Founder & Moderator Designindia online community for design with india.

 

A principal of Elephant Design, founded in India in 1989 and four other partners. His company has played a pivotal role in the growth of India's nascent design profession by inspiring confidence in the industry's services. Sudhir has put together a team that provides innovation as branding, product, packaging and environmental design solutions to a diverse range of businesses from banking and information technology, to automotive and retail.

 

Sudhir founded "Designindia" online community for designers in India, and is actively involved with various design events at local, national and international levels.

 

Sudhir has lectured at various universities around the world and is also involved with Symbiosis School of Design as an advisor. Sudhir is on the editorial board of an automobile magazine "Bike India".

 

Sudhir has published 3 books so far.

 

Today Elephant Design is an associate of The Asian Design Alliance - a groundbreaking network of Asian design consultancies working together on pan-regional programs for understanding cultures and markets in Asia (China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Laos, Lebanon, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam).

 

 

Policy discussions and a ground work of objectives for design in a country like India is imperative now. Design is perhaps the leap over the mistakes and wrong steps which developed countries took and India can avoid as it paces ahead to development. Like many technological leaps where the earlier, bulky and expensive technologies hampered the growth…(example being mobile telephony)…design too would move India to the knowledge and intellectual era along with material development.

 

The danger here is that the moment you discuss design at policy levels..it becomes an elitist activity, it alienates thousands of designers and their “impacts” on the ground from this discussion. Though it is very important to have thease discussions. It is equally important to take the major ground stake holder with us in these discussions.

 

I believe the only way to move ahead in this case where we have macro as well as micro situations in tandem and in communication is to take these discussions to the virtual level. Online communities like “Designindia” bring a certain transparency, open ness and create a pressure group for policy makers to be inclusive. Online communities empower each of us to know and act as we want and not in a format which is defined by someone.

 

I founded Designindia almost 5 years back with a very simple objective of involving Professional designers in discussions. Today Designindia has more than 1000 members. This is an achievement in the environment where no design body exists and after innumerable attempts by various institutes and individuals we have not been able to form an offline design body..I believe the quality of discussions and emerging actions would prove that Designindia is bound to be seen a mother body which breeds and encourages activities which are local but macro at the same time.

 

Design and online community for design with India- Designindia perhaps represent the way technology will make us skip the painful parts of growth.