Signboards as Mirrors of Cultural Change

The young designers of developing nations are faced with conflicts of diverse kinds. Like many other young designers graduated in the recent past from the meager number of design schools in India, I belong to this community and have experienced the conflicts of opposing design ideals. Why is it that the informally trained design ers of today, the many street artists and local craftsmen, continue to produce culturally entrenched designs effortlessly, while the formally trained designers cannot produce culturally-rooted contemporary works? And yet they consider local crafts, traditions, and skills of visual depiction as "nondesign." A country with a glorious design history today is considered best only at craft products, many on the verge of extinction. Why do the formally trained designers consider the local designs and manifestations of vernacular culture as inferior and taboo? Why do all congregations of designers in the country vociferate about the lack of design appreciation and design illiteracy in the Indian population in spite of the existence and history of a diverse visual culture and languages?