Portrait — Kavya
Design Futures India
Every Friday
[ puzzle mark ]
Independent des & editorial · Pune
India
Kaagazi Labs is an independent look at how design shapes everyday India — read as a weekly signal scan, written in plain language.
Three layers, one practice
Design capability already exists across India. We work on the pieces that connect it.
Research
Long-form essays and conference papers on how design capability is distributed — including work presented at RSD15.
Editorial
Design Futures India — a weekly signal scan tracking design and innovation across Indian policy, technology, and culture.
Practice
Advisory and teaching — helping institutions, educators, and teams build design literacy into how they work.
कागज़ी
kaagazi — of paper; the thing written down.
कागज़ (kaagaz) is paper. कागज़ी is what belongs to it: the record, the draft, the note in the margin. The name holds a quiet argument — that ideas become real when they are set down, examined, and passed on.
The mark is a puzzle piece. Design capability already exists across India — in craft, in code, in everyday decisions — but the pieces rarely connect. Kaagazi Labs works on the joins.
DFI #018 · 30 JANUARY 2026
Design Futures India
India’s Weekly Design & Innovation Signal Scan · with Kavya Agarwal
Latest issue
This week’s signals
- NDTV India steps back from the AI infrastructure arms race
- Policy Edge DPIIT proposes amendments to the Design Act
- Outlook India sets its sights on the hardest layer of technology
- Mercom Building codes begin to design for solar by default
- ADI 20 years of design discourse at Pune Design Festival
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About
“Design is a connector, not a silo. Craft is not nostalgia — it’s innovation waiting to scale.”
Kavya Agarwal is an independent researcher and editor based in Pune. Trained at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, with a master’s from IIT Hyderabad, she has worked across craft and informal-sector production, retail consultancy, and design education over nearly two decades.
Featured work
2026
Design Literacy as a Missing Layer
Conference paper · RSD15, October 2026 · On the distribution of design capability in India
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2025–
Design Futures India
Weekly editorial · 18+ issues · A signal scan on design, policy & technology
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Currently reading
- A Systems Literacy Manifesto · Hugh Dubberly
- Innovation in Indian Handloom Weaving · Mamidipudi & Bijker
Currently thinking about
- Whether design can grow an everyday vocabulary in Indian languages.
- What design literacy means as AI dissolves into everyday tools.
Read. Save. Share.
Design Futures India lands every Friday. One scan, five signals, an India-first read on what’s shifting.
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