Crap

Had been working on a booklet for quite a while. Fell sick, was hospitalised (even spent some time isolated as an H1N1 suspect :D ) and sent home for a month for recuperation (still struggling to come back to some semblance of normalcy), then faced a hard disk crash that wiped all my data off, and forced me to start from scratch (on this project, and much of the rest of my life too), then my laptop screwed up, and things just kept going wrong too often for me :( It’s been a bad semester, and with only 20 days to go, and my submissions on all my courses running atleast 2 months behind, it will only get worse.. Yeay.

Still,

I finally managed to complete the Web version of the Alcheringa 2010 Events Booklet. ..Must convey thanks to the 5 design juniors who worked with and assisted me, albeit in their own different capacities. Our collective aim was that they’d begin to learn to work on softwares, and practice them while working on what i assigned. In return, i managed some sort-of-an informal workshop, with assignments for them, and checking their work and giving feedback on it, and also managing the process for the booklet. Essentially, while they worked and i criticized it ;) i ended up teaching them the introductory basics of grid, hierarchy, a few brainstorming methods, typographic tools, visual balance and so on \ to whatever extent that i could.

In the end, i guess things turned out just about right :)

We made an attempt to follow a rather detailed process while working on booklet:

- Each module of events (and thus, each page in the booklet) was brainstormed-on and keywords based on colour, emotion and imagery were discussed, and ultimately all this was used to arrive at multiple options for the graphics to be used on each page.

- Existing images and graphics found all over the web were heavily discussed-upon. For guys as new to design as them (and me too!), i believe it is imperative to first observe work, and draw from it, while adding a little more of ourselves into each successive job we do. So – the images we observed were complimented (often!), and although most such graphics were of an exceptionally high quality, we consciously tried to understand different ways in which they could be improved upon, or simply, different approaches that could have yielded different or better results.

It is important to note here that these students who worked with me are 2nd-yearites at IIT Guwahati, and thus, only freshmen at the Department of Design (since the first year of every Design student is filled with a pathetic load of common engineering subjects – which, in some ways, is a good thing – but mostly doesn’t seem to work that way), and thus had been here only for about 3 months before work ended. So not every idea was solely original – a lot of existing concepts were evaluated and relied upon – but the bottom rule was that each graphic was to be made by us ourselves. Nothing was to be a direct copy or a rip-off, and even if we ran out of ideas and graphics, we made sure that nothing was the lift-from-the-web-and-paste-it-into-the-booklet-sort-of-a-thing that had always happened before, when booklets or such things had to be made for events on-campus.

- For each idea or concept, i encouraged discussions about whether it worked or not, and invited each person to table his views. Often, people disagreed and arguments stretched a bit, though frankly, i seemed to like it that way :) It was simple – no one was a senior or a junior among us. If you had an opinion, it had to come out. At the risk of sounding cliched: A design process just couldn’t exist if one guy dictated something and others worked as robots under him. Though, when discussions seemed to be going nowhere, i’d take a call (since i was the senior and sort-of more experienced in these matters), and unless someone had the strongest-possible conviction that said that i was wrong or being unreasonable, i asked them to go-along with me, for want of churning-out results within the stipulated time period.

I guess this worked quite well. All discussions do need to have a deadline, and then, the ideas that have come until then are the ones we ought to play along with. Else, creative thought-processes just don’t end. And while getting many ideas is a good thing, there’s this bit that Prof Ravi Mokashi-Punekar told us – learning when to stop pondering, beginning to organize the ideas and selecting the right ones is even more important, so that we may actually make something tangible, rather than only think about it.

- Each junior was to pick up one skill – one worked on floral brushes in Photoshop, one worked with simple type-based graphics, one began with the Pen tool, another was asked to create image-boards for each module, and one worked with the Glow effect for the backgrounds on pages. I did have a definitive plan in my mind, and thus selected those specific skills as the ones we’d go with. The fact that not each one of them would be able to deliver, was also accounted for – all that mattered was that they gave it their best shot, and asked me to teach them whenever they hit a roadblock.

- Discussions often related to the functional aspects of each element of graphics we used. A genuine attempt was made to try and convey the emotions with the use of the meagre-most of graphics – though i understand that our execution of the same may not have come out perfectly in the end. The juniors had only recently begun work on softwares (some, had to be introduced to the Selection and Pen tools), and i myself concentrated more on the layouts, fonts and explaining stuff to 5 guys who just couldn’t stop making mistakes every 5 minutes. But that was fun, and in most ways, i was egged on by the fact that no one (on the outside at-least) seemed to be embarrassed to hear me make verbal-sushi of everything they’d do. Then again, a lot of the work, given their newness to this all (pardon my english!), was quite encouraging, and, in some cases, simply brilliant.

Below are JPEGs of a few of the pages from the web version of the booklet. The print version, still to come, is what i’m waiting for – kinda expecting it to come out pretty decently, if the printing studio in the city can match the promises he’s made :) Also, the published .PDF can be downloaded from here.

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I’m only very new to Design.

That said, here’re a few things that have kept me a bit occuppied of-late. Might not be “awesome” or “stupenduous” or make someone go “oo-la-la”, but hey, they’re not too bad, eh? :)

PS. Feel free to click on the images for blown-up versions. :)

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Flyers for Events in Alfaaz, iitG’s fledgeling Literary Fest. The flyers were supposed to be A4, for a Black-White simple print. Nothing special in this. Just styoopid work. :P Still, it was fun trying out various lay-outs and playing with the margins and the overall grid.

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Logotype Design & a Poster, for the Entrepreneurship Summit, organised by EDC, iitG.

The poster primarily had to convey information, and serve less as an impact creating poster. I learnt quite a lot about Transparency Masks in Illustrator while making the poster. The Logotype came about while i was taking a break from Poster-making, and fooling around with the Title. It was almost accidental, that i landed up with the Logotype. :)

O and yeah. The poster was made in a small study-break that we got during my mid-semesters exams. Making the poster wasn’t much fun, but battling time was..

PS. The Poster looked downright sexy in print ! Seriously. What satisfaction i didn’t get while making it, was fulfilled while staring at it’s outcome :)

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The next one, already has a post dedicated to itself. Intended as a competition entry for an intra-campus event, this was a poster design for Techniche, iitG’s national techno-management-fest. Hugely inspired by a pre-existent design, but i did work on it for several days (and nights). Whatever little of Illustrator i know, was learnt and polished while working on the Poster.

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Some really frivolous Flexes for Alcheringa, the Cultural Festival organised by the students of iitG. This work was done a few months ago, when i was only beginning to get started on Illustrator. Played around with the Live Trace feature, and tried my hand at editing in Photoshop and moving stuff to Illustrator. Unfortunately, the Flex, once printed, was stolen, and another silly Flex that i’d made for another event was hurriedly used for the same event. The other Flex, however, is something i’m too embarrassed to put up here (it has a rose on it, and was for an event titled Crush – enough reasons!)

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Been doing a lot of other stuff. Some of the work i can’t show because it’s silly and naive. Like some stupid T-Shirt work.

The rest, like my first Logo Design…well, i’m far too emotionally attached to, to put up here. :) In much the same way how my favourite articles, essays and poems will not see light on this space.

Though, most notably, i’m part of an ongoing cold-war against some downright retarded batch-mates. As of now, it’s fun.<

i had originally composed this as someone else’s homework assignment. but i guess i took a liking to the subject of ‘functionality versus utility’. the result, lies below.

creativity has No limits. however, it is often seen (as is the case whence directives and duties do not restrain an individual’s freedoms) that creativity is unfocussed. function and utility, thus, present means to harness the genius that a creator possesses, unto an end that is both, constructive, and aesthetic.

in much the same way that pairs are innately inseparable, creativity and its constraints, work in harmony. it would be impractical to build the most elegant bridge in the world, and abandon structural integrity in lieu of a curvaceous mould. on the flipside, it would be horrifically mundane for a buyer if the virtues of variety and uniqueness were entirely absent, and each home was simply a repetitive embodiment of functionality..

often it is seen, that an innovator, in his quest for brilliance, ignores functional constraints that dictate a structure. often, scenic bridges (akin to a recent case in london – the millenium bridge) have not lasted 48 hours from their inauguration, since certain flaws had crept into their exuberant designs.

then again, some of the stand-alone masterpieces of architecture are some of the most lacking structures when it comes to utility or practical-applicability. take the pyramids at giza, or the moai structures on easter-island in the pacific. in fact, these structures and their constructions are actually blamed as one of the causes for the fall of those civilisations. even so, no one regrets the fact that the pyramids exist, do they? :)

yes, coming back to functionality, i must reaffirm that, the so-called ‘limits’ imposed upon an architect’s (or any inventor, for that matter) designs are actually beneficial to his creations. it only matters upon the perspective he(or she!) adopts whilst complying with the guidelines; why not look upon each requisite as an added avenue unto further expression of genius?

originally : March 27, 2008