As part of the Ripple Effect project in India, IDEO identified 5 organizations working in the domain of safe water and provided them incubation support in the areas of business and design to develop solutions such as delivery services and large-scale community water storage systems.

Quicksand was approached to document the journey of these five organizations, spread over different corners of the country, as they went about prototyping and deploying their solutions. The film based documentation became an important medium for IDEO & Acumen Fund to demonstrate the value of design thinking in driving issues pertaining to social development and impact.

The film is now in public domain and can be viewed here:

Spirit of Wipro was an organisation-wide initiative to inculcate the core values amongst all Wipro employees. Quicksand was approached with the task of translating this vision into a film, making it a more accessible medium.

Quicksand was mandated with the task of creating a rich media catalogue of its upcoming fashion line along with a platform for understanding the brand, its consumers and presence. Published below are a series of films that Quicksand made on Levi’s retail presence, key user personas for different sub-brands and a film-based fashion catalogue. The intent was also to create an accessible medium for internal brand resources.

Video for Levi’s Retail

Levi’s Line Presentation

Spandana has continued to successfully manage growth. Its gross loan portfolio stands at close to Rs. 300 crores, and has a client base that represents more than 800,000 households. This is estimated at constituting almost 1.5% of the BPL population of India.

The strength of Spandana has been in managing growth and profitability in a sector that has largely been under-serviced. As a result, the domains of intervention for Spandana are not limited to financial services. With ambitions of being the foremost service provider for its clients, Spandana was faced with a challenge to

• leverage its core strengths from the micro finance experience and become an enabler of services that were so far unavailable to this segment
• within the financial services sector, transform from an NBFC (non banking financial corporation) to a mainstream Bank with more robust & diverse service capabilities
• invite equity participation from foreign investors to give momentum to the above two goals

Quicksand was approached with the challenge of re-visioning the Spandana brand and articulating the new identity of the organisation to all interested stakeholders.

It involved, foremost, for the design team to understand the brand and all interfaces that it had with its customers. The attempt was also to uncover stories that would be inspirational and become the guiding beacon for designing the new face of the organisation.

Quicksand embarked on a design research exercise that involved:

• visioning workshops with the top management & CEO of Spandana, Mrs.Padmaja Reddy
• contextual research with Spandana’s customers, experiencing the micro-lending process first hand
• extensive film & photographic documentation of the people, processes and places touched by Spandana

The ensuing design exercise resulted in a new identity, a film and a manifesto for the brand that was unveiled at the largest MFI summit held annually in Canada. Spandana was subsequently also co-invested in by Lok Capital (a micro finance focussed equity fund) & JM Financial.

Click on images below to preview the film & manifesto designed. You may also download the manifesto by clicking here.

The manifesto was printed on recycled paper symbolic of an inspirational story of the founder of Spandana selling discarded newspapers to raise the first corpus of fund for lending. The film was shot at different centers of Spandana while living with the customers & documenting their lives as narrated by them.

Efforts involved the entire photography for the instructional book, graphic design and layout, and publishing management. Quicksand also assisted in the promotion and selling of the publication. Quicksand also prepared the multimedia materials that accompany the book such as an Audio CD and a Video DVD. More information on the book can be gathered at www.abhinayaa.org

Encouraged by the success of this book, praised for its new approach to dance instruction, Abhinayaa and Quicksand have again teamed up for the following projects:

- A third book on Bharatanatyam, that completes the series on the dance form.
- A book for young children on the ancient temples of Chidambaram, in south India
- A set of 3 games for very young children that helps them orient themselves and enjoy the language of the dance form.

In addition, Quicksand has also been a part of dance performances through its independent studio BLOT, providing live visuals and projections at performances in Africa and the Middle East. BLOT is also working with Abhinayaa on a new production on the history of ancient Indian flying machines.