Posts tagged as:

typographic

Street-inspired Strong Suit

January 24, 2012

I’m heading off on my annual pilgrimage to the motherland next week, so was delighted to receive an Indo-centric gift ahead of my departure – in the form of a deck of cards featuring designs inspired by Indian truck art. The pack was designed by my local buddy Anton Hart who started typo-ventilating over Indian signage a few years back while working in Mumbai.

Award winning designer & creative director, Anton Hart and Simon Hayward, have joined forces to launch Blow Horn Design. They’re planning a series of witty and whimsical products inspired by Indian street art and playing up local humor. The cards are one of their first products to reach limited shelves – mainly at Simon’s boutique Goan resort Vivenda Dos Palhacos and also at Tuk Tuk in Margao, Sacha’s Shop in Panjim and Rangeela in Calangute.

Like me, Anton, has been drawn to Indian vehicular graphics which celebrate uniqueness and honour the local. He has skillfully devised a palette of typographic elements which will feature in their upcoming range. Meanwhile I’ve been the lucky recipient of some of his prototypes – and will depart for India shortly with his Takes Notes OK notebook & I Love Bombay t-shirt. While you’re waiting for these and more to hit the shelves – check out some images of Indian signage which keep us inspired.

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Disrupting Typographic Transit Norms

April 17, 2011

Less is More, set in unadorned typeface Helvetica (more for Helvetica fetishists)

We’re so used to global transport networks featuring unimbellished typography in their signage and way-finding systems. Fair enough given that commuters require information to be legible, especially at high-speed interchanges or at unfamiliar junctions where there maybe all manner of other distractions. Fonts in the context of transit tend to be of the less-is-more, non-decorative, minimalist variety.

Frutiger pops up on Swiss road signs, at London’s Heathrow airport, on the Dutch national railways, and more. Univers strikes signage on the Montreal Metro, San Francisco’s BART and the Frankfurt Airport. Helvetica graces the NYC Subway system, my former regular transits on Hong Kong’s MTR, the Madrid Metro and beyond. (Its unobstrusivenss promoted typographic creator and critic, Jonathan Hoefler, to quip on it’s elusiveness to being evaluated: “Its like being asked what you think about off-white paint?”) If you’re a transit-type nut – you can check out more wiki-liciousness yourself, while everyone else reads on.

“Dilli-Metro” hacked in typeface Shree 715 (thanks to local type-geek Ghate)

On my recent trip to Delhi I encountered more of the uniform minimalism associated with mass public transit signage. Though tracking down the typefaces used proved to be a much tougher journey. I started by consulting with my cluster of global type-recognition experts, who all drew frustrated and occasional blushing blanks. My obsessive typo-curiousity evetually led me to Mudra Max’s wayfinding consultant, Sanjeev Hajela, who had led the team which devised signage for the Delhi Metro. The Hindi is Shree 715. The English is Brunel (Positive). Again, if you’re type-obsessed, you can venture on to Brunel’s relative obscurity yet public prominence and leave everyone else to stay with my train of thought.

Finally getting to the point – what really sung out at me during my own stop-hopping Delhi Metro experience, in India’s crowded yet colorful capital, was this exuberent diversion from standardised norms. Guys – don’t you just feel like you’re missing out on the party?

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Typocentric: Bazaar

March 12, 2011

Last month I had a blast hosting the Typocentric: Bazaar workshop at Delhi’s UnBox Festival. We had global players join local folk to construct typographic forms from objects commonly found in Indian markets – buttons, bindis, decorative mirrors, candles, textile embellishments, match-boxes and more. I had initially proposed the workshop to run over three days which somehow got condensed to three hours – but much fun emerged on this insane time frame. Having graphic designers joined by those with backgrounds in anthropology, education and finance led to a random-specific blend of capacities which kept everyone typo-ventilating throughout.

I got a particular kick out of working alongside my gifted former student and pixel-pro, Abishek Ghate, who experimented with constructing typographic forms out of various elements to devise the intense workshop format.

We started out by having small groups create Hindi words in Devanagari script out of bindis. For those of you who are in the dark, bindis are the red or coloured forehead markings worn by many South Asian women – often but not always signifying marriage.

Bram Pitoyo, Digital Strategist at Weiden + Kennedy, collaborated with others to form Usha (उषा) meaning the first ray of light from the rising sun.

Another group took a different path to create the same word. And that’s the arm of Kriti Monga from Tumeric Design – a typographic doyenne – who wears it on her sleeve. Some of you may recall her superb visual journal from Design Yatra which featured in Creative Review.

Workings + resolutions for Sakhi (सखी) – an endearing term for a girl, a friend, a confidante.

Babe (बेब) – phonetically from English and peppered through Hindi conversations when hotties are on the radar.

We then switched to a smorgasbord of elements from local bazaars. The pressure mounted and creativity escalated as teams raced against the clock to follow typographic guidelines while exploring the limits and opportunities that their designated objects presented.

Decorative mirrors, often used for textile ornamentation, were used to artfully form the word Chhavi (छवि) which means reflection or image.

A team working with matchboxes experimented with multiple approaches to celebrate the name of our hosts: The UnBox Festival.

Impressive collaboration from those who worked with coloured buttons to create the name of our host city: Dilli/Delhi (दिल्ली)

Decorative flourishes from a group working with gotas – pleated fabric embellishments used to adorn sarees and other traditional clothing.

And pyromania ensued to give justice to the word Lau (लौ) or flame, built with candles.

Ghate and I were joined in energising participants by Codesign founder and UnBox spearhead, Rajesh Dahiya – who was a former colleague of mine at India’s National Institute of Design, where he continues to teach typography as adjunct faculty. My Design Observer co-contributor and by now close conference-buddy, John Thackara, had to put up with our fervored racket from his more earnest workshop which took place a just few paces away – luckily I made up for it the next day by swinging us a table at the ever popular dining spot Gunpowder. With it’s scenic view, this was a great vantage point to reflect on the UnBox Festival – where I had also presented as Community Manager on OpenIDEO. It had indeed lived up to it’s promise to encompass work and play across contexts and mediums plus “rethink and stretch design practice through imagination, provocation and stimulation for those interested in social and cultural change.” While many of the conference sessions were focused on more worthy pursuits, we’d like to think that Typocentric: Bazaar ignited a hankering for the handmade, a love of the local, a craving for collaboration – all within the alluring hype of type.

Related posts:
Typocentric Bazaar on Flickr
Overlap: Intersection of Desi & Diasporic
Viva Vernacular

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Designerly Desi

January 24, 2011

Pooja Saxena is an emerging communication designer based in New Delhi with a love for typographic form and an aligned fascination with language and linguistics. One to watch for her agility across forms and fonts.

Material explorations on Devanagari script

Electricals Ltd. is Pooja’s modular typeface based on a friend’s photo taken in Jaipur.

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Handing Over the New Year

December 30, 2010

I recently came across this exquisite work at the Mother Tongue exhibition, curated by the Indigo Design Network. It’s creator, Karina Fernandez, was born and raised in Melbourne where she currently studies visual arts at Monash University. She delved into her Indian cultural heritage while devising the piece – which took her on an exploration of body art, particularly bridal henna designs. However Karina found working with henna a messy business and instead wisely opted for a fine marker which still took her a number of hours. The quote she chose is from from Gandhi: No Culture Can Live if it Attempts to be Exclusive – worthy of reflection as we close the curtain on 2010. Happy New Year all…

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Explosive Diwali Message

November 5, 2010

Indian designer Mickey Bardava proposed a playful way to highlight the dangers of open defecation, drawing on Diwali fireworks packaging. Associating the familiar perils of explosive fireworks with the health hazards of exterior excretion – the text goes on to wish you a happy Diwali while declaring that the message has been ‘issued in public interest.’ Barvada cleverly remixes a locally relevant graphic style with a potent social message.

And check out a further oddity in Diwali fireworks packaging I spotted in Mumbai this week!

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Archival Adventures

July 11, 2010

Artist Unknown, Mission School, circa 1849 Image Source

A good friend recently showed me an illustrative version of the Lord’s Prayer in Maori.
I noted that it was credited to the National Library here in Wellington so headed over to see what related items were in their online archive. I came across the piece above – promoting an early mission school.

Thomas Kendall, Nuku Tawiti, 1824 Image Source

Alongside Maori adoption of Christianity, the archive also points to colonial attempts to understand local spiritual belief. Early missionary Thomas Kendall made this sketch of Maori gods – which he observed on carvings in 1824.

K.P.M. South Pacific Line, 1939 Image Source

Carvings feature elsewhere on the site – here on the cover of a promotion for a passenger ship run by major Dutch company, Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij. Framing Mount Cook they gave an exotic spin on the antipodean landscape.

NZ Railways, Auckland to Rotorua – the Thermal Route, circa 1954 Image Source

Switching from sea-faring to land transport, the Railways advertised its once popular route to my home town of Rotorua from Auckland. Rotorua drew tourists with its thermal activity, thriving Maori culture and welcoming hosts. The advertisement features a tiki alongside the train and Maori carving motifs.

Horatio Robely, Arms of Dr TM Hocken, circa 1900 Image Source

The tiki and Maori motifs were used again in this artist’s rendition of the initials of Dr Thomas Moralnd Hocken, who funnily enough headed to New Zealand to escape British winters. I can’t imagine he found much respite in Dunedin. A doctor, avid collector and historian – he donated his sizeable stash of books, maps, manuscripts and ephemera to the citizens of Dunedin in 1910 in the form of the Hocken Library.

Charles Hill & Sons Ltd, Models 27-49, 1897 Image Source

Fittingly, it was the good folk at the Hocken Library who had pointed out the Maori Lord’s Prayer to my friend – which I mentioned in opening as prompting my foray into the National Library Collection in the first place. Back home in Wellington I’ve been having a great time trawling the library archive discovering a wealth of local visual history. Hats off to the National Library – for old times sake:

Christmas Card, Kia Ora. For Old Times Sake, circa 1890-1910 Image source

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Lo-fi Meets Hi-fi at the Corner of Send & Receive

June 11, 2010

A selection of creative endeavors featuring SMS, social media and spam provide artful commentary on digital communication.

SMS Stitching – embroidered text messages track ebb and flow of modern romance.

Wildlife-Social Media Mash-up – blasé bird tweets on life in New York.

Spam One Liners – hand-lettered renderings inspired by junk mail subject lines.

Highlighting aspects of immediacy, attention and privacy – all three artists share a tendency to save what others may delete.

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Overlap: Intersections of Desi and Diasporic

January 15, 2010

Earlier this month I spent time in Delhi with my old pal Arti Sandhu, putting up our exhibition Overlap at the Mocha Arthouse. Arti and I have been intersecting across the globe for a decade now – in New Zealand, India, Hong Kong and the US. Sharing a fondness for hand-rendered, vernacular artforms, we conceived the show around our varied perspectives of Indianess – touching on the desi and diasporic, the traditional and typographic alongside explorations of language and locality.

My own work included two series which I designed and had executed by sign-writers in Ahmedabad and exhibited previously at the Glasgow School of Art. The English of India series came from noting that visitors to India are so often surprised by the amount of English one encounters – on the street, peppered through films and even in remote villages. I aimed to capture the localisation of the global spread of English through the flair of local sign-writing.

The second series, Bollywood Soul – A Vernacular Walk of Fame playfully created a set which displays divas and heralds heros of national cinema, employing local portraiture and typographic styles commonly used to decorate rickshaws. I collaborated with a local legend who earns his living painting rickshaw mudflaps from his roadside studio – and committed his brush to rubber shoe-soles for the project.

Arti grew up in an Army family which meant she covered a lot of ground in India from a young age. A love of drawing and customising her barbie to look more Indian led her study fashion at NIFT in Delhi and later in the UK. Since then she has lectured globally and is currently an assistant professor of Fashion Design in Chicago. Her artworks explore identity and migration and provide insightful perspectives on the eccentricities of the modern and mundane in India and abroad.

On annual visits home to India Arti began to notice the idiosyncratic qualities of everyday life which she had previously taken in her stride. She drew on these observations to create the ‘A’ is for Akshar series in which she re-visits her motherland and language while providing a visual commentary on India through the lens of a migrant.

Exploring cultural baggage and excess baggage, Arti’s Mahila Moments series is inspired by Madhubani folk art. Here she delves into the dilemmas of modern day India, fashion and migration with a love for line, pattern and repetition. Reminiscent of Ganjifa playing cards, the series crosses borders of locality and globalisation in an interplay of what Indian womanhood has come to mean at home and further afield.

Included in the exhibition was a large format poster by New Zealand-based graphic designer and typographer Anton Hart. A few years back he landed up in Bombay on a work sabbatical. Like many before him and many to come, he was smitten. But the touristy tabernacles of Agra and Rajasthan were not what caught his eye. Instead he was enraptured by the truck painters of Bombay and farther afield. His Horn Please typeface and ornaments are a tribute to their flamboyant creativity.

The show Overlap: Intersections of Desi and Diasporic is hosted by the good folk at Box Design & Research and will be up at Delhi’s Mocha Arthouse, DLF Promenade, Vasant Kunj through March, 2010.

Related posts:
Viva Vernacular
Indian Street Graphics (Flickr)

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Painted National Pride

December 30, 2009

Visitors to India are frequently enchanted by the spirited decoration of trucks which traverse the nation. We are immediately drawn to the quaintness of English phrases like Horn Please which are commonly emblazoned on the rear of commercial vehicles.

However we often miss the assortment of Hindi phrases – the most common of which reads Mera Bharat Mahan (मेरा भारत महान) meaning My India is Great. This patriotic declaration was popularised by former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in his campaigning efforts to evoke a spirit of modernity across the nation. It went on to become a favoured proclamation of Indian cricket fans. The slogan prevalently graces the tailgates of trucks which cross state and cultural boundaries in a diversely painted salute to national pride.