PDF underscores the importance of design

The conference took place virtually and had quizzes, panel discussions, presentations from designers, storytellers, filmmakers and creative persons. The consensus of the conference was: 'The possibility of design is limitless'.

This year's event included sessions by Mervyn Kurlansky of Pentagram; Rahul Ram, a social activist; Jaya Jaityl, president and founder at Dastkari Haat; Eric Quint of 3M; Ramkripa Ananthan, director, Krux Studio;  Balaji Kalluri, founder, Credible.

Vijay Bapat, head of IDC school of design, IIT Bombay, spoke about his experience and how 3D printing is a potentially disruptive technology. Bapat, who presented the ADI honourary talk, said, “3D printing has the ability to be a disruptive potent technology, and it is going to seriously change the supply chain and business model."

“There is a need to rewrite our engineering. In engineering design, the material is homogeneous, but that is not required when I am doing layer by layer additive printing, If I have very little material deposited at the core level or something dense being deposited, the material is the same but distribution is different, this will require a new way of engineering of our parts,” added Bapat.

The PDF organised a design competition for students across various design institutes in India. The categories included packaging design, graphic design, industrial design, transportation design and more. Nikhil Phadke of Elephant Design, was the jury for the packaging design projects. The second and first runner up were Siddharth UR, NID (for the project, Bubble) and Shalmali Kulkarni, Symbiosis Institute for House of Ceramics. Apurva Gupta, NID, bagged the first place for Mesa tampons: story of a woman.

The event also helped students from different institutes across India to participate in project-based challenges, where they got to present their ideas.