Representation

Design Course

Visual Ethnography for Designers

Understand the design context

Prof. Nina Sabnani

IDC, IIT Bombay

Representation

Representation of Visual Ethnographic Data:

Visual methods are used not only to gather data but are an instrument to arrive at and communicate the findings too. That is, the analysis could be represented using visual methods such as photo essays, films (animated or live-action), an installation, a book and so on. Especially for designers, as they would use findings from ethnographic methods to inform their design practice. Here are a few examples:

After the final Painting was done Roma started working on extracting the elements from the canvas and forming a new composition as per the story line.

These are the important scenes of the story which had been composite by the artist in this painting.

Roma followed the same process throughout and came up with interesting compositions for each page of the book, according to the story.

This is one of the examples of the compositions.

The exchange between designer + researcher Roma Singh with members of Warli community to find out more about their art culminated in an illustrated book.

Everyone has their own story of Gandhi — and in this book, which came out of a set of four large paintings, an artist of the Warli tradition, an animation filmmaker and a storyteller come together in a unique collaboration to create a very visual Gandhi story. While the artist was inspired to paint Gandhi’s life simply because “he was like us”, the curating of the visuals was inspired by the delightful details in the paintings, picked and highlighted with care. There are the recurring motifs of buying a ticket and going on a journey by ship and by train, of physical work, the capturing of a moment rather than movement. Like the three creators behind the book, there are three voices that tell the story — of Rajesh the narrator, the questioning child, and Gandhiji or Bapu himself, all coming together to introduce young children to the great man called Mahatma Gandhi.

MY GANDHI STORY by Nina Sabnani, Ankit Chadha and pictures by Rajesh Chaitya Vangad, published by Tulika Books. Learn more: http://www.tulikabooks.com/our-books/picture-books/general-picture-books/my-gandhi-story

Tanko Bole Chhe

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Similarly, in Tanko Bole Che, community members tell their stories through the medium of embroidery- an art and craft that is central to their culture in Kachchh, Gujarat.