

Each product has a ‘unique selling point’, an economic term used to niche the segment of users the product caters to. Each advertisement aims at playing on the users fantasies. Man has always been egoistic and unsettling. If the product implies the betterment of his or her life, it creates a desperate desire, hence enticing the buyer to ‘want’ the product.

Publicity has expanded to such an extent that it no more promotes selected products, putting one over the other. Now same products of different brands have equivalent promotion, hence offering the consumer such a wide choice that he/she is left baffled.

Indian society and its curiosity levels, unknowingly often backfires on people itself. Owning expensive, mostly useless products has become a status symbol. Feeding the ‘envious’ behavior of the society neighbors, the Indian buyer is suckered into falling for the products in spite of knowing that he/she has no such use for such things.

Publicity has certainly given an opportunity to a lot of manufacturers to establish them in the market and has definitely served the consumer by giving him a broader aspect of choice. But where is it leading to? Publicity evidently feeds on people’s unjustified desires and wants. It is plausible to assume that in the coming years, the world will see a presidential rise of such issues related to the people product relationship. Currently and quite obviously, ‘products rule the people, rather than people ruling the products.
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street graphics: inference

S G HIGHWAY – an overview…..

The SG highway in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, is one of the important roads that is running across the city. This road at one point of time was the boundary of the city. Now in response to immense globalisation and urban development, the extents of the city have spread further away from the centre point or the core of Ahmedabad. The cultural activities have shifted their base to the peripheries of the city embarking upon drastic architectural, construction as well as planning developments.

Reallocations of cultural activities lead to a redefinition of the highway. It is now perceived as one of the major streets in the city. As we say, ‘city is where the people are’, visual identity of the road changed, bringing in investments from big brands, visually attractive shop facades and a trunk load of hoardings.

S G highway if looked at from a visual point of view, is cluttered and over burdened by gigantic hoardings.

According to basic categories of environmental visual communication, the road can be looked at from the following basic perspectives. Static graphics form a major part of the view, comprising of basic signages, logos of brands and signs with signals. Being a commercial hub, the road caters to a series of malls, all publicising brands and products of the modern age. A series of logos and publicity images hover over each junction, screening local as well as defined advertisements. From an ice cream laari walla with an umbrella with advertisements of local cellular company to the reliance mobile hoarding on the façade of the building, static or stationary hoardings form the visual language of the street.

Considering the fact that the so called highway caters to an intense gamut of traffic, the positioning as well the scale of the static graphics is imperative.
The hoardings have an urban scale to them with reference to the coming traffic as well as the cone of vision of the viewer viewing from a distance. Hence the scale of the hoardings adorns a definite scale and viewing distance.

Building facades on the periphery of the road have been treated to respond to the exposure to the public passer by. Facades have been treated graphically using structural materials itself. Extra large hoardings or super graphics have been strategically positioned on to the façade so as to be viewed from a far off distance. Responding to the direction of the coming traffic, reliance mobile advertisement follows a particular type face rotated to suit the context.

Significantly, the publicity items have used the primary colour as their base colour palette. To be noticed from a distance, the hoardings illustrate the use of neutral shades as their base colours, enhancing the material to be publicized.

As individual hoardings, the placement and the scales are quite appropriate. Unfortunately the collective picture is chaotic, clustered and scattered. The publicity arrangement does not follow a particular system or a specified pattern. Conclusively, the over powering, unorganized hoardings have destroyed the over all visual environment of the highway.

An initiative has to be taken to string the visual elements together. Road signages and dividers may follow a common colour code for better visual perception. The junctions have a series of small bill boards specifying the company responsible for environmental concern of that junction. This could have been indicated in a better way, incorporating landscape into advertising. The billboards on repetitive street light poles can become a part of a ‘street pattern’. The building facades can follow a particular system of facades so as to congregate the elements of street graphics. Let the street be a representative of developing Indian culture with an essence of modernity and globalization.

super graphics- an understanding......

Super graphics – an understanding…..


Super graphics are oversized graphics established for the urban setting. They are layers used to alter the environment.

Super graphics are a demonstration of how a simple image can amend basic human response to his immediate environment. It shows how design affects the behavior of people in different places.

Graphics plays an important role in the establishment of a product in the market. In this situation of groundless consumerism, branding, packaging and publicity Have the task of creating awareness about all that the market has to offer to the consumers. In response to the competition in the manufacture base, ‘the larger the ad, the better it is for the product’. That’s where the idea of possession comes into the picture.

Outdoor advertising is a constantly evolving medium of communication and super graphics so to speak. In fact, the entire concept has changed in recent times to Out-Of-Home advertising. It encompasses advertising not just on hoardings but in other places that get high pedestrian or vehicular traffic. Outdoor advertising today encompasses a whole gamut of vehicles, but hoardings and super graphics remain unassailably number one. Oversized headings command high-density consumer exposure as they target vehicular traffic. A case in context was the launch of Times group’s glamour and entertainment channel, Zoom. The persuasive hoardings with the sheer white background, contrasting red and black graphics and the teasing tagline, were all over Mumbai. What was interesting was that the advertisement itself did not need much customization although the billboards ranged in size and format from the traditional to horizontal bus shelters to vertical building façade graphics.

Brands label their market base aiming at a particular region or sector of the society. That calls for an entry of over sized graphics or super graphics. For example at SG highway junction, Ahmedabad, each cellular company has booked individual roads of the crossroads. The corner of the junction exhibits an oversized hoarding and the small boards follow the street lights on the street. Super graphics are thus, a representation of establishment or ownership of a brand in a particular place or context.

Super graphics are not only confined to advertisements and publicity. Street art, murals as well as architectural facades demonstrate the stimulation caused by over sized graphics in the environment. Graffiti or street art becomes a permanent exhibition of opinions on various important social cultural issues. Attracting the viewer using merely the scale of the image is the simplest way of generating response.

Supergraphics are often used as a second skin on an architectural set up. For example, the renewal or renovation of an existing building may incorporate Supergraphics as a decorative design element. This actually serves a dual purpose of advertisement of the owner of the building in terms of the logo of the company and the product as well as being a part of the building design itself. In response to the current world situation, this modernistic functional approach serves well, making the building an important part of the environment.

Overgrowing cities and never ending urbanization makes super graphics a major part of street signage. Often these become landmarks or identities of the street.

Super graphics deals with layering. Whether, it’s transforming the outdoor environment or interiors of a home. Oversized graphics form a major part of wall finishes in interior designing changing the complete perception of the space and hence human behavior. Restaurants have used Supergraphics as their identity as well as interior language. Interiors with peculiar graphics attract consumers and enhance the public image of the place.

Conclusively, Supergraphics add to the complete environment. Indoor or outdoor, street or a room, super graphics lend a language or an image to the projected. Supergraphics adorns a process of layering and projecting a message on a large scale for definite visual exposure.

environmental graphics- visual communication

Visual communication as the name suggests is a means of conveying information through graphical representations that are most of the time images or text.It is one of the most powerful and effective means of putting
information across with very little room for confusion through interpretation.There are many graphic design disciplines and specialties, media and markets. Primarily, graphic design can be divided into two major areas: print and multimedia. Print includes desktop publishing, advertising, magazine design, publishing, corporate identity, logos, typography, package design, and print production. Multimedia includes television and film design, video production, computer games, interactive design, animation, TV graphics, film titles, and web design.
The expanse of visual communication covers various means and methods that are adopted to convey information. This article is particular to those aspects that are related only to 2 dimensional representations.Under the chosen scope of study, visual communication is limited to graphics that can be logos, identities, signage, gestures,symbols and print productions.
In the indian context, from gestures such as " namaste" or any classical dance moves can be a part of visual communication. In a country like India visual communication is most of the time used in conveying things at a public sector.

Visual communication can be categorised into the following:

• logo s of brands
• magazines and newspares
• illustrations
• billboards
• street grafitti
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