Through its Design Consultancy Services, NID undertakes consultancy projects both from Industrial Design, (Product Design, Furniture Design, Ceramics and other materials) , Communication Design (Graphic Design, Exhibition Design, Animation, Short Films, Video Programmes, Audio Visuals & Photography) and Textile / Apparel Design.

Here enquiries are proceeded by a technical brief taken by our designer, followed by a project proposal. Upon acceptance of the proposal and requisite advance, the project is taken up on a phase wise schedule.

A few of the major projects, currently in progress, as listed below.

Warning
In selecting candidates for these posts one must be extremely careful about applicants discontented with their present work or anyone who would look upon the work in the institute as his “chance to be creative”. Also in this connection beware of the professional or specialist who when confronted with a problem having to do with design – seems suddenly to abandon the disciplines of his own profession and put on his art hat – this can happen to those who are otherwise most rational – doctors, engineers, politicians, philosophers.

This method of bringing various disciplines together to attack a problem in a fresh way will be used in India more and more. This institute is an excellent place to start. The method is not easy – the trick is to get the specialist to bring to bear on the problem, a logical extension of his framework of thinking – the nature of the design problem helps because it affords constant illustrations and progress checks.

The faculty will need a strong nucleus of exceptionally aware architects and designers to act as catalysts and preceptors, and to keep the system from oscillating too violently.

The effectiveness of the program will depend on the communication links established. Some staff members must be prepared to work and train in communication techniques – exhibitions, graphics, printing, photography, film, demonstration, writing, drama. Through these devices the Institute will communicate to itself and to the nation. The importance of the exhaustive use of communication techniques cannot be overemphasised. It brings concepts and statements out into the open, to be used, expanded, corrected. One measure of the strength of this Institute will be the degree to which it is willing to stick its neck out.

The Director of the Institute should perhaps not be a professional designer. He should be a mature man capable of approaching administration as a non-specialist – a man who by nature could become part of the Board of Governors and a part of the Institute.

3. The Projects or Methods
To be at all meaningful, the projects must be viewed in the light of the objectives (Part I), the description of students, and the description of faculty. The projects are meant as a possible guide to the nature of activities not the extent.

It is very likely that the staff and students of this institute will have – and want – more work than they can handle. This is good because it produces a sense of immediacy characteristic of living groups and individuals – but not always characteristic of our institutions of higher learning. Training will be through participation in and contact with Research projects and Service projects – plus special exposure to specific disciplines.

Buckminster Fuller, a man of great perspective, gave this problem to a group of students – Design a package of services and effects which will be the most essential to salvage from a city about to be destroyed – the program was of course limited – but it was not an exercise in civil defence. It was a careful study of relative values – what do you take with you when the house burns down ?

This is the careful examination of old problems in new lights and search for the beginning of new problems and the attempt to make a valid statement of solution as of this time. It is a project that can fully exploit the broad experience of faculty and consultants.

Example : To study the shelter and environment, all the artifacts and services required for a family in a specific agricultural community to make statements of solution in drawing and prototype.It starts out much like the problem of the Lota.

Detailed example : Study the problem of lighting in terms of increasing literacy and existing resources – consider the possibilities of electrical power becoming available and devise ways of making genuinely effective use of this power in terms of light – consider light uses – to banish fear, to work, to read, relax – make working models – prototypes – consider a system of wiring that will be efficient, effective and of such quality and concept that it will contribute to the whole, not detract.

The advantage of this attack on such a problem is that it clarifies the basic issues. We are searching for a device to turn power into an appropriate quality of light. We are not setting out to design a “lighting fixture” (the word “lighting fixture” is loaded with preconceived ideas). Furthermore we are doing it for a situation of most rigid economical circumstances – where basic values must remain clear. This line of attack could end up in a highly desirable piece of equipment – BUT the chances are that it would not end up highly desirable if there was much premature anxiety (see Gita quote) about how desirable and saleable it would turn out.

Project “B” would then arrive at a point where there was a collection of models, prototypes, history, cost data, looks into the future, etc.-but the responsibility of the Institute does not end here. In order to be a real contribution in these fast-moving times this information must be organized and communicated in a far-reaching digestible way. This means exhibitions, films, literature, made and organized as part of the service program of the institute.

Working in these media is great discipline for making statements in a communicable way. It is also a way to quickly discover mistakes – mistakes quickly discovered and acted upon can be of great value. Such an institute must have enough autonomy to be free to make its own mistakes – free to stick its neck out.

Project ”C”
The general procedure of exhaustive analysis and specific statement is much the same in this project as it was in the one above. However, the situation is of a special nature with special problem characteristics – a railroad station or a post-office or an information center where the solution may in many ways be standardized but yet must be adaptable to a variety of localities.

We will take a post-office as an example. This is a good problem for a number of reasons :

Because it is an image of the nation it should be pleasant to come upon, easy to keep clean. It should be related to a public place – the public spaces, the fittings, the hardware, the counters – the light should be as though this image really wanted to serve. The signs should give information with dignity and conviction. Ways of providing other needed information should be explored – as should the uniforms, the stamps, the posters, the trucks, the printed forms, the post office pens, the poles that hold flags.

To work on such a problem is to unearth many clues important to the prime objectives – a statement of quality values across the nation could form a contagious network. This too would make an exhibition and a film and word would be getting around in India and abroad that somewhere here in India there was growing concern about the quality of things – and that new and healthy values were beginning to appear.

Project ”D”
Has to do with a design for an occasion.

The occasion could be : The welcoming of some foreign dignitary, a national festival of music or dance, the investiture of some public officials, the Olympic Games, a national holiday parade, the mayor's birthday.

This kind of problem has in it many unique characteristics of value to the other projects, to the general direction of the Institute – but they are not easy to state. Like most problems in design and architecture it is a problem in true speculation – before the act relive the act beforeand evaluate many possible courses of action.

The great opportunities in the occasion is that it involves mood, symbolizing a kind of faith and a limited time span – the limited time is important. Cultures need occasions when they can be gay, symbolic, moody, colourful and yet not be held to it for all time.

The materials of the occasion are even different : they are flowers, paper, ribbons, wire, cloth, smoke, color, air, music. None are asked to hold – to the point of shoddiness – they are gone before they die.

It is a tricky problem and a good one for the Institute because it seems light but demands a knowledge of prime objectives, demands discipline, demands a concept, demands unity – that it why traditional parades were great, and indecisive modern parades just fall to pieces. The Republic Day parade was an example. All the traditional units had some measure of concept and unity (with the exception of the music itself) : even the military sections had a discipline that carried it through – but the floats which had no underlying discipline turned out to be an unrelated sentimental hash. The floats had none of the conviction or gaiety of their religious counterparts in other parades (Incidentally, if an elephant is decorated at all on such an occasion he should be beautifully decorated). It would do neither the Institute nor the image of India any harm to treat an occasion.

Service to Industry would get more detailed material and would also provide a method by which industry could come to the institute with problems. The institute would not provide a “design” service but would help analyse an approach to industry's problem and familiarise them with just what was happening within the Institute. Such an exchange of questions could be of mutual advantage. Some graduate trainees who stay with the Institute and become part of the service wing could visit areas where direction in attitude was needed.

Undoubtedly prototypes developed in the Institute would find their way into production, but the greatest help would seem to be in triggering similar attitudes and disciplines in industry itself.

Service to Government
We feel that it is very important that the Institute invite other branches of Government to avail themselves of the service. It is important to have at government levels some intercourse in the areas of quality, discipline and image.The nature of the request for service could take many forms :

This would be a “design and research” service, but the restrictive aspects would be this – the outside agency or department would have to bear the expenses of the work and the institute would have the right to final decision on the solution. These restrictions would keep the institute from being overrun by service requests – for a while, that is – until just after the first projects are made public.

5. The Physical Plant
The real introduction of the Board of Governors to each other and to the faculty and the introduction of the faculty to each other and the first students to life, will come during the analysis and planning of the buildings to house the Institute.

One has the feeling that such an institute should either be housed in Fatehpur Sikri or else the most unmonumental, anonymous, pleasant, unpretentious, workable, unshoddy, national buildings possible. They should face the problems of climatic comfort, both with airconditioning and without.

Students and some faculty should live within the complex because much of the development of ideas and individuals would be on a round-the-clock basis – including food, music, conversation, special films and programmes and work.

Extract from Tribute to Charles Eames
Pupul Jayakar

. . . Unique Document

Out of the visit came the Eames report, a document familiar to most students of design in this country, unique in its insight, its demands for quality and the depth and width of its thinking. Commencing the report with the famous phrases of the Gita : ‘On man's right to work but never to the fruits thereof', the report sees the ‘change in India, a change in kind and not a change of degree'. Seeing the complexities of the revolution in communications that had struck India with terrific impact, ‘made more violent because of the nature of India's own complex situation, isolation and tradition', the report focuses on India's tradition and a philosophy that is familiar with the meaning of creative destruction and stresses the need to appraise and solve the problems of our times with tremendous service, dignity, and love'. ‘The search for form demands an investigation into values and qualities that Indians hold important to a good life', and that ‘there be close scrutiny of those elements that make up a standard of living'. The report goes on to urge ‘a restudy of environment and skill and to think anew on detailed problems of services and objects. To restate solutions in theory and actual prototype', and ‘to explore the existing symbols of India'.

The preliminary report was that of a creative genius and philosopher who had delved deep to discover and pinpoint the crises in the field of form, function, and a way of life. The detailed notes that followed it spelled out the technological hardware necessary to build the workshops that formed the integral structure of the institute and provided facilities for training research and service in the field of design, in its widest sense. The National Institute of Design was born. . . .

Through the years, Charles and Ray continued to visit India to meet old friends and to visit the National Institute of Design. I was in the USA and Canada, in July and August of 1978, and had spoken to Ray on the phone. Charles was away, but we had planned to meet before I returned to India. I lost contact with them as I had gone for a holiday into the interior of Canada, but on my return to Toronto towards the end of August, found messages awaiting me from Ray. It was on the phone that I heard of Charles' death.

Charles Eames was a giant amongst the new educators of the environment. Exponent of a new culture born of the vast technological and communication explosions that were transforming the environment and man's life, in him we saw the culture's mature flowering. His compassion and depth of seeing enabled him to draw from the riches of the past to provide the human dimension to his projects; with this there was infinite concern with the practical and with detail, a precision that made enormous demands on those who worked with him.