Ms. Lakshmi Murthy was invited to IDNU to give a talk on social communication on 18.7.17. She is a designer and graduated from the NID, Ahmedabad in 1986. Her design work has been grounded in social communication, her core areas are in reproductive and sexual health, in rural and urban slum contexts. She has done extensive work in visual perception and visual literacy with non-literate communities. Her design studio Vikalpdesign is based at Udaipur.
Lakshmi shared one central message that design work is around communities, whether it is urban or rural. As Lakshmi?s work is with rural communities, she shared many ground realities and challenges that she faces in her design practice. The examples that she gave were ? how women and girls have no toilets ? how schools often do not have sanitation facilities, how much garbage there is and the dangers in open dumping sites. She spoke of how in these contexts health training programmes become crucial. She shared how these programmes are designed, planned and scaled up, giving examples of media design and effective communication.