Listen to the wisdom of design geeks

Since 2016, Kedar Nimkar has interviewed dozens of design professors and artists, with the aim of understanding form and function

Kedar Nimkar, the 36-year-old head of design at BookMyShow, didn't go to design school. So, two years ago, he brought the design school to him. On his podcast, Audiogyan, he interviews design professors, professionals and artists. Since December 2016, he's released a podcast every week, and interviewed design nerds such as type designer Shiva Nallaperumal; Prof GV Sreekumar, head of IDC, IIT Bombay; calligraphy teacher Santosh Kshirsagar; Gaur Gopal Ray, ergonomics professor at IDC; Pravinsinh Solanki, furniture design professor at NID; architect BV Doshi and so on.

A subset of these interviews also includes people from the performing arts, such as theatre director Sunil Shanbag, playwright Ramu Ramanathan and musicologist Dr Vidyadhar Oke. "In the case of performing arts, I try to reach out to people who have more than 20-25 years of experience," he says. "But, in design, I have kept it open. I try and interview academicians or professors from NID, IDC or Srishti Institute of Art. The other [way] is going through Instagram and stumbling upon people's work."

The lengthy interviews follow a conversational style. "In a typical blog post or any gaga-type magazine article, you have a standard format. 'How did you start your career?' It's the same way that we are talking right now. Because given the bandwidth and timeframe, there's hardly any room for experimentation. I consciously avoid that and try to keep the questions abstract. That's one big differentiator between other podcasters [and me], that I don't take a trip down memory lane. With [filmmaker] Rajat Kapoor, we didn't speak about him at all. We spoke about the importance of independent cinema and art in our society."

Kedar Nimkar with Ashwini Deshpande, co-founder and director of Elephant Design

Even though he admits that "every interview is an experience in itself," he's certainly more at ease with designers than artists. "What happens with the performing arts is that since I don't have hands-on experience, my questions or my reach are limited. With seniors like Ramu, Sunil Shanbag, or [architect and playwright] Makarand Sathe, I keep very simple questions. If I have a counter or on-the-fly question, I ask them. Otherwise, it's like a monologue, with some nudges in terms of direction. But when it comes to design, I understand the nuances. Finally, it is a common language: about form, function and aesthetics."

While it's a philanthropic project, Audiogyan has also served as a back-to-school experience for him. "The biggest difference in my perspective today is, because I have always been exposed to online interface design, I used to live in this small bubble. I would think that every problem could be solved using good [online] experience design. That has completely changed over the last two years. The canvas of design has widened. Because I am also interviewing academicians, [I am aware of] the urgent need to educate a lot more people in the field of design as well. I did an interview with Anirudha Joshi, a professor at IDC.

He said that probably there are 20,000-30,000 designers [in India today], but in his guess, we need around 1 million designers. There's a ratio, like every group of 10 people needs one doctor or 100 people need one policeman. So, the designer-to-person ratio is very skewed in India right now." His hope is that Audiogyan will inspire someone, anyone, to put pen to paper. "Hopefully, these passive listening conversations will stimulate some ideas, motivate people and bring some insights. We are very inspired by Amazon, Starbucks, Ikea or Silicon Valley start-ups and design shops. They live in a different environment altogether. To put it bluntly, we are experimenting with bringing food and delivery items through drones, but in parts of India, there is no food at all. Because of IDC, [I've understood] that there's a crying need to solve Indian problems."

With two lakh listens so far, his audience is still only a fraction. "About 10,000 listens a month, which is not a very big number." We interject that it's a niche field. And then, he hits on the nub of the problem, "Plus, thoda gyan bhi hai."

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