Good Design! Good Design? Good Design:

Well an exclamation! , a question mark? or a colon:
all apart if I have to put it very simply and factually - a good design indeed is what serves best for the purpose.

Here's something on 'design' I would love to share here with my readers.
"
Design constructs a visual language for the purpose of communication.

It organizes and gives form to a message in a way that adds value and meaning.

It functions to organize, clarify, persuade, and add drama to an otherwise overlooked idea.

Design plays a primary role in the interpretation of a message.

It creates the crucial persistent impression.

It encourages examination and generates interest.

Accessible, understandable information and beauty of form can engage observers and arrest their attention.

A confusing, poorly designed message will miss its target almost every time.

In a world where information flows abundantly, our minds have developed filters to sift through the overflow of useless data.

While design must appeal to the aesthetic, it must not stand in the way of delivery, cause complications, or introduce stumbling blocks.

Rather, the presence of design should simplify and facilitate our everyday life"



Let these mantras assist you to refine / re-define your designs, making them 'ultimate' product/s or service/s.

Cheers!

-

Recess-ion:

Almost everyday in newspapers and news channels we come across news covering the present times of global economic recession; it's dire effects on corporate and private sectors and much much more of adverse ones on the common man who went to work one fine day as usual only to witness being victims of the same on the very next.

Thinking of it, is it not something we are already familiar with?
"Survival of the fittest/only the fittest will prevail" - Darwinism.

Just like present, those times must have been equally tough or even tougher. You would say; that was then, this is now and it has never been so precarious. True but while so, lets look around in the market today; do we not see only the real good brands surviving the present recession storm? These and many others such still-standing institutions or personalities are presenting us with a live recession-survival-tips-kit, to re-learn from. Our outside influences, in other words. Whilst our inside carry the 'will and wit' to keep us going.

So I say back, to these news headlines, "what's the big deal?"
Let not the anxiety and fear hinder our will while we are struggle and evolve be fit once again.
While I leave you with these thoughts, here are some powerful lines by the thinkers and writers ( and doer-s!) of our times.

"Creation is a better means of self expression than possession; it is through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed." - Voda D. Scudder, The life of the Spirit in the Modern English Poets.

"What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal; a freely chosen task. " - Viktor E Franki, Holocaust survior' author of Man's Search for Meaning.

"Trouble sharpens the vision" - P G Wodehouse

"Changes in perception will dramatically effect emotions and behaviour. The use of 'logic' will not have these effects." - Edward de Bono

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. " - George Berbard Shaw, Maxims for revolutionists.

"The man dwelling on sense-objects develops attachment for them; from attachment sprins up desire, and from desire(unfulfilled) ensues anger. From anger arises infatuation' from infatuation, confusion of memory; from confusion of memory, loss of reason; and with loss of reason one goes to complete nowhere. But a self controlled man, while enjoying the various sense-objects through his senses, which are disciplined and free from like and dislikes, attains placidity of mind. With placidity of mind, intellect of a tranquil mind one attains composure (with the one/could be what we aim for). " - Bhagavadgita, Sri Krishna.

---

So it's time to gear up our gadgets!
Good luck to all of us....

much love!

Sacred Cow

I saw a cow yesterday. Tied to a pillar under our building. He was pretty young (months older than a calf I guess) with big dark mascara eyes, dusk-rust skin and a bit underweight for some reason.
Looking at him roused an instant affection in my mind. :) The kind we used to feel while feeding cows or looking at them lazing in the middle of roads back home in India. They have religious significance just like every-living-born from nature or nature herself in the society where I come from. Showing gratitude-towards or praying cows as a part of tradition. They are considered to be sacred.

May be my affection for him was more so being in country where you don't see animals except in a zoo or a sanctuary. We do get to see some street cats, the survivors of the extreme climate (and extreme traffic) in the Dubai and Sharjah. Anyways, getting back to my topic... So while I stood next to my cow, I almost had an instant non-verbal dialogue with him out of delight of seeing one after almost a year, as if saying "oh! how are you!" But the very next second my joy vanished with a realization too sad to pronounce here. The cow was not a part of a nostalgic fairy tale to give me greetings from my country but was brought here for a reason.

It's Ramadan month here and the cow was tied outside the tent where the religious groups gather for the occasion. When I came back later that evening, the cow was gone and the group had just finished eating and was heading for their daily prayers.

x x x

" Most religions isolate, formalize and shrink our relationship to the world rather than to expand and immortalize it"

" Our assumption that micro-organisms, plants and animals exist without the capacity for contemplation of the divine is to assert that our concept of divinity is the only one there is. We do some harm to plants and animals when we kill and eat them; yet, our assumption that they are not intelligent enough to contemplate, is a greater injury."

- The mechanics of God


" No sacrifice can be performed without the aid of curds and ghee (clarified butter). The very character of sacrifice which sacrifices have, depends upon ghee. Hence ghee (or, the cow from which it is produced) is regarded as the very root of sacrifice. Cows have been said to be the limbs of sacrifice. They represent sacrifice itself. Without them, there can be no sacrifice. With their milk and the Havi produced therefrom, they uphold all creatures by diverse acts. Cows are guileless in their behavior. From them flow sacrifices and Havya ( fire) and Kavya ( Hymn ), and milk and curds and ghee. hence cows are sacred."
- Mahabharata, one of the two major Sanskrit epics from ancient India,

x x x

Image, courtesy wikipedia

More on sacred cow in Hinduism> cattle in religion
Some facts on cow meat here >

x x x

much love, respect & peace
R

From the 'GOD OF SMALL THINGS' :

God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, is one of those special kind of books that one could read more than once.

Yes, I too hear the echo of ‘one’ & ‘once’ occurring more than needful but thinking of it, I will let this part of the post sound biased until you get to the extracts from her book ( further below) and choose for yourself.

I personally adore her style of packaging-the-impressions in simple words. They are so very well composed, trimmed & timed that her style actually manages to let the book give out the very newness & truthfulness as it’s 'best-part', every time!

Sharing some still-very-fresh-lines from ‘God of Small Things’, as scribbled in an old dairy:

‘The afternoon was still & hot. The air was waiting’

‘Chacko didn’t slap her. So she didn’t slap him. But the air grew angry’

‘… cold, calculating, cruelty.’

‘… with frilly apron and a vinegar heart.’

‘Rahel looked at herself and saw that she was a part in a play. But she had only a small part.’ ‘… But the play went with her, walked while she walked. Stopped while she stopped.’

‘There was a short, sad-about-Joe silence.’

‘… no death for them. Just the end of living.’

‘… without warning the train began to move. Very slowly.’

‘He was careful not to hurt her. She could feel how soft she felt to him. She could feel herself through him. Her skin. The way her body only existed where he touched her.’

‘Night’s elbows rested on the waters and watched them. ’

‘…wet mud farted under their feet as they squelched through the swamp.’

‘.. victory had left him with no better off than when he started out.’

‘In a while the rain slowed to a drizzle and then stopped. The breeze shook water from the trees and for a while it rained only under trees, where shelter had been once.’

‘A sparrow lay dead on the back seat. She died on the back seat, with her legs in air. Like a joke.’

‘This arrangement suited her, because in her mind a fee clarified things. Disjunctions sex from love. Needs from feelings.’

‘And there it was another religion turned against itself. Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature.’

~
More about Arundhati Roy : here> & here>
More about ‘God of Small Things’: here>

Relish!

~

'Soul Secret' in brief:

Know your SOUL (Atma) as riding in a chariot,
The BODY as the chariot,
Know thou the INTELLECT (Buddhi) as a chariot-driver,
And the MIND (manas) as the rein.

The SENSES (Indriya), they say, are the horses,
The OBJECTS OF SENSE, what they range over,
The SELF combined with SENSES and MIND…
Wise-men call it the ENJOY-ER ( Bhoktri).

Higher than the SENSES are the OBJECTS OF SENSE,
Higher than the OBJECTS OF SENSES is the MIND (Manas),
And higher than MIND is INTELLECT (Buddhi),
Higher than INTELLECT is the SELF (Atma).

-- Katha Upanishad