Design goes 'inherently Indian'

Quirky brands such as Chumbak and Happily Unmarried are embracing more 'Indian designs'

Truck art photo frames, Gabbar cushions, caricatures of classical music icons plastered across tunics, Bhojpuri coasters, doormats with technicolour jootis, pagdi lunch bags  — with products such as these, the average consumer can be seen wearing his Indianness on his sleeves like never before. Be it in doormats, crockery, stationery, accessories, curios or home decor, the rise of “India” in product design is in clear evidence. “Desi cool” is how design companies are defining this trend. 

Brands such as Play Clan, Happily Unmarried, Chumbak, Pure Ghee Designs and India Circus are drawing from popular culture, rather than tradition, to create products that speak the language of the youth. “Our products are a playful take on all that we see around us — stories that we have heard, places we have been to, conversations with friends,” says Himanshu Dogra, founder, Play Clan. 

 

The 2000s were a time of drastic change in India. Infused with a rush of entrepreneurial spirit, the youth was becoming economically independent at a much earlier age than before. The 20-somethings were financially independent and well-travelled. This was also a time when NRIs were coming back to the country to discover their roots. Suddenly, the average Indian youngster realised that it was quite hip to be Indian. “It became cool to play Hindi or regional music at parties. Hindi films became cool and started gathering fans all across the world. This resulted in a pride in all things desi. The products were a logical extension,” says Rajat Tuli, co-founder and director, Happily Unmarried.

This led to a stark change in product design itself. “People are now telling a story through design rather than conforming to a stipulated visual language. And that’s because India has matured and the youth has a mind of its own,” says Prof Pradyumna Vyas, member secretary (India Design Council) and director, National Institute of Design. The fact that the Taj Mahal painted behind autos or the images of actors painted within are making their way to cushion covers is a clear example of this. “Ten years ago, who would have put a hand painted Amitabh Bachchan in the living room? Now, the youth is visiting new-age hotels, which are using these kind of interiors. Films such as Munna Bhai made a certain kind of lingo cool and that’s become huge. So all this is influencing design as well,” he says.   

When Tuli started Happily Unmarried in 2003 with Rahul Anand, there were no benchmarks for the tone, manner or idea of such a product. “India was changing, but the design sensibilities remained very West-inspired,” he says. Similarly, when Chumbak’s Vivek Prabhakar and Shubhra Chadda founded the company in 2010, they saw “a lacuna for design that represented the peculiarities, eccentricities and what is core to India”. 

Sculptor and industrial designer Aditi Prakash, too, started the accessory brand Pure Ghee Designs in Delhi in 2010 to address this gap. “Right from my student days at the National Institute of Design, it used to irk me that design is taught in a Western style, especially since India has such a strong visual language,” says Prakash. 

So, while Tuli and Anand started by picking up products that were not inherently considered funny and integrated popular culture, emerging trends and cultural insights into the design, the Chumbak team began to use typically Indian motifs — such as painted elephants spotted during Onam, a Kathakali figurine, an autowallah speeding through Bengaluru with jasmine garlands and banana leaves tied to the vehicle — in a contemporary style. 

Similarly, the colourful Indian streets and the vast textile aesthetic of the craftspeople served as a huge influence for Prakash who drew inspiration from quirky lungis seen on the streets of Hyderabad and Kochi and the fourth generation craftsmen from Barmer and Varanasi. “I wanted to provide people an option to be proudly Indian and to help them express themselves more individualistically,” she says. 

Kite top

Brands such as these not only brought back the “India” in design, but were “also performing the function of educating the consumer about what works and what doesn’t in terms of aesthetic”, says Krsnaa Mehta, design-director, India Circus.  Marked by vibrant contrasts, Mehta’s design label brings to life awe-inspiring memories and scenes from the streets on everything from silk cushion covers to table runners. Royal Bengal tigers, peacocks and camels with their riders are just some of their oft-spotted motifs.

The popularity of such designs stems from the target consumer’s urge to make a quirky statement about everything it sports -- right from a small fridge magnet to a cushion cover. A product can no longer be a mere functional entity. For instance, within a peer group populated with 25-year-olds, it would be considered sacrilege to buy a <chai> cup just for the sake of having tea. Rather, it should be feature quirky concepts, such as a humorous take on the great Indian baraat or witty slogans such as Mooch Nahi Toh Kuch Nahi. “Product is now about a feeling, an emotion, a viewpoint, which we bring to the treatment of the subject and which attracts the consumer,” adds Dogra.

Before these players came about, Indian design held only two connotations in the consumer’s mind: handicraft or kitsch. However, the current crop of product designers take great umbrage if you relegate their visual language to the realm of kitsch. They maintain that the context and narrative that they bring to their products separates their aesthetic sensibilities from a kitschy style. “Everyone has seen a doormat featuring a lady with folded hands, with ‘Welcome’ written below. Now, it would be kitsch if we take that image, turn it into a graphic and not add anything new to it,” says Nikhil Saxena, head of design, Happily Unmarried. “However, when you add context to it, this becomes an evolved design story. For instance, for Women’s Day, we took the same lady and made a graphic, in which she is not just folding her hands but also winking. The slogan says: ‘Do You Mean To Say That Everyday Is Not Women’s Day. Challenge Accepted’.” 

Dogra concurs and explains the three movements of “Indian” design: the first being kitsch, in which you take an image, photoshop it, add tlayers and turn it into pop art. “Second is when you take imagery from an everyday situation and add a quirky slogan to it. And third, which is what we do, is to draw inspiration from a certain style and then reinterpret in a completely different style,” he says.  For instance, depending on the theme or the subject, the Play Clan team decides if the illustrative style should be geometric, calligraphic or cubist. “When we did temples, we went geometric. We did another series called the Mughal Nama colour playing cards, which tell the stories, vices and strengths of four Mughal kings. So you don’t just play, but also learn something in the process,” says Dogra. 

It is no wonder that “Desi Cool” has become the buzzword in design across the country. Many more players are latching onto the success of brands such as Play Clan and Happily Unmarried. “I have seen so much of our art being used by mainstream brands. But the fact is that people are copying or innovating with this only because it has worked. Also, this trend is now going from niche to mass,” says Dogra. 

This popularity is reflected in the brands’ own growth trajectories as well. For instance, Happily Unmarried, which started from a flat in south Delhi, is today expanding through franchising and online sales, and has a projected turnover of Rs 50 crore this financial year. “We now have a design team of about 10. One big measure of acceptance was when we were invited to bid for a shop at the International Airport. To us, it meant that we had reached a level where the world could be shown the modern Indian design language,” says Tuli. 

Expansion is on everyone’s mind at the moment. Chumbak, which essentially began as an online store offering fridge magnets and notebooks, has now grown to a design house with over 35 stores across India, and plans include adding more brick-and-mortar stores as well as an international expansion. India Circus, on the other hand, which has partnered with stores like Westside in the past, is aiming to open its first store in Mumbai’s Colaba by Diwali. And it will stand true to its name by being in the most chaotic part of Mumbai, shares Mehta.

A Konkani bag

To cater to the growing demand, companies have had to scale up their design team as well. For example, Prakash started the brand with one karigar, who incidentally inspired the brand’s name. “He got a big dabba of pure ghee from his village as a gift. And that made me realise that what better name for a brand that is synonymous with India and stands for quality,” says Prakash, who now has 16 people on board. Aya Nagar, which is where her studio is located, is home to a lot of migrant workers. She now also provides employment to their wives through a series of upcycling projects.

In the process, the brands’ design aesthetic has evolved as well. “We had a product called the Procrastinator's Diary, which was very popular, so much so that some people bought five editions of it. But the audience was limited because of the language constraints. That’s when we started to think of more ideas from the heartland and less from the anglicised mindset, that, perhaps, we were comfortable with,” explains Saxena.

Chumbak too has seen a steady progression in aesthetic and is now actively pursuing the international audience by opting for “global” designs. The shift towards less-Indian elements doesn’t mean that Chumbak believes that Indian motifs are losing their appeal, but that “the portrayal and style in which they are represented needs to keep evolving. An animal representation in one of our designs, from five years ago, will now look radically different. The character, however, will still remain the same,” say Prabhakar and Chadda.