An Uncertain Arc: Impressions of India’s Design Century

Design has come into focus in present day India. It is seen as a source of competitive advantage, as a business resource, as a development resource and even an expression of soft power. In popular culture, the concept is more available than at any other time. On 20 February 2014, a conference for the design community held at India International Centre was addressed by the well-known typographer and designer Itu Chaudhuri.

Entitled, ‘An Uncertain Arc: Impressions of India’s Design Century’ – Chaudhuri illustrated the history of design from the 1900s onwards to the present with his own eclectic collection of examples. Chaudhuri said, “In advertising, or in street signs, an entirely imported style can be seen even if the subjects are Indian. As western manufacturers attempted to compete for Indian customers, often with Japanese exports, their advertising, packaging and graphic design mixed religious depictions, maharajas, or westernized gentlemen and lettering traditions — all of these sold products or sat cheerfully on matchbox labels.”

Chaudhuri reflected that in 1905, the first advertising agency, Dattaram’s Advertising in Bombay (which still exists) was formed and by 1924, National Advertising in Calcutta came up. In the formative years after independence from 1947 to 1960, the action moved to Delhi, not because business or industry shifted but because of the role of the government under Nehru. In the 1961 to 1991 period, no institute of design was as admired, debated or denounced as the National Institute of Design at Ahmedabad. These extreme reactions were a reliable indicator of NID’s impact.

By the 1980s, the IIT Powai in Mumbai set up a postgraduate design department headed by Sudhakar Nadkarni. By the 1990s, several IITs added graphic design departments. A central thesis of Chaudhuri is that from the 1990s to the present day, design’s trajectory responds to the economic environment, in ways good and bad. The opening up of the economy after 1991 seems to have had the effect of proliferating everything to do with design – schools, graduates, firms, designers, beauty, sophistication, crassness and created squalor.

“Up to 1990s, the most significant institute to have opened after the NID and the IITs was the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) in 1989, behind which we can see the hand of Pupal Jayakar. Its graduates have made an instant mark, and some have started to make waves internationally,” says Chaudhuri. “In the 1990s at least ten new design institutes opened, expanding the design workforce, mainly in graphic design. ‘NID graduate’ appears as a desirable tag in the matrimonial classifieds. Today’s multinational companies like HP, LG, Samsung and some other big brands, Indian firms like Godrej, and every automobile company have all started design departments in India. The Tata group states design as a key policy thrust and has a development centre in Europe. Some designers have done well outside India.”

Chaudhuri also discussed type design for Indian languages and scripts describing a Gujarati font as a good example of a quality type design based on Indian calligraphic systems. He mentioned the work of calligrapher and type designer RK Joshi who designed the first Devanagari fonts for Microsoft. Despite earlier NID efforts, this is the modern Hindi font that has become ubiquitous, as an everyday, jobbing font. Joshi’s work inscribed an arc from Ulka Advertising, to IIT Powai’s design school to the NCST – a government institution for software development techniques.

Alok Kumar, March 2014 issue Indian Printer and Publisher

Buoyancy in print publishing despite strong head winds

Despite headwinds faced by the Indian economy, the print and publishing Industry continues to grow at a healthy pace. Be it the newspaper industry, commercial printing activity or the publishing of books, there appears to be some movement and growth at a time when many other industries are holding back on investment decisions. This month we profile two leading Indian language newspapers who are modernizing and expanding at a frantic pace. The 125 year old Malayala Manorama is investing over Rs 150 crore to buy five Mitsubishi’s ‘made for Asia’ New Diamond Spirit SA 4 x 1 press lines. “This is the third of a four phase expansion plan designed to replace the old single width presses with double width single circumference machines,” says George Jacob of Manorama, “and we plan to complete the modernization at all our dozen printing locations in Kerala within a couple of years.”

We also visited Dainik Bhaskar, the diversified Indian language newspaper that straddles seven states across Central, North and West India with several dailies with a combined circulation of over five million copies. Dainik Bhaskar in Hindi is moving eastward with its Patna launch shortly. Known as DB corp after its highly successful IPO, the diversified conglomerate continues to expand its newspaper business at a rapid pace by setting up a new press location in each quarter for the last five years. The big story here is the trend towards colour pages and that more than four fifth of all new newspaper printing capacities in India are of 4-Hi color towers.

If Indian newspapers are doing well so are the commercial printers investing in digital color production presses. Though this year seems flat for entry level presses, both the mid-level segment and the high end presses continue to do well. Like in the newspaper industry, there is a strong preference for higher color quality, one of the reason for the distinct shift towards high priced digital presses. Investment in building new capacities have more than doubled during the last year with HP, Xerox and Kodak reviving up the top end while Konica Minolta has set the pace both at the entry-level and now in the the mid-range segment as well.

Sandip Sen from the edit-blog page of November 2013 issue Indian Printer and Publisher

The chaos of Indian book publishing

As Indian literacy and education grow rapidly, the country’s book publishing remains a chaotic mix of large international and medium and small local publishers. The book distribution system seems bottle-necked with difficulties of geographic reach and payment recoveries. University and college librarians are bribed by distributors of scholarly and technical books to build up their libraries. School principals and teachers receive bribes from textbook publishers to prescribe the right books for their students.

This is a situation that invites college students to share PDFs of widely pirated textbooks easily available on the internet. And also invites the large online platforms such as Flipkart and Amazon that offer discounts and free delivery of millions of titles catalogued online to practically every nook and cranny of a large and disorganized country. Of course publishers, distributors and booksellers lament the deep discounts and the unfair competition from the large marketplace portals citing the recent French competition laws on discounts and free delivery. At the same time many of them willingly collaborate – they are traders after all. Another outcome is the malaise and restructuring that was bound to strike the large bookstore chains in the country. Many of these issues are discussed in the current issue and we plan to write on this theme in the future.

The GlobaLocal events in Chennai and New Delhi organized by the German Book Office complemented the two major book industry events in the country this year – the World Book Fair in Delhi from 15 to 23 February and the Literature Festival in Jaipur from 17 to 21 January 2014.

Krishanu Dutta from the edit-blog page of December 2013 issue Indian Printer and Publisher

50 Fastest growing Indian dailies – third annual review

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is time for our third annual review of the 50 Fastest growing Indian dailies. The list as in earlier years is compiled from an industry perspective with an eye on rising circulations, new plants and quality ratings (membership of Ifra International Color Quality Club 2012-2014), environment achievements, innovations, increased color pages, turnover and new editions. Attributes such as the reported ABC circulation in the past three years up to July-December 2012 were also considered for selection although we have mainly used the more publicly available NRS readership data. We have also added one more detail to the rating parameters which we are referring to as Transparency – how much information( including circulation, readership and financial) is readily available for the general reader.

The Indian newspaper industry is amongst the most vibrant in the world, and if it could have a heart of its own we surely would be seeing it pumping life and infusing hope to the entire newspaper fraternity worldwide. We continue to see launches of new dailies and new editions and with the impending state elections in five states and the Lok Sabha elections due next year, newspapers are going to remain hot for some time to come.

But the industry is not without its problems. With massive devaluation of the Indian Rupee, the newsprint prices, which are mostly imported, should be scaling new heights – at least Rs. 40,000 per ton already. With such pressure over raw materials, it will not be easy for the newspaper houses to increase circulation or launch new editions and new dailies with 'predatory' or 'introductory' pricing. Every major newspaper we have talked to is talking about reducing circulation although they are all talking about increasing color. With the high price of newsprint it hardly makes sense to print black and white when advertisers want all color pages.

Hopefully the situation may improve and the Rupee may earn some stability in the long run which should infuse some life back to our GDP growth rate. Apart from issues concerning the economy, the Indian publishing scene seems to be poised for greater heights. And with the general level of literacy set to improve over the years, penetration of newspapers is bound to improve in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, towns and villages. Whatever may be the medium of choice, people will read more and more and although matching the levels of penetration as in Scandinavian countries is only a distant dream, news houses should remain buoyant and encouraged.

Krishanu Dutta from the edit-blog page of September 2013 issue Indian Printer and Publisher

Consumer demand boosts top packaging labels

Unilever CEO Paul Polman said at a Bengaluru press conference this month that the company will generate threequarters of its revenue from developing markets such as India and China by 2020 — almost 20% higher than today. Unilever labels like Kissan, Knorr, Annapurna, Tajmahal,
Bru, Lux, Rin, Ponds, Lakme, Close Up and Sun Silk that have straddled the urban Indian retail marts for decades are now moving to the smaller towns and rural interiors which have become the fastest growing areas for its Indian arm Hindustan Unilever. As per a Nielsen report released last week India’s poorest households with income below M72,000 annually will add US$ 3 billion (around M16,710 crore) to the sales of the consumer packaged goods industry by 2015.

The buoyancy in the FMCG and retail segment of packaged goods is unbelievable despite the fact that the overall economic situation is still to improve, with high fiscal deficit, low government investment spending, and extremely high interest rates prevailing in our country. Nevertheless
the demand surge has improved retail consumer spending significantly and its effect was observed by us at the recently concluded Labelexpo India in New Delhi, where exhibitors were happy and business was brisk. The live demos of narrow web label presses by both foreign and Indian manufacturers like Mark Andy, Gallus, Omet, Nilpeter, Gidue, Weigang, Multitec, RK Machines and several others livened up the atmosphere — creating a happening buzz for the show.

As per our information more than a dozen flexo label presses, digital label presses and other converting and inspection and finishing equipment were presold before the show and several more were finalized both during the show and immediately after. The label stock and associated consumables, accessory automation and software exhibitors did equally brisk business — established buyers and first time walk in visitors were impressed and looked satisfied. Another example of the packaging and label industry’s bouyancy came immediately after the Labelexpo India with the news of Huhtahmaki Paper Products acquiring Webtech. In our special Labelexpo review issue we cover these success stories.

Our article about Tata Elxsi in the Packaging Design and Marketing section reflects the growing awareness by consumer product companies for integrating branding and packaging design. In our packaging production section we cover FMCG packaging giants, Manjushree Technopack and Positive Packaging.

- Sandip Sen, edit1@ippgroup.in

Indian market woos the best of label technology

The demand-centric Indian market is proving that it has the capability to attract the latest global technology and capital to the country in a short time. This month we bring you two  shows in two different parts of the world that will give you an insight into the rapid emergence of the Indian printing and packaging  market and its ability to get the latest machinery and innovative process solutions. A few years ago machines, processes and software displayed in Labelexpo America would reach the Indian shores much later and only after its introduction in other parts of the world. Not any longer. The  Labelexpo Americas 2012 that attracted record audiences of label printing and  packaging professionals at the Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois in mid September this year had manufacturers displaying several innovative machines and solutions that will be also showcased at the Labelexpo India exhibition during end October at Pragati Maidan  New Delhi.

                            Creed Engineers at Labelexpo India 2010

Among the major manufacturers who are showcasing similar range of machines in both the American and Indian label shows are Kodak with its print process control solutions, and its new Flexcel NX System range. EFI Electronics a world leader in customer focused digital printing innovation also plans to introduce Jetrion UV digital presses during Labelexpo India and market them through its recently appointed India agent Weldon Celloplast. Tresu, a global supplier of flexo presses and ancillaries for the flexo and offset printing market, plans to showcase its new developments in its chamber doctor blade systems for narrow and midweb flexo at the Labelexpo India. UPM Raflatac will present new solutions to show how labels can be used while Flexo Image Graphics will demonstrate Mark Andy, Xeikon, and Rotoflex machines at the biennial Indian show. Nuova Gidue, a manufacturer of printing and converting machines for the labels and the packaging industry will introduce the latest version of the M1 press for the production of self-adhesive labels and light carton and give a live demonstration of the process. However there are others like the home grown Cosmo that participated in the Chicago exhibition but will skip the Indian meet because they are currently focusing on development of new export markets.

The estimated 200 exhibitors at the New Delhi Labelexpo are twice the number that exhibited at Labelexpo America which included a sizable number of participants from Latin America. This shows the maturing demand and the needs of the modern Indian consumer who must have products in professionally packaged and labeled bottles, cartons or containers. The previous Labelexpo India attracted over 6,000 visitors from 60 nations in 2010 and the latest reports suggest that this year’s figures will be substantially higher. We are happy to inform you that Packaging South Asia is one of the media partners for the event and we will publish a daily email newsletter for all our subscribers and participants at the Labelexpo 2012.

- Sandip Sen
edit1@ippgroup.in

The biggest corruption is silence

Anti-dumping duty — are you happy or just keeping quiet?


The interim findings of the anti-dumping commission of the Ministry of Commerce suggested anti-dumping duties on the import of offset plates from China and Japan and these were notified for a period of six months on 4 June 2012. At the open hearing held by the commission at Udyog Bhavan, lawyers for the plate manufacturers and importers pointed to many flaws in the interim report — there are seemed to be errors in certain tables (called typos) and errors in reasoning such as the application of duty on the basis of square meters rather than weight. There was debate whether CtCP plates were to also be considered digital plates or whether the duties on conventional plates should continue to be applied on these.

Another issue debated was whether TechNova had actually suffered economic injury by Chinese and Japanese manufacturers’ exports of offset plates to India. As was pointed out in the hearing TechNova’s accounts were not available and thus the claim of injury was not convincing. The point made by TechNova that it was a benevolent monopoly was naturally refuted both by the lawyers and by the Kerala Master Printers Association which forthrightly stated that it preferred economic democracy rather than the ‘benevolent monopoly’ of a single supplier of a key technical and business input such as offset plates. Of course the argument against anti-dumping duties is simply that it will drive up the prices of offset plates and also that it could to some extent limit access to new, useful and environmentally friendly technologies such as CtCP.

Several prominent printers wrote to the anti-dumping commission before the open hearing and several more have written to it after the hearing. Although TechNova is treating the interim order as a ‘fait accompli’ — something presumed to be done and which nothing can change — in fact there is a possibility that the commission could do away with the interim duties that it has applied. Printers such as Thomson Press in Faridabad and Adarsh Printers in Bhopal have written strong letters and made representations against anti-dumping duties. The Kerala Master Printers’ Association has again made written arguments which dispute the very argument of injury to TechNova on the basis of financial figures that TechNova’s was subsequently forced to reveal.

In addition, Ranjan Kuthari the current President of the All India Master Printers’ Federation has made a statement that calls for the continued import of offset plates to the tune of 30% of plate consumption in the country. Although the statement claims that 26% of offset plate consumption is already imported we feel that the entire subject requires improved research and auditing which the AIFMP should invest in. In any case, the plea for 30% imported offset plates presumably without anti-dumping duty would imply that more imported plates are needed or desirable than at present.

The printers who have spoken out and sent their views to the anti-dumping commission are the tip of the ice-berg. As is the Kerala Master Printers Association which is fortunate in having a leadership that takes the trouble to seriously look at an issue affecting the entire industry and invests time and money in presenting its views to the government.

More printers need to study the issue (the interim report is available on the Internet at www.commerce.nic.in/writereaddata/traderemedies/adpref_Digital_Offset_Printing_Plates_
ChinaPR_Japan.pdf) and they need to give their views one way or the other. As we have written before, the anti-dumping duty on offset plates is an issue that finally has woken up the printers to an issue of importance and some  have come out openly and given their views. Many others continue to show apathy — either because they are afraid of TechNova or to be noticed by the government.

This is the time for printers to speak up and be counted — and also to ask their associations to speak up. We all lament the growing tide of corruption but the biggest corruption is our incompetence in learning about business issues that directly affect us and our silence even when the government has a commission that invites our views. You can give your views to Satish Kumar, director, telephone number 011- 2306 3642; eMail: satishk@nic.in; or, satprag@gmail.com.

Naresh Khanna 13 August 2012 from the edit-blog page of August issue Indian Printer and Publisher