Making a Mark
“Make a curve like this, and let go of the line like this. You don’t have to complete the letter. Let it look alive, like it is moving,” said Mr. Shah as he sat at the edge of my parents’ sofa. The good man with the gruff voice was demonstrating the drawing of a letter...
MP Ranjan: A Teacher for a Life in Design
The thing about Ranjan was that you couldn’t ignore him; he was prolific, he was everywhere and he had a deep, unshakeable conviction that design could and should change the world. To me, he was the friend who always stayed in touch, a philosopher whose ideas sparked an enduring fire, and the beacon whose light...
Sketchnotes: UnBox Festival 2021
For four years now the UnBox Festival has been a torchbearer for cross-disciplinary pollination of ideas. A combination of design, technology, craft, art, activism, systems thinking, city-planning and social change action, the festival has constantly challenged the presumptions of a way of life taken for granted. By bringing together makers, thinkers and doers from a...
Sketchnotes: TEDxGateway 2014
A continuing source of inspiration, TEDxGateway is an invaluable forum that highlights important issues and relevant solutions to the problems facing the world today. Held on November 2nd, 2014 at the NCPA in Mumbai, the theme for the day was #BetterIndia. Here’s a roundup of some of the ideas to take home from this edition....
The Look of Language
If the pen is mightier than the sword, then the printed word has brought revolution in this world more swiftly, more often than war. Since Johannes Gutenberg first invented the movable type printing press in 1439, printed matter has given voice to dissent over dogma and freedom over ignorance. In the six centuries since, his...
The Design of Ordinary Things: Ambassador Cars
The second comic in the series for The Small Picture was on the design of Ambassadors – those beloved cars that I and so many of my fellow Indian grew up in. We didn’t always love the Amby – and it wasn’t ever the sexiest car on the road – but when production of the...
The Design of Ordinary Things: Pressure Cooker
Earlier in 2014, I was selected as one of the new artists for The Small Picture – a weekly comics column run by the team at Manta Ray. Following from the comic from the Creating Change book I contributed to for Kyoorius, I decided to make a series of one-page comics tracing the design history...
Review: This Side That Side
The stories of This Side That Side: Restorying Partition spill into the mind like immigrants from across the border – seeking refuge from the oblivion of forgetfulness, bereft yet proud, anxious to be heard, taken seriously, desperately in need of a telling, of finding a home on paper. To read this book is to hear...
The ARThink Southasia Fellowship in Germany
A year ago I applied for the ARThink Southasia fellowship programme. A unique arts management programme open to cultural practitioners from 8 different countries, the objective of the initiative is to build competencies and networks that will benefit the cultural sector in the region. At Kahani Designworks we’re very passionate about working with museums, galleries...
What We Talk About When We Talk About Design
So you’ve heard about the Creating Change book and all the great work that Kyoorius and British Council have done to get new design writers together. Though the book is now out-of-print (!) we can still share the work we’ve each done for it. Here it is at last, my long-form comic for the book,...
5 Reasons Why We Need Design Histories in India
We write history to understand how things were and what makes them the way they are today. To write history is to explain the cause and effect relationship of events, to script the roles of its protagonists and their part in the story of things. All histories – any histories – account for the agencies...
Creating Change: Design Writing from India
Over the last year British Council and creative network Kyoorius have conducted a series of Design Writing workshops and events across the country over the span of the last year. I’ve been a part of the initiative since it first began at Kyoorius Designyatra 2012 and that process recently culminated in the release of the...
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