Introducing Thotin: Starting at the beginning

The past century has brought about a number of revolutions within various realms of human interactions, but none has been as impactful as that in the field of communications. A hundred years ago, the fastest a person’s thoughts could span distances was through the telegraph – a technology that’s extinct today thanks to the arrival of far faster means of conveying thoughts. Thanks to this, we are able to think more, and use our thoughts for far more varied purposes. Most vitally, we are able to conjure up and implement ideas to bring about positive physical change that affects many more people in many places.

We started Thotin with the intention of using our understanding of this process, this transmutation of ideas into life-affirming actions, in assisting those who were already bringing about radical change across the development world. In the process, we set about teaching ourselves about the environment we operated in as well, fine-tuning, among other things, the extremely necessary art of communicating the various approaches and perspectives that are employed within the frame of developmental activities by organizations that may not necessarily be within a governmental ambit.

The causal chain in this regard is easy to follow: there’s an idea whose implementation takes the form of certain actions, whose impact leads to specific consequences. Thus, the process involves, at every stage, communication between potential donors, participants, and beneficiaries; indeed in many cases the concept comes directly from discussions with such respondents with implementation following therefrom. This interaction can be formal as well as informal, depending on how well-developed the connections between the various actors are. We decided to bring in our expertise to the area of formal communications, to using the interplay of text, images, and sometimes even moving pictures, to convey most efficiently the necessity and purpose of various programs.

At times, this journey seems akin to looking at thing through a microscope: a mere flick of the adjusting knob and your focus shifts elsewhere, to another facet of the process. This ability to trace intricacies fascinates us, and forms the crux of our blog, which is thus an account of how we move through this world and how we reflect upon the themes and stories found herein. We also realize that there are others making such journeys, and it is this that drives our desire to put down for posterity our experience, through this blog.

We hope to present to you the world of communication and design as they impact and are impacted by the developmental world. We may not be philosophically insightful, but we do have the excitement and experience of a voyageur, and we hope to take you along on our journey. In part, this is also in the hope that we will hear and learn from you as well and pick up more strategies and destinations.