Souvenir Design
Mysore Railway Museum, Railway Design Center
Materials & Experiments
Industrial Design, Packaging Design, Graphic Design, Market Research
Summer Internship, 2023
Duration: 1.5 months, 1 month for research (with 1 week on-site) and 2 weeks for ideation and prototyping.
Client: Indian Railways, in association with Railway Design Center
Guide: Mohammed Naim Shaikh
Tools: On site research, sketch notes, AutoCAD, prototyping in workshop
Brief: How might we design souvenirs that represent the city of Mysore and it's railway museum's heritage using the regional craft and culture?
About the project:
As part of my internship for the railway design centre at NID, I got the chance to design souvenirs for the Mysore railway museum. We travelled to Mysore in a group of 3, 2 students and a faculty guide, and did intensive onsite research, visiting the museum, multiple factories, craft clusters and important landmarks. We studied the regional craft techniques such as wood inlay work and Channapatna toy craft - the traditional wooden lathe toys made near Mysore, all in a span of 7 days. After coming back, I developed multiple deliverables in the form of tangible proof of concepts.
The project began with the interns brainstorming and selecting the team for researching the various zones of the Indian railways. The teams went to the following areas with the most prominent museums: Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mysore. Me and Disha Matreja were the team that went to do onsite research at Mysore.
The teams were responsible for collecting data on souvenirs, regional craft work and define the scope of intervention for their respective museums.
On site research at Mysore was nothing short of incredible. The city is full of inspiration!
We research extensively about the wood inlay craft and Channa Patna toys.
On visiting the museum, we were greeted with a lot of interesting artifacts and locomotives. Frankly, it was too difficult to do justice to the amount of ideas I had in my mind within the two weeks I had left for ideation and prototyping. The museum was full of amazing sources of informatioin.
The collection
My deliverables for the internship.
Adding class to ordinary keychains by taking the unconventional route. I got inspired by the beautiful palace tiles and thought of using them as a design element and create explorations around them. Souvenirs don't always need to be straight forward.
Palace tile inspired jewellery, to target a wider range of audience.
A pocket watch/keychain concept inspired by one of the stop watches displayed in the museum, making it slightly quirky by added an element of surprise. I replaced all the hours with tea cup symbols, an ode to the love of Chai Indians have!
Inspired by the Mysore palace and Raja Ravi Verma's art, these are family photo frames made from MDF and acrylic.
These are simple bookmarks that take inspiration from the Blue prints we discovered in the museum.
Palace tile inspired coasters for a royal cup of tea.
Palace tile inspired lamp shade.
Watch car inspired bag tag.
Through this project, I met a lot of kind strangers and communities, thanks to the guidance of my faculty Mr. Mohammed Naaim. I got to learn about the rich heritage of the city. I have a new found appreciation for the amount of time, skill and energy that goes into crafting a piece of traditional craft work.
Thank you!