https://georgesupreeth.com/web/tags/essay/Recent content in Essay on George SupreethHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usTue, 25 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_a_banana_worth_millions/Tue, 25 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_a_banana_worth_millions/Why did the sale of this work of Art drive people bananas? Table of Contents But is it even Art? But, it’s just… fruit. But, where is the effort? But was it really worth $6.2 million? A Theory of Art Notes In the years following India’s Freedom from British rule, a group of Indian Artists—deeply disturbed by the partition—began exploring a new style of Art and in 1954, they organised an exhibition of their work in Delhi.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_drawing_away_from_mindlessness/Thu, 20 Mar 2025 12:25:01 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_drawing_away_from_mindlessness/There is a group in Bangalore that gathers on Sundays to draw. They fill their sketchbooks with subjects that most people wouldn’t consider worthy of attention—landscapes, buildings, trees, vehicles, animals and people going about their daily lives. Sometimes a passerby notices them at work, and asks, “what will you do with these drawings?” The assumption is that the drawings must be important—an object of value. Surely, if drawing takes hours of work, such labour must attract a price.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_the_ingredients_of_identity/Fri, 10 Jan 2025 12:25:02 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_the_ingredients_of_identity/Table of Contents What is Visual Identity? Identity Design & Me Identity as Salience Identity as Signalling Identity Through Differentiation Running the Gauntlet of Corporate Approval Changelog Footnotes “My kid could have drawn that” is what one client told me when I asked for payment towards the logo I designed. This happened early in my career, and though I don’t design logos anymore, I have since maintained an interest in visual identities and what their owners have to say about them.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_improving_my_information_infrastructure/Sun, 17 Mar 2024 12:25:01 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_improving_my_information_infrastructure/Table of Contents The problem with BigCorp Building my own FAIR system Plain Text as the foundation The Goal Can I do better? Learn Touch Typing Get better at using Text Editors, particularly learn about the Modal Editing paradigm Search my old mail archives Getting better at the Terminal Syncing, Backups and Version Control Scripting for Automation A Better Website Notes I find it inspiring to read about how people manage their personal information infrastructure.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_the_messenger_medium_and_message/Mon, 28 Dec 2020 12:25:02 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_the_messenger_medium_and_message/An odd thing occurred in 2020 among a great many other odd things when a jewellery company called Tanishq released an ad celebrating an Indian festival. The video tells the story of a family of Muslim faith, celebrating a Hindu festival for their daughter-in-law. The unexpected social-media outcry that followed the release of the ad, caused Tanishq to pull it off the air. The ad seems to have crossed an unspoken (until-then) societal boundary.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_191112_what_is_design_led_strategy/Sun, 10 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_191112_what_is_design_led_strategy/A little Preamble This piece is part 4 of a series (start here) on design-thinking and this one turned out longer than I intended. Use the TOC to scroll down to the whichever section interests you the most. Section 1 explores some assumptions around the idea of Strategy and trace some of its larger influences. This is important because the term is interpreted as many different things today and exploring its past will give us a thread to hold onto, so we are not mired in pointless semantics later.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_191106_is_design_thinking_an_innovation_method/Wed, 06 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_191106_is_design_thinking_an_innovation_method/In part 1 of this series, we discussed the early influences of creativity research on design-thinking. In part 2, we discussed how design-thinking was further influenced by management consulting and also perhaps, new age spirituality. This part turns it’s critical eye towards the claim that design-thinking is an innovation method. Table of Contents A wedge of lime in hot water If you’ve heard it on the internet… What innovation means Yea for Rail Travel And the crowd goes wild The other side of of the story How to tap an emerging market, imperialist style Innovation as a Phoenix Innovation as a Destructive Force Innovation as Disruption Other types of Innovation What constitutes innovation?https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260214_how_design_thinking_got_is_woo_woo/Sat, 02 Nov 2019 12:00:00 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260214_how_design_thinking_got_is_woo_woo/In part One of this series, we explored how design-thinking evolved from design, specifically as a meta study of the design process, and how it has come into its own today. In this part we explore the history behind what makes design-thinking the weird concoction that it is. Table of Contents A case against cosmetic design A brief flashback to part 1 of this series Designer time VS Consultant time Design-thinking - Part Design, Part Management Consulting, Part Woo Woo Learning from the Witchdoctors All hail the Model Where Design-Thinking got its woo-woo The Self Actualisation of the Design Thinker Even business superstitions need some TLC How HR departments cast a wide net Oooh, it’s a kind of magic Deconstructing Design-thinking today Up Next A case against cosmetic design It was in 1990, I was just coming out of my teens, and in art school when I came across a photocopy of Victor Papanek’s book from the 1970s - “Design for the Real World.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_191029_design-thinking_is_not_design/Tue, 29 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_191029_design-thinking_is_not_design/Table of Contents Then, why is Design-Thinking good for your organisation? From Creativity to Design-thinking Could Creativity co-exist with Efficiency? Moving towards a human-centered design paradigm Practitioner to Theorists to Practitioners The problems with generic Design-thinking today Moving from Design-thinking to Design … and addressing that old chestnut. It’s not. Design-thinking is NOT design. It may have started as observation of how designers approach problem solving, but now it has taken on a role of its own, and one that is well suited to it’s audience.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_190814_the_rise_and_rise_of_mcempathy/Wed, 14 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_190814_the_rise_and_rise_of_mcempathy/Table of Contents The Dawn of a New Era The Thrill of Invention and the Irresponsibility of Commercialisation It’s 2019 and Inventions are still harming customers What is Empathy really? Empathy can be irrational Empathy can erode Empathy is an attenuated experience More complexities in perspective taking The emergence of McEmpathy Dealing with McEmpathy So, what is a Designer to Do? Don’t drink the Kool-Aid Unsubscribe from the positivity cult Recognise institutionalised thinking Form your own conclusions I own a book on Victorian inventions that I enjoy flipping through.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_a_shorthand_to_life/Sat, 15 Feb 2014 12:25:01 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_a_shorthand_to_life/The last time there were leaches everywhere and caterpillars in their hundreds, dropping down on us from the overhanging trees. Our group had trekked through the hills and forests of Savandurga to eventually emerge at the Bheemshwari elephant lodges, exhausted and hungry. That was my last trek, over twenty years ago. This time, we started from Subramanya, home of the ancient Kukke Subramanya temple, the one that Shankara visited during his epic all India road-trip in the 8th century.