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Being a Graphic Designer was not a choice. I was born into it. As a kid I was fascinated with colors and what they can create on paper. Since I had been thinking about my career choices, Visual Communication studies had always been one in my priority. The wish came true through National Institute of Design in 2012. I had just passed out from school with Physics, chemistry, Maths and Computer Science. I had to shift city and thus began a new life, entirely different from the mundane books and mugging for exams. NID, for the first time in my life, gave complete creative freedom for all 24 hours in a day. I finally found my haven. Thus followed the year of learning the design basics, from sketching to composing, from learning about different materials to studying communities to co-existing! One year of foundation studies later, I was in Graphic Design discipline. And since then the projects I have done, the learning processess I have gone through, both classroom and freelance, are compiled in this portfolio. - Bidisha, 15.11.15
INtro
oduction Photos recreated by Cyanotype Photo Print process. ( Self, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer : September 2013 )
Digital Illustration printed as posters and invitation cards for Durga Puja 2014 ( Sharodotsav : October 2013 )
ations
Illustr
Digital Illustration Poster for SpicMacay show in NID ( November 2014)
Book Cover Illustration and design. (mix media : May 2014) Client: Harper Collins India for author Karen Jonson
Notebook Cover Illustration and design. (Watercolor : Jully 2015) Client: Indicreate
Event poster design and illustrations for various competitions held in the annual Hindi celebration week in NID. (digital : September 2014) Client: NID
Publication
Design
Brochure Design (September 2015) Client: NID for the Centre for Bamboo Initiatives by Outreach Programmes
Book Design (April 2015) Brief: To compile selected projects done by IDS over years into a book. Client: NID for Integrated Design Services (IDS)
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P ck ging Every year NID organises The International Open Electives throughout its 3 campasses. The theme of OE 2013 was Drawing by Design and the design team was to come up with a merchandise bag for the anchor and guide faculties and the organising team. The theme colours were orange, black and white. I started with getting inspiration from different kinds of tote-bags. To make the bag more durable, I chose canvas for the body in grey colour. A patch of orange cloth with various Indian motifs was stiched on top which also served as a pocket. The NID tags were custom manufactured in orange and stiched along the side edges. The straps of the bag were
being cut out in size from flat chord ropes and dyed first in orange, and then in black from end to middle, which was stiched on last to complete the bag. The contents of the bag included a notebook, a guidebook for Open Elective 2015, a map of the campus, a planner and stationeries, all colour coordinated in the theme colors.
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Branding Identity
Visiting cards for employees. Indicreate is a company inspired by nature and wanted to reflect that in their visiting card. I drew inspiration from organic elements and floras around me and used water colour to create the image and then print it on Handmade paper. the sides of the stacks were spray painted lastly. (July 2015) Client: Indicreate
I was travelling in Jaipur in January 2015, when I came across the Amer Palace of Jaipur. The palace intrigued me, and for my next classroom project I took up a hypothetical project of branding the Amer Palace and creating Signages for it. The research that followed was studying the palace, the history, the history of Jaipur and the current ownership of the palace. Then an intense documentation of the palace followed after which I started with finding elements and retain certain textures and color from those documentation. The following sets of identity exploration followed which got inspired from Jaipur jwelleries, blue pottery, motifs and shapes from the Palace architechture etc.
Logo Design (August 2014) Client: Town Official Language Implementation Committee, Ahmedabad
Logo Design (December 2015) Client: Dustin Jones (men‘s casual clothing brand)
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Web ite De ign
For one of my Classroom projects I chose to redesign the existing website of the Design Clinic Scheme by MSME. The aim was to make the website more user friendly and interactive. Also the old website had lots of unarranged information, which had to be redone. After much brainstorming on possible themes, I chose to highlight their work the most. Accordinly, a design language was developed which consisted the icons, illustrations, shortcuts and various links. Also a lot of photographs from the Design Clinic Scheme‘s archive were used on the pagees of the website for reference.
Print Process
Poster Design on different printing processess compiling four illustrations in metaphores. Offset printed in two colours, black over red.
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n September 2015, I was travelling through the mountains in Himachal Pradesh. The Tibetan settlement in McLeodganj, in upper Dharamshala, intrigued me so that I stayed there for quite a few days exploring through their monastries and people and their culture. One day, I stumbled upon this small signboard pointing at a little cottage, which said it was a Handmade paper making factory. Very curious I ventured inside to find a beautiful collection of various types of handmade paper, hand-bound notebooks, folders, paper bags, paper boxes, postcards and many more handmade stationeries. I was very exited to find such a lovely collection and started asking around about the place. So the people around introduced me to Chokey, the manager of the factory, explained how this factory was an initiative by the Tibetan people to recycle and reuse paper, and in the same process it is the livelihood of a group of the local Tibetans who produces everything in the factory by hand. As Chokey was showing me around, some screen printed postcards surfaced from somewhere and she said that those postcards were printed by someone
in the factory years ago, and they have all the equipments for screen printing, but they did not have the knowledge of the process, so the equipments are just lying around. I was searching for an oppurtunity to collaborate with these people, and I found the perfect one! I immediately volunteered to do a screen printing workshop with them, since I had learnt a neccessary bit about it in college, being a Graphic design student. Chokey gladly accepted. The very next day I went to the factory and fetched out all of their equipments, which included silk screen mesh, squeegee, PVC inks, and thinner. However they did not have the photo emulsion, and as it was not possible to get one at that time,
I decided to show them the most basic screen printing process which was by a paper stencil. The super enthusiastic workers (and two foreign volunteers) each created a stencil of their own. Then I demostrated how the screen is clamped to the table to make it stable and how the stentil is to be mounted on the screen, and
how the ink is to be poured evenly in a horizontal stretch on the screen, and how the squeegee is to be held firmly and bring down the ink below the stencil, so that the ink spread evenly. Once I removed the screen the image which came out on the paper made the people super exited to make their own designs.
So I showed them how a mesh is to be cleaned properly with thinner before they proceed on to the next design.
By the end of the day, there were a bunch of screen printed Tibetan motifs on the beautiful handmade papers of the factory. The glee these peolpe had on their face, when they could finally use the abandoned equipments to make art, was the best takeaway for me from this workshop.
As a part of a classroom assignment in NID, we the Graphic Design Students collaborated
with the kids of an institution called Visamo Kids Foundation.Our assignment was to get together with a few of the foundation kids and come up with any activity which would interest thm. My team brainstormed and came up with the idea of creating a signage for the Visamo campus. We wanted to teach the kids about sustainability as well, so we thought of upcycling the materials. We finally decided on using paper mache and thought of teaching the kids to do it themselves. We started with shredding and soaking newspapers, and blending them. Then as a DIY alternative we cooked up starch with flour and water to make adhesive which was to be mixed in the paper dough. Once the dough was prepapared properly, we used it to built letters, using discarded Foam boards as our base. Once all the signs were made of paper mache, and dried properly, we added one layer of tissue paper to give it
a finish before putting on the first layer of paint. We wanted the signs to be colorful and something which would stand out. So we chose lavender and lime green for a good contrast. The paint was done and we had the entire set of Visamo signage ready in 4 days. The kids were really enthusiastic about the whole exersice and work ran very smoothly with everone cooperating perfectly from the first day itself. We are proud of the work we got to do with the children and the amount of knowledge which was passed on both ways through this amazing collaboration.
sketch scans
hbook
Design and content by Bidisha Biswas. January 2016
Typefaces used: Raleway by Google Fonts and Kilogram by KalleGraphics