'Basic Design Teaching'
A workshop by Prof. Mandar Rane
Workshop Theme : Basic design teaching is more about learning over a period of time and therefore demands an incubation period. The work needs to be contemplated upon, rather than forming concrete results or frozen opinions. It is about exploring/ experiencing and employing pragmatic perspective of an experience within a context through a medium. The task of teaching Basic Design has become arduous as the tools of a designer have undergone drastic changes. Working with hands is disliked as new tools have ventured in; arguing that if computer can do it precisely, why the similar needs to be constructed with hands. The intangible knowledge of looking/ seeing at empty spaces is often missed out by a novice. This leads to a lack of basic knowledge of creating visual relationships governed by the laws of Gestalt. A graphic designer analyses the content, forms semantic chunks, further to manifest them into visual chunks to finally construct the message. To design is to create an interpretable/ perceivable relationship between these chunks. A graphic designer designs a communication message, to bring visual and semantic hierarchy (by forming groups or breaking groups) between these information chunks by creating visual relationships. Knowledge about the variables of distance, value and scale are critical for understanding of typography and are the most powerful variables to create visual relationships within information chunks. This workshop will attempt to explore the concerns mentioned above through short exercises. Students will be required to bring their own laptop.
About Instructor:

  Prof. Mandar Rane
Mandar Rane is an Associate Professor at Industrial Design Centre (IDC), IIT Bombay and teaches in the discipline of Visual communication. He specializes in Graphic design; Information Design, Book Design
Visual Identity and design of interactive applications. Since he belongs to visual communication is less verbal. You can see his academic as well as professional work on his personal website http://www.mrane.com
  Mr. Omkar Shende
Born in 1976, Omkar Shende completed his B. F. A from Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Arts, with a specialization in typography. With more
than twelve years of experience, he has worked on user experience design for several web, desktop and mobile devices.As a typeface designer, Omkar Shende has worked closely with Prof. R. K. Joshi, and designed fonts for both Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems. In 2002, he was invited by Microsoft to attend a font design workshop in Seattle.