Create a visual culture in Bangalore: Rashmi Niranjan

The idea of visual culture is to understand a city through its visuals and images which eventually create an identity for the city. Bangalore has always been known to be a green city and appreciated for its beauty because of that. Turning the pages of history, Jawaharlal Nehru in his visit to Bangalore also appreciated the municipal corporation and greenery of the city. Today also, these aspects do stand strong.

Rashmi Niranjan, Associate Professor, School of Architecture, MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bangalore, said in her address at the first Karnataka Talks OOH! conference held in Bangalore that with the flourishing OOH industry, it so happens that there are junctions which become cluttered. The concept of visual culture can be propagated with OOH and an aesthetic value can be brought in.

"Today we have lot of formats for OOH like hoardings, transit advertisements, bus shelters, gantries, Metro and alternative formats as well like skywalks and railway media. If we think about about how OOH appears on them, the visual imagery of a city can be improved,” said Rashmi. This can be addressed with PPP projects, she said.

Rashmi also gave a few examples on improving the visual impact. At a cross road junction, instead of having hoardings at all four corners, they can be clubbed to one or two corners and use the rest for green spaces. It will also improve visibility for the passersby. Another example she mentioned was for building facades and all signages can be brought to a central composition to improve the look of the facade and avoid clutter.
She said in conclusion that the concept of visual culture in OOH can do wonders to the look and layout of a city.