IDEATOR Michael Foley Head/Titan Design Studio

Wren's London, Lutyen's Delhi, le Corbusier's Brasilia (the city was based on his tenets but planned not by him, but his followers), and, someday, Foley's Bangalore. The first three were city-planners and architects; Foley is a designer; but his spoor can be found all over Bangalore: in the lights at Bal Bhavan, a children's play area in the city's Cubbon Park (he has also designed benches and fences at the park), in the signage of coffee bar chain Café Coffee Day, and in Civet, a boutique restaurant (serves Thai) at the ITPL, a tech park at White Field, on the outskirts of Bangalore. Foley's hand will soon also be visible in a new hotel he is designing at Garuda Mall, the city's retail-space-to-be-seen-in circa June 2005. That's not quite the same as laying out a city but, hey, the man is only 34, and who is to say what he will and will not do in the years ahead. Then, it seems only apt that the name of a young commercial designer, in the prime of life, be associated with a young city, an it-boomtown that is plagued by the pleasures and pains every single boomtown that came before it has experienced.

Already in Bangalore, Foley is a mini-celebrity, especially among A-listers as this most unscientific of sampling exercises will prove.

Do you know Michael Foley? If so, what do you think of him and his work?

Nandan Nilekani, CEO, Infosys Technologies, the city's best-known technology firm knows of him and speaks of his role in developing a custom-issue watch Infosys gifted employees when it crossed the $1-billion-in-revenues (Rs 4,400-crore) mark. Incidentally, Michael's role was supervisory; the watch was designed by his younger brother Neil.

Captain G.R. Gopinath, CEO, Air Deccan, Dinesh Hinduja, Director, Gokuldas Exports, and Geetanjali Kirloskar, Chairperson, India-Japan Initiative have heard of Michael Foley too. All three believe the Café Coffee Day design rocks with Gopinath saying that "it stands out in the clutter of the city", and all three believe that Titan's watches look good with Kirloskar saying that "Michael has helped the company retain its design edge." "I must say that Titan offers a wide range of well-designed watches at reasonable prices," says Hinduja.

That's not bad going for someone who started off designing watches as an apprentice at Titan Industries.

Mhow is a small Army town in Central India (it lies 23 km to the south of Indore) that was founded in 1818 and has since enjoyed the kind of public presence reserved for significantly larger urban habitations. One reason for that could be the theory that it is located at the geographical centre of India, with co-ordinates of 22.34 N and 75.47 E (India extends from the eighth to the thirty-eighth (north) latitude and the sixty-ninth to the ninety-seventh (east) longitude, so this isn't true). Another is that the name Mhow is derived from Military Headquarters of War or Military Headquarters of Western India, both claims that ring hollow about a place that has never been more than a divisional headquarters. Still, Mhow (since renamed Dr Ambedkar Nagar, in honour of Dr B.R. Ambedkar who was born there, although the old name has stuck) has had more than its 15-minute share of the limelight. It has figured in the writings of Rudyard Kipling, Winston Churchill spent some time there as a sub-altern, India's only silver medallist in an individual event at the Olympics, Major Rajyavardhan Rathore, was based there at the time of his feat (2004, Athens), it is the most important Army training centre in India, and, is, arguably, the first Wi-Fi hot-spot in India. And, oh yes, the town's Kendriya Vidyalaya School is where Michael Foley graduated from in 1988; Michael's father Neville was in the Army and served across 11 centres.

The fractal-inspired lighting at Bangalore's Cubbon Park and Thai restaurant Civet (in Bangalore, again), are two indications that Michael Foley's spoor is becoming common in the city's topography

Foley remembers those years fondly. "Being in small towns has its advantages," he says. "You have a lot of time on your hands and (since you are in an army town) there are almost no boundaries." The man is probably referring to the thing about Army towns being different, the last vestiges of the Raj, really, bound by discipline and regimentation, though not the same rules that bind other, 'civilian' towns, and places where boys can be, well, boys. And so, young Michael sketched, painted and modelled his way through childhood. Don't make the mistake of writing him off as a pure right-brain type, though; while designing the lights at Bal Bhavan he used the mathematical concept of fractals. For the benefit of the uninitiated, a fractal is a complex geometric object that can be divided into parts, each similar to the original structure; a more fun way of looking at a fractal would be as a vivid colourful geometric shape that lean more towards psychedelic art than pure math.

It seemed only apt that young Foley go to the one place in India where people endowed with similar skills go and have always gone, the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad. Since 1961, when it was founded, the finishing school for designers (most people are already that, in some form, when they enrol) has turned out people who have influenced the shape and structure of India in their own ways, big and small.

These digital doodads that could have well featured in Minority Report were designed by Foley for technology products hotshop Innoviti

From T-shirts to furniture to stainless steel utensils (and cocktail shakers) to newspapers and magazines to entire malls and fairgrounds, NID alum have done it all, and done it well. And while Foley doesn't go out and quite say it, the school may well have awakened the industrial designer in him. After all, for someone who grew up painting-his parents encouraged him to paint, and he would often spend weekends copying the works of the Old Masters-it does seem strange that Foley hasn't painted anything in the past decade (he graduated from NID in 1994). However, that seems the right thing to do for someone who sees himself as an industrial designer, a person who has to focus on issues such as cost, utility and customer-requirements, not an artist, an individual focussed on self-expression. "Michael was very adept at understanding design and getting into the finer details of a project," remembers Pradyumna Vyas, Principal Designer, NID, one of Foley's instructors. "He possessed an admirable mix of design skills and conceptualisation and was able to think out-of-the-box, yet devise viable devices."

And it seemed only apt that Foley sign on with Titan Industries as a trainee in the design department. Since the time it burst on the scene to take on a moribund HMT in 1984, Titan has always been a company that realises the importance of design; with its recent foray into Fastrack sunglasses and accessories (earrings and the like), it is evident that the company also realises the benefits of leveraging its design-strength to diversify.

Titan Design Studio was created in 1998, when the company decided to merge its visual merchandising and product design departments. Foley took over as its head in 2000 and today, heads a team of 25, which includes his younger brother Neil. The Foleys appear a design-oriented family; Neil's wife Pallavi Dudeja Foley is a designer with Tanishq, Titan's branded-jewellery arm. And knowing fully well that a single-minded focus on watches could have a detrimental affect on the skills of its design team, Titan allows employees of Titan Design Studio to undertake other projects as long as these do not interfere with their work in any way.

Michael at home surrounded by his designs, succesful and unsuccesful; the two metal constructs in front are scale models of the fractal-inspired lamp-posts he has designed

The studio, Foley himself, and Titan, all shot into prominence in 2002 with the launch of Edge, the company's range of the slimmest commercially available (important, because there are slimmer prototypes and the like) watches, each a mere 3.5 mm thin. Not just is Edge revolutionary (in terms of thinness), watches in this range were priced between Rs 4,495 and Rs 4,995 when they were launched, one indication of Foley's ability to balance form, function and price. That, say people who have worked with him, was always a given. "Michael has a refined sense of form, function and manufacturability, which means what can be made and the costs involved," says Xerxes Desai, the former Chairman of Titan and Foley's mentor. "I first met Michael when he was a precocious trainee on the Titan design team and was instantly struck by his brilliant ideas," adds Bijou Kurien, Chief Operating Officer, Titan, adding that apart from being the country's best designer, Foley brings expertise in ergonomics and usability.

That's evident in Foley's design projects that do not involve Titan. Like Vaayu, a wireless internet connector, and Mita, a wireless mobile phone extension device for city-based tech hotshop Innoviti. "Mike can imagine user scenarios, then work out a design," says Rajiv Agarwal, Founder and CEO, Innoviti. "As a result, his products are simple in conception and because of that, they appeal to customers."

Foley himself believes the scope for design in infinite. "There's a huge potential in urban areas," he says. "Many highways, for instance, have signboards that are functional rather than well-designed." That sentiment about under-designed signboards doesn't mean Foley is about to jump off the deep end and start redesigning everything he can see. For one, he is not into over-designing things. "Michael has got a minimalist streak in him," says Desai. "There is no unnecessary colour or design in his work and he isn't a decorator or into ornamental stuff." For another, Michael believes in simplicity. "You don't need five different things to handle five different functions," he once told a magazine. "I try to minimise complexity." At one level, that translates into a whole-new perspective of design. Design, he insists, is not about creating stand-alone silos for different product categories. Thus, Foley has tried to incorporate design elements from the Fastrack range of sunglasses into watches. The auto-companies call that approach platform sharing. And car making remains the most complex of manufacturing processes.

More products from Michael's 'factory': a really cool bicycle; a cooler radio (it really is one) and a watch that is as much a reflection of cutting edge-design as it is, his respect for his day-job at Titan

When the weather allows it-it doesn't between June and August-Foley goes rowing every morning in Bangalore's Ulsoor lake. These days he has to be content with a five-km walk in the evening, something that he doesn't miss very often; work-timings, claims Foley, are fairly regular, dispelling the image of ordered-chaos right-brain types have always striven to acquire. Ideas, he says, can strike him everywhere.

We are conversing in the study of his home in Bangalore's cantonment area, and the evidence around indicates that the line between work and life is very thin for this man. There's a whiteboard in his study, with jottings of the kind that denote an active mind, phone numbers, future concepts, ongoing projects; he is surrounded by his designs (an article on the Tata website claims he decorates his apartment with his failed designs). And despite the fractals (remember, the lights), he smiles, he is not a quant-jock: "... but I have a great fascination for scientific principles and use them extensively at work." That shows, says Innoviti's Agarwal. "Good design keeps in mind the entire usage of the product, how and where it is bought, even how the user opens the box...," he says, "and this was a capability we found lacking in all designers until we met Mike."

Foley believes in balancing form, functionality and cost; his mentor and Titan's former CEO calls him a minimalist; this book-rack indicates that he is indeed that

It is that ability that Foley-he counts Andy Warhol, Jonathan Ive of Apple Design Studio fame, industrial designer Phillipe Starck and comic books among role models and sources of inspiration-will increasingly have to leverage as he moves into more challenging assignments, the kind of which lend credence to Foley's-Bangalore kind of statements. "What I want to do is to take up projects at the concept stage and provide an entire range of design services," says Foley. "This may not be possible on my own and I have to work with others in the field to pool our skills." For the Café Coffee Day project, for instance, Foley worked with fashion designer Sandeep Khosla.

That's the now of it. The future, he hints, could well see him dabbling in electronics, a white-hot market for industrial designers. "Imagine designing a gaming device that can be used with just one hand," he says, his eyes locked on to a mental diagram of what the product will look like (close enough to touch for him; immeasurably far for this reporter). "You can play even when you are travelling (in the metro) or holding a bag."

What you hear, Mr Foley, is the sound of two hands clapping.