DESIGN: AN ODYSSEY

MP Ranjan interviews Kumar Vyas about the latter’s book that was published by NID in 2009. The first edition of this book was published by NID in 1980 and called Design and Environment: An Introductory Manual. The interview veers on to explore new thoughts and insights presented by Vyas in the much revised and updated second edition called Design and Environment: A Primer.

MPR. Would you like to give a little bit of background about how the book came into being in the first instance, and the subsequent publication of the second edition?

KV. The first edition was published way back in 1980 and at that time it was called Design and Environment: An Introductory Manual. The word ‘manual’ is quite important because it was part of a design awareness kit which had three components; apart from the book there was an introductory film and a series of film strips. This was specially designed for students who were in the last years of their secondary education and also for those who had completed their secondary education and begun their higher studies. The entire kit was designed and used for the first time at NID itself. Later on, it was used in schools at Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Coimbatore and Delhi. Further, the film and film strips were combined and made into an independent film called Design and Environment in eight modules. This happened mainly because Doordarshan suggested that it wanted to convey something about design to the young audience, and ultimately this is how the film modules got telecast. Subse-

INTERVIEW

DESIGN: AN ODYSSEY

Quently, I felt that it was not necessary to include a manual as a part of the revised training kit in the form of film modules, and that is how the idea of revising it into a self-standing book came about. Another reason was that there was also a considerable amount of feedback from various design workshops that were conducted at schools by NID faculty members and sometimes by the teachers of the schools themselves. So based on these two developments, I revised the book and now it is made into a primer. So that is basically the difference.