If I were to cook Butter Chicken for dinner, I would probably first call up Pooja aunty. Because I remember having dinner at her place once, and her butter chicken was delicious.
I know she would happily share her recipe. And along with it, I am prepared to hear her details of what each ingredient brings to the dish — onions cut down the sour taste of tomatoes. Soak the cashews in hot water, use a coffee grinder. Don’t use machine blenders — they kill the aroma.
That’s Pooja aunty. She will passionately share everything to make a good butter chicken, the way she makes it.
But maybe — is it too much information? I wasn’t aiming to be a professional butter chicken cook. It’s just a dish for an evening.
I recently met a senior designer in Delhi who narrated the same scenario. A bunch of Gen-Zs were asked to cook butter chicken, and in the midst of chaos, the recipe wasn’t passed on.
Miraculously, the dish appeared on the dining table.
How?
“Youtube. We followed the video from the first search result”
Who was the chef who gave the recipe?
“No idea. It looked easy. That’s why we followed.”
But was the butter chicken good?
Surprisingly, yes.
How “we” learned vs how “they” learn.
As “we” become oldies in the design world, “back in those days…” becomes the standard conversation starter.
Design can be a fascinating rabbit hole if one wants to start crawling.
For subjects we wanted to learn, we dug really deep. A font seen on a printed leaflet would trigger a quest — who designed it, which foundry produced it. A movie title sequence made us stay back through the end credits. An illustration, a leaflet, a logo, a book, a campaign, an installation, a shop, a building, a product, a t-shirt. Everything was potentially a trigger.
We call each other and ask, “Did you see _______? Do you know who did it?”
It was the time when internet speed was slow; no Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. For corporates to even have a web presence was a big thing.
We learned by going behind the scenes — the craft, the process, the minds of the creators. We felt deeply connected to the OGs. “Seven” is not just a movie. It is Kyle Cooper. “Meta” is not just a typeface. It is Erik Spiekermann.
That’s how we learned. And somewhere in the back of our heads, that’s still how we expect the next generation of designers to learn. Go deep, absorb the substance, don’t just scratch the surface.
But maybe that expectation is ours to examine. Not theirs to meet.
Typical Instagram moment.
I stared long and hard at a post. A cutesy illustration that has garnered 5778 likes. All the heart emojis . All the comments of “So good. So beautiful. Awww. Wow wow wow. Awesome. 😍😍😍❤️❤️❤️”
Something inside me felt like it died.
The inner critic tells me there’s nothing fresh about this illustration. It bears a striking resemblance to the style of an established illustrator from London. The colour palette reminds me of another experienced designer who’s worked on numerous Wes Anderson movie sets.
I strongly dislike it because I know where the influences come from, and I respect the original creators. This young illustrator probably saw the original works while browsing online, found them interesting, and remembered them without knowing who made them.
The illustration didn’t work for me, but it worked for at least 5778 people. For comparison, I can’t even get 100 likes for any illustration I post on Instagram.
An experienced brand designer forwarded me an Insta link about a new startup brand she had declined to work with — budget constraints. She observed that the visual identity was all over the place. Lacking the finesse and consistency expected in a well-executed branding program.
But I saw it differently. A young client and a young designer, both seemingly unaware of old branding standards. Both focused on creating something that resonated with their audience — which was, essentially, themselves.
The takeaway: I must shed my preconceived notions about standards and quality in defining good design. There’s a whole new world out there. A whole new audience.
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Back to the butter chicken.
If Pooja aunty were to taste the butter chicken cooked up by Gen Z using a random YouTube recipe, she’d make a big fuss about how bad it is.
But that’s just Pooja aunty being herself.
Because all the other guests at the dining table enjoyed it.
And that’s what really matters.
