Disclaimer: This post, on account of its title may read as a how-to-date-a-client. Apologies for the disappointment some of you may experience in the next half of this sentence, for it is NOT. It is however, the first of many in a series of short posts (one hopes) on on ways of looking at design practice, with real world/life metaphors. Because let’s face it, design is really a life choice of sorts.
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A small note for a big project.
Over the past 2 years I have had the pleasure of early & sneak previews of a remarkable editorial design & publishing effort by Anugraha, through my conversations with friend & peer Deshna Mehta. Being in it and being of it is a contemporary visual handbook, documenting experiences and conversations from one of the largest faith gatherings on earth, the Kumbh Mela of Allahabad in 2013. The short note below is my reading of this mammoth telling, published as part of the introduction to the set of 8 books that make up the Kumbh story.
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Original Content: Beyond Branded
My affair with design began primarily with a love for the way it engages people. And in the case of brand design, that engagement has always been on the bedrock of great content. Needless to say, I tend to keep an eye on what’s happening with brands and content.
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Show & Tell Saturday #10
For the latest Show & Tell we invited illustrator, friend and collaborator Priya Kuriyan to speak about her work (online here and here). Priya has worked across a wide range of projects from Penguin Book covers to Discovery Channel animations, editorial illustrations for the BBC to packaging illustration, not to mention editing graphic novels and now writing her own picture books as well as continuing to illustrate them. Priya’s commitment to her work, whether commissioned or self-initiated, seemed to set the tone of the evening and resonated with several of the other people and projects presented. As a whole this week’s presentations were especially inspiring, not simply because of the projects on display, but because of the drive behind them.
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Show & Tell Saturday #9
From food design to curriculum design, type museums to type foundries, we had it all this week in the 9th edition of our studio Show & Tell. I wanted to draw together the connections between our presentations, as Mohor did last week, but they didn’t seem so clear this time, besides of course their roots in design. Instead what we proved this week is that a studio is not necessarily made up of the same type of people. All the better for it I say, and a colourful Show & Tell is what this gave us this week.
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Leveling the field: Ideas & Craft
As is the case often, the universe conspired to finally put my thoughts together for this blog post. Design is a demanding mistress at its best—demanding both great intellectual and craft capital. It is of course unfair and unrealistic to demand equal proficiency of every designer, and that I recognise as some sort of general human failing or attribute (along with no claws & tails). However the gradual increase in a polarisation of the ‘idea’ and ‘skill’ as two seemingly independent streams is what begins to confound me. It doesn’t end here. It gets worse, with a veneration of the ideas designer over the craft/skill designer. Three things happened to me across the last 10 days, and push came to shove, to this post.
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Show & Tell Saturday #8
Show & Tell #8 had 2 firsts. Firstly, a special guest who joined in the chatter and also talked with refreshing honesty & pragmatism about scale. And secondly everyone managed to keep their presentations to five minutes, well almost. Here’s my round-up.
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Show & Tell Saturday #7
Show & Tell Saturdays at studio, are back. While it always serves to open up new work & people across the group, it is the intersecting themes / reflections / questions that stay long after the cups of chai. Here’s a quick round-up from some of the things that remained with me.
