Dastaan-E-Karachi
For my undergraduate capstone project I wanted to explore and celebrate Pakistan’s heritage. Growing up, one of my strongest connections to my culture was my mother telling me her renditions of local folklore and myths so I took this as a departure point. As I read more on the subject matter I came across the term “Intangible Cultural Heritage” referring to practices or expressions that are meaningful to a community. Metropolis’ like Karachi are rich with cultural or historical narratives and sites, yet residents are often removed from or unaware of this aspect of their city.
Dastaan-e-Karachi is an augmented reality (AR) platform that attempts to solve the problem of Karachi’s fast fading intangible heritage. This interdisciplinary project was done in collaboration with a computer science student, having a major impact within the university and the design community, earning it the best capstone award in 2018.
Methodology
We applied the double diamond method to produce a successful design solution. breaking the design process into four distinct phases – Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver.
Identity Design
While designing an identity for this project, it was important the logo should incorporate some cultural element to situate it within our local context. Folklore is often relegated to a lesser role in cultural heritage, taking a back seat to more formalized traditions that have physical text. We wanted to design an identity that drew attention to these stories but also presented it as something at par with other textual traditions. For this reason, we decided to call title the project “Dastaan-e-Karachi” (The story of Karachi), tipping our hat to the long-standing oral tradition of the dastaans in the subcontinent. As a logo mark, we decided upon using Calligraphy done by local calligraphers from Pakistan chowk After reviewing various options we settled on the use of the deewani script because of its regal and romantic appearance.
Development
We developed the app using the Unity Engine and incorporated AR with the Vuforia Plugin after doing a competitor analysis.
To enable marker-based AR we needed to design unique markers and also compile them in one place so that users were easily able to access them. For this we chose to make a zine, however on their own these markers did not tell a story and so we provided accompanying text with them that explains the story and all its various forks.
Initial AR Test
When deciding what colours to use we kept in mind the kind of stories we were telling. The stories covered a range of themes and we wanted to our colours to represent that. At the same time, we wanted these colours to be representative of Karachi. A common theme in our selected stories was mysticism and magic but Karachi does not have an overtly magical colour pallet. There are, however, moments when the city does appear magical, when the sunrises and sets. We then began to explore colour combinations from images of Karachi’s sunsets and settled on shades of teal, pastel yellow, and pastel pink. Inspired by major brands at the time we used gradients in our design. Using a 3-stop gradient to replicate the magic of Karachi’s sunset.
AR Markers and Testing
To enable marker-based AR we designed unique markers and also compile them so that users were easily able to access them.
Markers work well when they have high contrast and are unique patterns that the camera is easily able to recognise and differentiate them.
We wanted our markers to have a relationship to the stories they brought to life and so for each story we designed unique markers. For the story of the ghost Bride of Karsaz we appropriated the designs of mehendi (henna) as it is worn during festive occasions like weddings
For the story of Abdullah Shah Ghazi we took the stark geometric pattern from the mazar itself and drew inspiration from optical art, to create the minimal markers.
We tested these on the Vuforia software to make sure they had enough contrast and were distinguishable.
Compiling them into a publication was fairly straight forward. Alone these markers did not tell a story and so we wanted to have an accompanying text with them that explains the story and all its various forks. Thus our final text for the zine highlighted specific moment in the narrative an in the form of footnotes showed the various alternative plots for each story.