Horn OK Please: Much more than a piece of truck art – a new report considers the role of design and communications in the UK-India corridor

Mark Hannant:

Indian roads are a risky business. Having driven thousands of miles, I’ve had some scrapes but lived to tell the tale.

Honking is the grammar of India’s roads. In the UK the horn is heard as aggression. In India it’s used as a greeting, part of a conversation like a raised hand or a tap on the shoulder.

Millions of trucks across the country carry the words ‘Horn OK Please’ emblazoned on their colourful backsides. Grammatically meaningless, it works dramatically. It’s art, craft, economic and social history, and a safety injunction all rolled into a motif that every Indian driver understands. It’s shorthand for: “I’m slower than you. I don’t have mirrors. If I do, I don’t use them. If you plan to overtake, let me know by honking. Please and thank you!”

Like many things about India this confuses foreigners who hear honking, see a lack of lane discipline, call it chaos and want to impose discipline.

This week Deborah Dawton and I launch our report on the opportunity for designers and design businesses in the UK-India corridor. We’ve called it Horn OK Please because the phrase captures the essence of India; the forces that drive it; its paradoxes; the disregard for rules and the respect for craft that go hand-in-hand. Trying to impose order is a fool’s errand!

The report – part-funded by the UK Government’s Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade – looks at the respective strengths of the UK and India’s design sectors and asks: “What can we learn from each other?”

To answer that question, we conducted a series of interviews in India during a week this summer that coincided with the UK-India Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement coming into effect.

The report contains several elements:

• Reportage
  Deborah and I visited the National Institute of Design and MICA – School of Ideas, both in Ahmedabad. These institutions train India’s top design and communications talent. We met the president of the World Design Organisation and discussed the design needs of the Commonwealth Games to be held in the city in 2030. In Mumbai we met Indian businesses active in international markets and UK businesses already present in India. We had a behind the scenes tour of India’s premier cultural venue. We spoke to design leaders in enterprises and agencies, The British Council and the University of York, Mumbai the latest UK HE institute to set up a campus in India. Those conversations provide an unparalleled picture on how design and communications’ practices are valued.
• Observations
  From those conversations we extracted a series of insights and six lessons. These spotlight areas for collaboration, show where UK and Indian design capabilities can be aligned for maximum impact, and underscore some of the challenges. We focus on the power of reciprocity and the potential to co-create solutions. We consider the immense value of combining the UK’s excellence in systems’ design and international markets alongside India’s ability to design for scale, complexity and frequency.
• Opportunities
  We’ve identified seven sectors that are important to India’s development – infrastructure; airports and aviation; travel and tourism; beauty and wellness; digital, AI and technology; medical devices; clean energy – and considered the value of design interventions. Every part of the design industry, from product and industrial design through UI/UX, customer journeys, and placemaking to branding, editorial, and communications design, will find an abundance of opportunity.
• Recommendations
  Design is a powerful driver of business success. Particularly in complex areas such as cross-border trade that requires cultural fluency. To capture that potential requires coordination, alignment, relationship building and ultimately trust. We make a series of recommendations that will make it easier for designers and communicators at both ends of the corridor to support the ambition of shared prosperity.

The Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement creates a huge opportunity for the creative sectors in both countries. Every company that participates in the UK-India corridor, whether they are UK origin or Indian origin, and whatever their sector, needs communications and design support.

Twenty years ago, when I first did business in Inda, Indian companies looked to the West for creative solutions that they then adapted to the Indian context. Those days are gone.

As India looks ahead to the centenary of its Independence it plans to achieve Viksit Bharat Developed Nation status by 2047 and to become self-sufficient Atmanirbhar Bharat. India’s young designers are innovating in multiple ways and developing indigenous solutions at scale. Those have applications elsewhere.

There is much that UK design businesses can contribute to India’s development. And much they can learn, too. The key is to listen: Sometimes honking isn’t a hazard, a threat or a warning. More an invitation.

YOU CAN FIND THE FULL REPORT HERE

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Mark Hannant is a creative services entrepreneur and author of ‘Midnight’s Grandchildren: How young Indians are disrupting the world’s largest democracy’.

Deborah Dawton is an industrial designer by training. For the past two decades she has advocated for the design industry as chief executive of the Design Business Association.