Pune Design Festival 2006, organized by FICCI in association with Pune Design Foundation is part of the mega-initiative to promote Pune as the design city of India. The festival aims to make the advantages of 'Good Design' visible to people, industries and policy-makers and break the myths around design. It was a result of Onio's initiative with FICCI that is now taking shape as first ever design festival in India.

Being held on the 17 and 18th of November, 2006, the festival will have conferences, competitions and exhibitions.
www.punedesignfestival.com

To take a stock of good work done and to learn from the mistakes, all 16 of us huddled together in a cozy retreat near Pune called 'Oasis'. Exchange of ideas on Onio's growth, welcoming the new members and learning from the completed assignments was the note of the day.

A plastic injection moulding company, Miltech wanted to participate in the PlastIndia exhibition 2006 in Pragati Maidan, Delhi between February 9th - 14th 2006. Onio's mandate was to lift the company's image to a global level. Onio strategic branding intervention lead to refreshed positioning as a global sourcing partner in the automotive, consumer electronics and exports segment. The new personality for Miltech evolved as 'One Source, One Force' injection-moulding partner - which was then reflected in the brochure, stall design, corporate film and website ( www.miltechindustries.com ).

In collaboration with Style Vision
( www.style-vision.com ), Onio conducted a Trends Workshop on 12th January 2006 at the Grand Hyatt, Mumbai. Sponsored by Pantaloon, the workshop saw the participation of corporates like TI Cycles, HLL, HPCL, Tata Elxsi, Titan, NID (National Institute of Design), Freedom Tree Design, Philips, Munch Design, VIP, Quaser Innovations, and ITC. The speakers at the workshop were Manoj Kothari - Founder Onio Design Pvt. Ltd., Genevieve Flaven - Style Vision and Pradeep Lokhande from Rural Relations. TRENDS help you to identify the 'ATTITUDE' towards issues like acceptance to break-through ideas, flavors in visual, textual and audio content, check on universal appeal of your product/service and help you design and position your product/service smartly.

Onio Design, Pune
Major thrust areas: Electronic consumer gadgets, perfume and cosmetics, engineering products, design research and trend forecasting, strategic consulting
Number of designers: 5
Number of clients/MNC clients: 50/15
Projects completed/ in hand: 200/5-7
Select clients: Volkswagen, IKEA, Infosys
"We are encroaching on to the space of management, strategic advisors and advertising companies. Integrated design solutions are being offered and our clients are happy," says Manoj Kothari, director, Onio Design. It is a strategy inspired by the leap made by global design firms like IDEO, Frog Design and Fitch from designing products to becoming strategic advisors to businesses. Another area that Onio has got into is defining future trends, for which it works with Style Vision, a Paris-based consumer trends forecasting company. Auto major Volkswagen is one client that's interested, and has been taking presentations from Onio on possible trends in consumption attitudes. Call him a futurist, though, and Kothari protests: "Trend prediction is valuable for companies and definitely applicable, while being a futurist may be exciting, but is a bit abstract."


Be that as it may, being capable of predicting trends has allowed Onio to advise companies on product and service categories that they could get into. So, brand strategy, products and communications, all goes out from under one umbrella. An integration that attracts projects like setting up a series of fashion accessory stores in Paris. Says Kothari: "At least companies who had never looked at design (or designers) are making a beginning." Traditional consultants, take note.

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