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The world that’s far from perfect

Tweet the Earth The contest drew more than 600 illustrations

The UMO Bad Design Expo, in its fifth consecutive year, urges us to stop and ponder over all things ‘bad’ but considered acceptable in our lives. Art galleries are places to showcase paintings, sculptures and illustrations about all thing s beautiful or at the most, things that make you think, right? What are ‘bad’ things doing here? The expo features entries it received in two contests — Bad Designs and Tweet the Earth.

The UMO or Utilitymatters.org makes us take a breather from our blissful online ‘tweets’ and wonder if we are losing the real bird tweets on earth. No, they are not merely talking about ‘Inconvenient Truths’ of climate changes and global warming. The cartoons and illustrations reflect the world we live in, with a dose of humour.

Touch of humour

More than 800 illustrations from 53 nations have poured in for the Bad Design Contest. Some take a no-nonsense look at environmental issues and others poke fun at things we’ve got used to. For instance, an illustration takes a dig at the fashion industry with the sketch of a woman sporting a gunny sack in the garb of ‘Summer Collection 2009’.

The 600-odd entries for Bad Designs give a glimpse of design concepts that don’t work in our public spaces, at home, work, travel, roads and in general. We’re often flummoxed by the umpteen buttons on the DVD/TV remotes while we use only a few; we’ve come to accept that buses will stop in the middle of the road creating a traffic snarl due to lack of enough bus bays; we can do nothing but complain about the winding drive inside the multi-level parking at a new mall and we sms unabashedly despite the keys of most of our mobile phones not being user-friendly for frequent typing.

The entries for Bad Design Contest and illustrations for Tweet the Earth are now open to viewing at the State Art Gallery, Madhapur, till September 22. The winners will be selected by a panel that will also take into account public opinion on the entries. The expo will then move to the IIIT campus before being showcased at IIT Mumbai.

The exhibition, says Kaladhar Bapu, a UMO volunteer and a design architect who works for Microsoft, is to create awareness for the need of good design. “We have many engineers and very few designers. Grooming designers will make a difference,” he believes. UMO has planned a national-level workshop, TechEase, at IIIT to bring together students of technology and design to address various issues.

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