INTRODUCTION
In the contemporary context, designers are increasingly needed to raise their abilities in areas outside their core design disciplines in order to compete successfully. Collaborative design process, which by nature encourages such Lateral thinking across professional and social fields allows design themes to be enriched and dealt with in greater detail to produce unexpected results. CoLAB takes a playful approach to analyze, (re)think and visualize this phenomenon of collaboration and/or its effects on design, manufacturing, marketing etc. in an innovative, artistic and thought-provoking way. The micro-research will be carried out and achieved through a collaborative process between students from varying design backgrounds and regions, creating an excellent platform for richly diversified potpourri of ideas.

THE WORKSHOP
The nature of the workshop is not to address a well-rehearsed and defined problem but rather to consider it as a process of “idea” gathering and through this process hopefully develop/discover something new, without preconceptions- which is what the essence of collaboration is!!. The focus of the workshop would be on creating an entertaining and imaginative visualization of the concept of collaboration. Students shall be encouraged to use contemporary visualisation techniques like mapping, surface transformations etc. to decode the components of collaboration, collaborative techniques and results of collaboration in a graphical way. The means of achieving this would be open to the students to interpret, although some samples have been provided in the “Inspiration cloud” section as a quick startup kit. Based on the generated visualisations, the students will also be encouraged to propose and illustrate a product which could use the graphics in a completely unexpected context.

FORMAT
The students shall use the supplied A5 size cards as their basic module of presentation, that could be used in any creative way to convey the ideas generated by the students. The collection of these cards produced by each team shall be composed and presented in a master board which would help derive visual, physical, tactile relationships between the individual cards. The resultant display of disparate images, texts, diagrams etc coalesced into a fluid sequence of thoughts on the theme of collaboration would then be exhibited and presented for an open floor discussion between the teams along with the moderators. This setup allows complex conceptual ideas to be captured in a concise, appealing and a high impact format. Individually each post card can become a souvenir for the conference while collectively they act as collage of ideas.

CO.LAB INSPIRATION CLOUD
Considering the time available for the workshop, several words/concepts related to collaboration, graphic techniques, and presentation scenarios are introduced in the inspiration cloud below to kick-start and aid in the thinking process of each team. The words are in no particular hierarchy and are meant to act only as a means to ignite a discussion and to reach a productive end result. A series of tools and techniques are also enlisted for students to be inspired from.

TECHNIQUES
•Mapping, Networking, Linking
•Folding, bending, flexing
•Cutting, stripping, slitting
•Text, Font, Glyphs
•Origami, folding, continuity
•Blur, blurring
•Repetition, Continual differentiation
•Pixelisation, dematerializing
•Structure, organization, communication
•Scaling, Non-scalar, a-scalar
•Patterning, Patterned distribution