Kyoorius Designyatra 2011

Kyoorius invites you to catch a ringside view of what you can expect at DesignYatra this year.

Block your dates for a sneak preview of Kyoorius DesignYatra 2012 on 18th May, 2012, 7pm onwards.

Here's what you can look forward to:

- A look at how the speaker list at DesignYatra has shaped up.
- Understand what goes into shaping the DesignYatra speaker list.
- Share your feedback about what you want to see at DesignYatra this year
- A chance to score advanced 'on-the-spot' special delegate fees for 2012
- And of course, Friday night dinner is on us, along with pizzas and a few beers

Join us at Kyoorius Mumbai Office. Unfortunately, space is very limited.

Register for the evening by sending an RSVP to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , mentioning your name and the organisation that you are currently employed with.

Mark Chalmers

Mark Chalmers trained as an architect and found his inspiration in the study of religious spaces such as Cathedrals ranging from the traditional to the kitsch such as inflatable chapels. In his talk, he spoke about coming to the realization that the cross is the symbol of one of the most widely accepted and recognizable brands in the world. He talked about popular brands in consumer culture, what they seem to do and what they actually stand for. According to Chalmers, H&M, though one of the hippest retail brands in the world, is basically a large distribution house; Ikea is a big warehouse selling street food (50c hotdogs is the reward to a tired shopper who has spent hours browsing through the store) and Amazon is essentially one of the largest software development companies in the world.

He took the audience through the Canvas Experiment. This was a hugely successful creation of screens where Converse shoes were the pixels that were animated through a series of simple mechanics and machines. They experimented with the mechanics of animating these screens responding to various sounds such as that of drums and guitars, motion sensing of people moving, walking and dancing in front of the screens and even programmed the screen of shoes to be an interface for video games. Once the idea was established and the technology resolved, the possibilities were endless.

Sandeep Khosla & Tania Singh Khosla

Their work explores history, tradition, culture and climate in the built environment and visual communication. Their work is local and at the same time global. Influences of their education in the US and their response to the rich arts and crafts around them become the set of tools for the projects. This husband and wife duo presented works from their individual practices of architecture and graphic design respectively. Their work largely talked about the modern vocabulary of design in India keeping in mind the culture, context and history of a place. They discussed the visual differences that are seen in the west and the east and interpretations and overlaps. In that spirit their work is a combination of minimalism overlapped with the ornate, embellished and wildly colorful sensibility.

Adrian Shaughnessy

Adrian Shaughnessy currently does what every designer eventually can only dream of doing. In his presentation on day one of Kyoorius DesignYatra, Shaughnessy explained how he made the transition from a traditional successful graphic design studio environment to writing and now publishing his own books. By eliminating the publisher, Shaughnessy says he has managed to design each book as a masterpiece project that allows him to not only write about work that interests him but also present it in a way that is compelling. Publishing his own books allows him to play with the choice of paper, the design of the cover, the changing textures of the pages of a book, the treatment of type and the images. The Internet, he pointed out, is the reason that has allowed him to bypass the bookstores and the publishing houses to create his own books.

Day two began with the Young Blood session featuring Novi Rahman and Raw Color.