Design of future: Minimal, casual and honest

Bow out baroque, gothic and stylised art deco. Minimal, innovative, mass and the elemental are waiting to take over design in India and across the globe.

Being casual, honest and going back to the earth’s natural pools is driving the core of universal aesthetics of design, experts from the fields of art and design said in the capital.

Predicting the future of the global design at the recent two-day India Design Forum 2012 here, US-based industrial designer Karim Rashid said the “world was going to change completely in 20 years with no room for going back to history”.

“The age we live in now is casualism. It’s seamless, in which navigating through space and things are not obstacles. No ties, no suits… Sixty percent of our shoes are running shoes. Casual age is most interesting because it is about care and love,” the celebrated designer said.

The world will become 4D — the fourth dimension, which is about the human experience, Rashid added.

“I am designing rings for people to get married in space right now,” Rashid laughed, painting the designer’s world of the future.

Designer Manish Arora, the creative head of Paris-based fashion and design house Paco Rabanne, is looking for inspiration from graffiti, street art and everyday things this season.

“Creativity and honesty will rule design in the years to come. The look and aesthetics for the next fall will be a move back to the basics – to simple things and the nature around you. I have used wall graffiti and the casual kitsch of the streets – all the things in life that you tend to ignore – to complement my designs and clothes this
season,” Arora told IANS on the sidelines of the forum.

He said the “well-kept Paco Rabanne” archives inspire him. “And I use Indian craftsmanship to my advantage. It is about modernising India, not westernising India. You have to stick to your identity and keep going on and on till people start believing in you,” Arora said.

Famous Dutch design trend forecaster and educator Lidewij Edelkoort foresees human emotions and relationships transforming fashion and design – along with the elements of the earth.

“This means that the man of the future is going to be more soft, more romantic and more tender. We will see men with longer hair and a different attitude towards life. Siblings will be more important, the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren will grow stronger… and our relationship with the earth will grow deeper,” she said.

At a demonstration of the relationship between design and earth in the capital last week, Edelkoort said: “Beautiful textile stories are being jeopardised…if we don’t turn it around, the next generation will be sitting on wood, plastic and metals.” The design forecaster predicts a “return to natural fibres, colours, shades and
great innovations in the next phase”.

Design must have relevance for the mass, especially in a country in India, Pradyumna Vyas, the director of the Ahmedabad-based National School of Design said.

“We are living in a complex world and in a digital age where design cannot cater to a particular group but has to serve the masses. There are so many sectors like healthcare, education, survival sectors and experiential leisure in which design plays an important role,” Vyas told IANS.

It is the age of design and “we have to be inclusive in our approach to it”, he said. In a use and throw culture, designs in countries like India have to be sustainable and cost-effective, Vyas said.

Inaugurating the India Design Forum in the capital March 9-10, union Urban Development Minister Kamal Nath, who had implemented the National Design Policy, said: “Design innovation was a pre-eminent factor in the process of urbanisation and India needed to unleash its creative potential given the country’s young age profile and growing disposable income rural areas”.

India will be a design-enabled innovative economy, Aishwarya Pathy, founder of the India Design Forum, predicted.

“Design will be the driver of planned development and innovation and the key differentiator for competitive edge in all spheres. Also,India’s design talents have gained international recognition. India has a responsibility to champion its designers. There is no time like the present for India to join the global debate on design and
creativity,” Pathy told IANS.