How Frank

In a family composed of poets, writers and actors, the only thing establishing me as the ‘creative’ one is that I am a communication designer by education. The rest must save their artistic sides for whenever they are not studying or practising medicine.

Thus it wasn’t surprising when my sister, exposed as she always is to terribly designed medical textbooks, did a double-take on sighting actual beauty in one of them. And, seeing how such an observation is of little use in her day-job, handed it over to me to professionally examine (read: gawk at uncomprehendingly.)

That is how I ended up holding the Atlas of Human Anatomy, or what Frank Netter called his ‘Sistine Chapel’. Through it, I was introduced to what became the subject of my presentation at Show & Tell #16… his intriguing life and game-changing art.

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Somewhere towards the end of 2015, I came onboard with OML to guest-curate the Design stream for the third edition of the Coalition, an effort to look collectively at the creative industries and kickstart conversations around it. My interest was piqued with the mandate to not showcase the best that we have to offer as an industry, but rather to kickstart conversations on the bits of practice that may not be the glory of our wins, but more the challenges and questions that practising design raises on a day to day basis. Essentially the brass tacks, the small niggling doubts and the business of practising.

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A quick-roundup of what transpired at this month’s edition of Show & Tell Saturday, the 13th in this series at the studio.

Dhvani Behl / Flora by Fauna

The session kicked off with artist and print-maker Dhvani Behl talking about her journey from a child who never thought she could draw (well) to a print-maker who just debuted with her solo show in September this year. I first saw actual samples of her work at her debut exhibition titles Enso: The Language of a Printmaker at the Alliance Francaise in Delhi.

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—The Hindu, March 30, 2014

Back in March 2014, a Indian-American teen claimed, to great media fanfare, that the US government could save ink and therefore resources and money by switching typefaces. What seemed a rather clever suggestion on the surface was quickly shot down by the type design community, and though we can commend a 14 year old boy for having his ideas and heart in the right place, the professionals, it turns out, had a point. It also turned out that this was neither the first time anyone had thought about typefaces and ink consumption, nor was this the first time someone had meticulously studied the differences between typefaces with respect to this issue.

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