Colloquy with crafts – my internship experience at DCDC summer interns team

Colloquy with crafts – my internship experience at DC

“You are accepted for the internship” it all started with that mail in my inbox, at first it was the happiness of getting placed in a company where I can “drag” the requirement of my institute’s compulsory industry internship so that my grad paper doesn’t get jeopardized and it was all that I had in my mind before getting into my first day of internship with Direct Create.

So what is Direct Create? It is a tech-based start up that connects the artisan, the designer and the buyer who have one common vision of taking Indian handicraft as a mediator of contemporary lifestyle and sustainable indulgence. Being a design student the term craft has been a very detailed subject through out the terms and my personal weakness towards the same has been quite uplifted with the news of joining this team which is why I used to land up at 8 am in the office. At least that is what I tell myself, now I feel it was too much anxiety that saved me to find tardiness excuse for the day.

I thought this early in a working place makes no sense, it’s not our college turns out I was in for a surprise when I found out that some people actually spent the whole previous  night working, who were now looking at me realizing that they just found a new paper tiger to laugh about.

On the same day, I met my industry mentor, Ms Bittu. She passed as the most pleasing but dynamic in-charge to me and turns out this perception still remains. As the day went on I realized that craft is not just an up-lifter, it is so much more than passion for people – it was almost like a ritual that these enthusiastic people were living for faith that they believed in and work which was nothing but obeisant to them and the fear crept in me. The first thing that rang in my mind was, will I ever be able to do justice to communicate crafts like this team does with such gusto?  And I figured out it’s actually very natural you just need to fall in love with the charm of hand skills which was the easiest task for me to accomplish in this internship.

Designing hackathon with Masterji, Khan saab

 

The most important lesson that I learnt in this internship was knowing that nothing exists in isolation. Designing for the sake of designing is not how the industry works. It works on integration of conceptualizing, manufacturing and selling and somewhere in between lies the design which is communicating and creating what has to be purchased and what  is offered to be purchased. It’s the fine line between what’s in the market and what you can get in the market. All of this, still a jargon, as my journey with the company was only for 8 weeks but knowing that this was for my academic credit, I never expected it to teach me that linguistic was the best design that mankind ever came up with, as recalling the most precious memory of my work in the company was  my numerous conversations with the artisans who made carefully handcrafted products and it made me think that they speak through their mastery in crafting art and  my team is the linguistic for them to speak to admirers of their work.

 

My friend Navya who interned at DC for two months

I have loved the beauty of these handcrafted products

Our farewell cake 🙂

So what is Direct Create? Its’ a dialect  of artisan, craftsmen, smith, journeyman, mechanic, technician, operative, maker, builder, creator, architect,  framer, mason, producer, constructor, inventor, originator – it’s a roof under which the divine skill can have words and sounds to speak to its seekers. It’s HOME SWEET HOME!

I am going to retell this narrative to the people I meet in the future in my life. I fell in love with the products that Direct Create had curated, I spent my entire stipend for two months in purchasing the beautiful products from the office! If you would like to check their collections, check them out on shop.directcreate.com.

 

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