Building Poetry

So I have resigned myself to the fact that, CorelDraw is not going to happen on the Mac. So AI it is. And here's my first attempt with it. 

Book Cover

Just this one for now. 

Trashy but in a good way

So once upon a time, I had to design a couple of posters and stuff for SRUTI (a wonderful organisation, doing wonderful things - visit their website for more details). Although none of these really made it (the final one was, *shrug*, so I didn't upload it) it was super fun. I have to do a logo now and am a little blank. Ideas and opinions would be welcome! You know where to email me. :)

Magazine Reload

Okay, so sue me. These images aren't mine. These aren't true. Yada yada. Just having a bit of fun with layouts. Mostly lazy, but I do have plans to do more later. But what do you think? Would you pick these up at a magazine stand?

Texty

Random Prints

So, after a long and terrible separation from my beloved software, I finally managed to reconcile and have some fun. Also, thanks to super fast internet (ohgodletsnotjinxthis), I downloaded some fonts and textures. So here you go, some random prints. More later!

E-Invites

This is an e- card I made for my sister-in-law to send to friends whom she didn't have time to snail mail invites to. Somehow I hate the thought of scanning invites. This is cheaper, you have all the creative liberties in the world and yes, you do save paper! I used to have more stuff, but ever since my computer crashed, I've lost a terrific amount of data - and also, sadly CorelDraw. Life sucks. Dug this out of an old e-mail, and since its wedding season, decided to post!

Travelling Light

I took a longish break around November and just wondered about a bit. Took some random pictures and wrote a random article. For time killing purposes - here goes -

Travelling Light

How beautiful is a city? I mean, how exactly do you measure it?

Conventionally, they call Paris beautiful. I’ve been to Paris, might I add, at a very impressionable age. But I had a splitting headache the whole time thanks to jet lag, and the people were largely unfriendly. What stuck to my memory was the headache, some rushed sight seeing and not much love or appreciation for its archaic, romantic beauty. It was all wrong. Paris, just didn’t happen.

I usually feel a huge surge of disappointment when I share pictures of my travels. “Oh, but why didn’t you do this? This is so trite! This is so touristy!” is not what people necessarily say, but is what I always end up feeling. In Paris, I felt as if I didn’t have the right camera. I didn’t go to the right kind of places. I didn’t do it right. I felt if A went, or B went, they would have made a better trip out of it. I’m weighed down by this tremendous sense of waste and futility when I see pictures from that entire trip. But then, I stumble upon a slightly blurry picture of my Mom and Dad laughing at some silly joke my Dad cracked. And my brother, still a student, with probably more than one girlfriend. And me. Smiling, with so little worry in life and highlights in my hair.

Screw it. I’ve changed my mind. It was fabulous. It was life changing. We had dinner at the Eiffel Tower. I had swan meat and pink champagne for the first time in my life. I lit a candle at the Notre Dame. I watched the Moulin Rouge. I went to Paris’ oldest book store and I cooked chicken in a typical Parisian apartment with my cousin. All in a span of two days. It was rushed, I had a headache, I took bad pictures, but I had fun. I just didn’t give it enough credit. Maybe, Paris was beautiful after all. Or maybe I’m indulgent now, because I see it through the distorted lens of nostalgia.

The beauty of any place, I’ve realized over my few years of travel, is only somewhat to do with its architecture or history or geography or magazine publicity. A bad breakfast or a luggage lost or one rude waiter can bring down your spirits like a house of cards. I constantly worry about not living enough in the present. About missing the beauty through layers of static and indigestion. How horrible of our minds, bodies and circumstances to let us down during the best moments of our life. Thank heavens for photographs. And now, if I may add, Photoshop. It’s a joy perhaps not all fair and honest – but a joy nonetheless to look back upon and smile.

So I’ll come right out and say it. I’m a chronic photographer. I’d hate me, if I was me – because I slow down the troop. I pause to see everything, twice – and if the exposure is wrong, thrice. I stop the car in the middle of the highway to take pictures of sunsets. I take pictures of random hotel rooms. I photograph people without permission and I bully my friends and my family to pose in a carefully careless manner – passed off as candid photography. And I hate it if anyone takes my pictures. Unless they’re doing it right. I am a photography megalomaniac.

But over the years, I’ve slowed down a bit. I’ve paused to breathe in the air and given my eyes a chance to see things unassisted. I’ve let moments pass and stored them in my mind. I’ve grown impatient with other chronic photographers. I’ve, ahem, taken pictures on the Auto Program mode. Just as a keepsake, not some exhibition piece. My addiction has mellowed. I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad.

I’m on a break right now. And I’m traveling light. And I’m taking pictures, both neurotic and non-neurotic. Hop along, won’t you?

Approval!

Now up on hoardings, and an office building in Calicut and somewhere else I forget. But yay!

Litfest 2011

Fake, I promise. But I remember making one back in the day for the English Academy when I was in college. It was design disaster, but it was new and shiny, so they went with it anyway. That was called Reflections of a Roadside Minstrel or something equally absurd. But I kept this down to the cheesy 'Reflections' bit. I just felt I hadn't given Helvetica it's due, because I honestly think it's such an awesome font when used well. This is a little rough around the edges, but I kind of like it. It's English Academy-ish. Pic 1 is the poster and Pic 2 is the fanfold brochure. The brochure somehow looks nicer bigger, but I had some trouble uploading larger files. I had some variations of the main poster as well, something more minimal, but this seemed like more fun. Working on a few more. Watch this space for more.

Logos!

Okay, so I'll come right out and say it. Logos are goddamn difficult. They maybe small, but they'll totally screw your happiness. Like these screwed mine. I'm still working on more though. Some of them you may recognize from the old blog - but modified it slightly. So far, I'm only digging Wireless Guru, Energy Ideas and Beanie. Office Square was just to fill up space, hehe (I got bored).

Branding for an Event

The title is a bit of a mood kill, but moving on.

The company's called Ak Bhar Cha Productions (translated into English it means One Cup of Tea productions, but bhar is more like an earthen cup, from which Bengalis sip tea at a leisurely pace discussing the events of the world and their neighbour's cat - also known as adda - the activity, not the cat...although that would be a nice name). Now Ak Bhar Cha wants to do this film fest thing, but being primarily Bengalis they don't just want any goddamn film fest - but something with a little more quirk. So they make Ulto Reel (Ulto = Opposite/Topsy of the Turvy fame) which is basically a whole mashup of indie flicks, LGBT films, art house cinema etc. Nothing commercial, mostly pretentious. You get? Anyway, the cause is noble and the films are actually pretty damn good so let's get this prettied up.

For the posters, I stuck to the format I'm currently crushing on. Bright colours, fonts of varying sizes. Minimal, with just the right amount of information. For further details, you'll have to log onto the website. Fonts from the Helvetica family and I've tried different coloured backgrounds.

I wasn't sure if I should have continued with the bright colours for the site, but this is what I finally decided on. Neat and minimal, with a few accents of bright colour. The reason being, there's a lot of material on the site and the more sober the colours, the easier to stare at the screen for longer periods of time. It's a detailed website with the event itinerary, trailers and summaries from the films being screened, categories of cinema being screened, director profiles - all the scoop basically. Ak Bhar Cha wanted to cut down on printing costs and also be environmentally friendly. So sorry, no catalogues, only cyber memorabilia.

Oh but what is branding without something to take home and remember you by? So we have passes, designed in the same vein as the posters. You can use these unusually shaped passes as coasters after the event. Or just stick it up on your softboard. The front is simple enough - event name, date, event logo, company logo. The back is an idea that may or may not be incorporated - but it works for people like me who are too lazy to go through the fine print. It has all the event highlights of the day, telling you how you could plan your day. Oh, but FYI, none of the films in competition are promoted. That would be unfair.

So for that we have the schedule sheet a.k.a. Event Itinerary. It has the entire list of events listed according to time and date (which I haven't done, because obviously this is all make believe and even if I have a lot of time to kill, it would be ridiculous to make up a 4 day long film schedule for a non-existent event and non-existent company).

So there you go. That was fun. For me. Sigh.

Secrets

So, this is a little complicated, because I certainly don't want to put up my secrets online. So I made some up and some are just random not so secret secrets. I'm sure you know this is inspired by the utterly voyeuristic, but totally addictive www.postsecret.com

Story - Shut up - Kiss - courtesy SoodooSen.

Posters

So I've not had much to do of late apart from waiting, waiting and waiting for this stupid commercial to take off. So I busied myself with some poster designs for an imaginary orgnaisation called BRAINSPILL. They don't really mean anything, but I'm bored, humor me. I want to play some more with the fonts. Then, I'll work on the cleverness. For now though - tada! I like the idea of really bold solid colours with illustrations and heavy fonts (I've used Kilogram and Xirod).