Design empowers business; GH Resources at Designyatra 2007

"Good design is good business", famously quoted by Thomas J. Watson Jr, CEO, IBM provided the inspiration for the theme at Kyoorius Designyatra 2007: 'Design Empowers Business', held in Goa, India in September this year, Designyatra brought together over 2,000 participants around the globe.

Identifying the importance of bridging the design industry with businesses, GH Resources was the only Sri Lankan advertising agency present at this year's design fest. "Attending Designyatra was clearly a good decision.

Making us look at new creative design and to use our talents as tools to empower our clients' businesses," said Managing Director, GH Resources, Gayathri Hanwella. GH Resources values itself on constant improvement, and this event provided just the right fuel for sourcing new ideas as well as networking amongst the cream of the crop.

The advertising agency also prides itself on nurturing and exposing young talent, in this case, being GH Resources' Trainee Art Director, Thilini Perera who also participated at Designyatra.

"It was a fantastic experience to be able to attend Designyatra. Normally, in any other company, I would never have expected to have been given this opportunity, but at GH, it's different.

I was given as much opportunity as everybody else, there was absolutely no bureaucracy," Perera said. Emphasizing the need of looking at creative practice, not merely from delivering visually pleasing solutions, Designyatra stressed on the need to measure the effectiveness of it in the marketplace.

Speaking further Hanwella said there was an increasing importance for creative agencies to take a step back and evaluate their work. The design fest also created a knowledge-sharing platform, which created a hotbed for sharing ideas, innovations, avenues for collaborations, etc.

Designyatra 2007 featured a multitude of events including a design conference, workshop and panel discussions, an expo and Kyoorius Verdict, all India Design and Print Awards.