Kyoorius 2013: The ‘second electricity’, unconnected minority, fluidity

Simon Sankarayya, creative partner and co-founder, Allofus, kicked off proceedings at the IAA Kyoorius Digiyatra 2013 with a session themed ‘Design is empowering’. He started off urging people to be themselves and do things that make them happy.

Referring to the internet as the world’s ‘second electricity’, he said, “For the first time in history, the people who are not connected form the minority. That means the signals you send on social media and other platforms of the internet could be highly consequential.”

He supported the statement with a stance taken by his firm Allofus. “Allofus wouldn’t work on a gambling brand (we’ve got offers to work on www.gambling.com), cigarette brands and fast food outlets. You should think of what you shouldn’t work on before thinking of what you should work on.”

He cited the case of building a television news channel for Kommepcaht (in Russia). On the mandate received and the process Allofus undertook, he said, “All the news channels around the world look the same. Some have a globe running around, while the patterns of most of them remain the same. Kommepcaht wanted something different. The network was known to be taking on serious matters with humour. What we did was create the design for the channel using cues from old flash sites that were available online. This was something more fluid and could be spread across mediums easily too.”

Sankarayya went on to urge people to apply themselves and make their minds wander. He spoke of how that helped him when he was D&AD’s president in 2011, when the organisation released the president’s speech in 16 languages (including Hindi) to call for entries. It was also the year the White Pencil was launched, he pointed out.