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Showing posts from January, 2013

Playing with dimensions

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Immensions

Talking of advertisements

I was provoked to write this small piece on design… Provoked by the discussion on an advertisement I was witness to this week.  I just draw your attention to four aspects that we are likely to ignore:  First, the space. You cannot fill all the space of a page layout or an advertisement, thinking that you are able to say more in the same amount spent. If that were the case, the Google homepage would not be that clean but be cluttered with advertisements, if not other content!  Second, the flow of lines. Don’t the lines going up and to the right denote growth vis-à-vis those in opposite direction? Plants grow tall, children grow ‘up’, sun rises, charts depict higher values up and right… Then, why do we place arrows going from right to left and steps going down when in an ad graphic we try to depict growth?  Third, colour. No lecture on the theory of colours. Let me just let you imagine what looks vibrant to you. Don’t we find flowers and freshly rain-soaked leaves more lively tha

Grandpa

3rd January, 2357 This page of my diary is going to be very different from others. It is on this day last month that I had seen the face of my grandfather the last time and I have been missing him all along. So depressed had I been that I did not write my ‘daily’ diary for a full month. I won’t be able to forget grandpa even if all my organs are changed, including my brain. Let me mention here that concepts about humans are changing fast after the first full brain transplant two years ago. We have long achieved sort of immortality thanks to in-situ cloning of organs, organ transplants and what not. The concept of being a grandfather, even a father, has almost lost its meaning. Yet, only if you had suffered the loss of your grandfather – or grandmother if you were lucky to have seen one – would you realize their value in your lives. Till the last moment of his life, grandpa was active like a child. Part of this energy, I am sure, he had regained from our child Coxy. H

Is today's media accountable? For whom?

India has perhaps the largest number of news channels, airing news, entertainment and 'entertaining news' day and night. The print media has also been in good shape in India, as against the global trend. To add to this information regime, various forms of new media have arisen, some changing the very concept of 'the press' or 'mass media'.  Questions have often been raised about media's accountability. In the paper reproduced below, I have tried to analyse how much accountable does the present day media is and should be, and for whom.

Communication for development: a much-ignored tool for public participation

How much do the beneficiaries of various developmental / welfare schemes know about these schemes? Even if they know about them, is the information relevant and actionable?  My argument is that if we weave communication in developmental and welfare schemes, we'll get greater  public participation and better implementation of these schemes. My article written sometime back in a popular mag emphasises this.

Welcome, the new year!

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I welcome the new year with this painting:  Mirth