Design Work Life: Cataloging Inspiration Daily

Use Rubber at Night is an incred­i­bly thought-provoking project by Shantanu Suman. Here is some more infor­ma­tion about the con­cept behind and goal of the project, straight from the source:

The Indian roads and high­ways are known to look beau­ti­ful and colour­ful, thanks to the brightly hand painted trucks and lor­ries that run on them. Every truck is bedecked with hand-painted art and sym­bols, which are com­mon across all trucks, but have a unique char­ac­ter, as they are hand painted. The Truck Art style is a tes­ti­mony of the truck own­ers’ love for their brightly dec­o­rated homes.

However a star­tling study (con­ducted by the Center for Media Studies) indi­cates that India cur­rently has over 5.1 mil­lion AIDS patients, and truck­ers are pos­si­bly one of the largest groups car­ry­ing the dis­ease. There is an urgent need to cre­ate aware­ness among this com­mu­nity to curb the spread of the fatal dis­ease. More than illit­er­acy, it is the igno­rance and long dis­tance from home and their wives that are the rea­sons behind the spread of the dis­ease among the truck­ers’ community.

The fact that cards games are the most com­mon recre­ational activ­ity among the truck­ers in India, led to the incep­tion of this set of play­ing card design. This pack is a small step towards spread­ing the aware­ness about AIDS among its users, spe­cially the truck drivers.

The play­ing card design has been inspired from a very com­mon phrase ‘Use dip­per at night’ seen quite often on the back of Indian trucks. The mes­sage has been altered to suit the pur­pose and now reads ‘Use rub­ber at night’ which serves as an impor­tant reminder to the user of using con­doms while hav­ing sex.

The design for the cards has been inspired by the Indian Truck Art Style. The lady with the lamp and the 3D treat­ment of the typog­ra­phy are some of the com­mon fea­tures of the Indian Truck Art Style. Even the char­ac­ters (king, queen, jack & joker) have been illus­trated in the tra­di­tional Indian paint­ing style to give the work an Indian feel. The print­ing method includes a mix of let­ter­press and inkjet print­ing. The front (char­ac­ters and num­bers) of the cards have been printed using an inkjet printer whereas the back and the pack­ag­ing of the cards has been printed using the Letterpress technique.