creative
200/www.CreativeGaga.com
VOL6/ ISSUE1
Jan/Feb 2016 the enthusiastic creative journal
Discover THE brands which speak! by Lopez Design p40
Shaivalini Kumar explains how to
Have Fun with Letters on p28
Cover illustration by
Shaivalini Kumar
Nico Castro explains Dimensional Mystery
behind his work on p46 Tutorialall on p64 Read pages by subscribing on Magzter.com or CreativeGaga.com
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Contents 31
EXHIBIT 08___TrendFeed Inspiring design with potential to be influential 12___NewsFeed A quick take on the recently concluded events, exhibitions and workshops that explored a new dimension of design.
46___Dimensional Mystery/ Nico Castro From Spain talks to Creative Gaga on his unique 3D take on design.
GYAAN
14___SpendThrift Thoughtfully designed stuff that you can acquire.
54___Know Thyself/ Lopez Design Understand the basics of creating successful brands from Lopez Design.
16___ProjectShowcase/ Kritika Trehan Young communication designer, shares the journey of creating her unique book, Evolve or Devolve.
60___Magical Reality/ Mahboob Raja Caricaturist and illustrator, explains his process of caricature for the legendary Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
18___ProjectShowcase/ Neha Battoo Advertising Professional Neha Battoo tweaks ideas to create meaningful designs.
64___Perfect Balance/ Shaivalini Kumar Communication Designer explains her process of making the cover illustration of this issue.
FIGURES 22___Old is the New New/ Pooja Bhapkar Illustrator and Graphic Designer on modernising a cultural concept to make it relatable today. 28___Open Letters/ Shaivalini Kumar Visual communication designer bridges illustration and graphic design through personified typography. 36___Handwritten Letters/ Anup Shah Graphic Designer Anup Shah’s take on the raw and manual form of calligraphy. 40___Word Connect/ Lopez Design Branding and Communications firm take on various elements that help strike a chord.
DESIGN PLEASURE 68___Word of Art/ Furgan Jawed Young designer tells the story behind his love for letters. 69___Brand Talkies/ Mazhar Bagasrawala Explains his talent to make simple designs out of complex information. 70___Publish That!/ Pupul Bisht Understand how she taps into the consumer’s psychology to get the perfect branding. 72___Contest Champs/ Design Mela One of the biggest online creative contest announced their winners.
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FIGURES_GagaWorthy 01 02 03 04 Design for Education. These guidebooks for students were designed using custom typography
for each book, which was playful - with clean and sharp layouts for the internal pages.
Visual Communication Designer, Shaivalini Kumar primarily works with illustration and typography. Also a denizen of the digital realm, she thrives on being able to connect and communicate with people all across the world. Her works have featured in many renowned publications.
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Jan/Feb 2016
Open Letters As the digital world has made the world smaller, design has coalesced as well where different forms are uniting and new evolutions are seen. Illustration ‘Type’ is one such avenue of type design which can add more meaning to characters and words. Visual Communication Designer, Shaivalini Kumar throws some light on the key points to be kept in mind while venturing down this path.
Design is like a chemical reaction. We’ve studied it in science how some reactions slowly yield products. That’s exactly how design works as well. It all starts with the hint of talent that predisposes one towards the creative side of the world, just like potential energy which when comes in contact with culture, people, books, dialect, surroundings and food explodes to yield a great product - a designer! Inspirations that cradle us from childhood combine and release themselves through creative energy which manifests in various forms. It’s all about finding magic in the mundane to create extraordinary designs. 02
It’s all about reading between the letters! Typography is a challenging area of design where one is limited with a form that is already defined; an ‘a’ has to look like an ‘a’ in order that people read it as ‘a’. This is where “illustrated type” has been a saviour for many designers who are inspired by the possibilities that typography has to offer. Combining illustration and graphic design, this mode of design allows designers to bridge their two areas of interest. In order to redefine a form that is already defined, it’s important to re-look at it often with a theme or a storytelling perspective. This is where a simplistic base structure is crafted and then modified by either constructing on top of them, modifying them, detailing them and giving them depth, all in a way so that each letter has its own story to tell >
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FIGURES_StudioScope
Word Connect
Brand communications is a lucrative channel of design as brands become increasingly conscious of how they appear in the market. Brand Communications Firm, Lopez Design seems to have developed a formula which works best. From typefaces to colours, digging deep into the language of branding, they talk about crucial factors that can make all the difference. CG: You make use of traditional scripts and language to communicate your designs for clients. How is that different from working with Roman Scripts? What challenges do you encounter? What makes it fun? LD: The script is really a visual expression of a culture and geography. It defines a certain space like nothing else can. It is important to understand the cultural context even before approaching script while communicating to your audience. Language and script become the connecting factor. The Roman and Devanagari scripts come from completely different origins, so they are not really comparable. When they are introduced in the same space, it is a typographical challenge. It can be a lot of fun but sometimes, it can also be a painstaking exercise to get it right. For instance, a real challenge can be to find a wide range of Hindi or regional fonts, as these are limited in number. There are good regional type foundries today designing regional typefaces, but to reach sizable high quality choices will take several years. While creating a logotype in dual or multiple scripts, the problem is far diminished. We need to match and design only a few characters; the traditional rules of type design can be also set aside. It is tedious and nuanced work that requires designers with a love for detail and typography. There is a real sense of joy when it all comes together > 40
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Jan/Feb 2016 Anthony Lopez started Lopez Design in 1997 when design in India was still in its nascent stages. Today the brand communications firm is known for designing identity programmes that define brand character and behavior, which lead to genuine experiences and engagements benefiting both its customers and business growth.
03 01 02 03 04 The Missing Pavilion ‘The Missing Pavilion’ exhibition was a response to the constant absence of an Indian pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The poetic reflection of the artists explored emotions arising from the absence of our identity in the globalised world in a contemporary language. This reflected in the identity design, a large portion of the typographical landscape wiped out from the poster, to make a bold statement aligning with the artists’ point of view. In the logo, leaving out the “i” – which is the very image of self and identity highlighted the sense of a gap. The dot remains though, hovering above, allowing the puzzle of partial presence, like hope, to linger in the consciousness of the viewer.
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FIGURES_MadeInSpain
09 10 11 12 13 14 YTV. This TV branding for YTV, a Canadian television network specializing in shows for children and young people, captures the look and feel of the target audience to make it pop!
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Jan/Feb 2016
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CG: What’s next for your illustrations and graphic design? Do you have another destination in mind? NC: There are always new ideas in the mind and new challenges around. I’m never too sure of what the next step will be. I guess it’s more about the journey than the destination <
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GYAAN_BrandStand
In design, we research the market and interview the target audience to see how a brand can fit and how best we can project it. If there are six similar entities in the market, we want ours to stand out in some way. Thus, branding is always about finding the right proposition and making the right choices to see how the product can find its place and most importantly, continue to grow and succeed. Summing up, the process involves finding:
• The Brand’s Essence • Brand Positioning and • Brand Attributes A brand can only succeed if we are honest in finding what it is capable of doing. If we over-project an idea, that may fall short of the target audience’s expectation. Much of our work, therefore, organises itself around the brand behaviour.
How will the brand actually act in the real field? The ‘Tone of Voice’ helps with this and this is really all about setting the values and mannerisms. When we think of Scandinavian furniture we instantly recall clean, non-fussy, comfortable and functional images of products. Similarly, we can set out the way in which the brand must behave - for instance a cultural organisation that brings Japan and India closer may be warm, proactive, cross-cultural, simple and poetic. Whatever the tone of voice is, in the realm of design, we are working primarily through the visual message. The ‘visual language’ paraphrases how we perceive the brand. It is in a way the dress code of the brand. A ‘farm-fresh’ ice cream can decide that it will use images of farm and natural landscapes to celebrate its flavour. This has to consistently happen many times over the years, so when we define the visual language it has to allow for enough explorations. The visual language also decides the colour palette for the brand.
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Jan/Feb 2016
Finally, there is the performance of the brand, which is the value it delivers. I like a certain ice-cream because it meets the expectations the packaging has set for me, with its fresh and fruity graphics and it’s promise of a ‘farm-fresh’ flavour and I am not disappointed when I find real fruits and a creamy taste when I take a bite. I go back and buy the same pack the next time. This is desirable. Our caution to people who design for brands is ideally captured in this quote from Kalila and Dimna (the Pancatantra retold by Ramsay Wood):
Never seek after anything, which may be unworthy of you or contrary to your nature. Like how the crow who attempted to learn to fly like a partridge, a way of flying impossible to him, forgot his own skill and crashed to the ground. Branding for success is about discovering what the brand’s essence is and what it wants to be and knowing the difference between the dream and reality.
The brand can only work when it consistently delivers what it has promised.
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GYAAN_DexterArt
Mahboob Raja a self-taught caricaturist, illustrator and art teacher who recently co-founded the image studio called YuN where they create key images for movies and television series. He has also been associated in making of many popular Indian animated TV commercials.
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Tools used â&#x20AC;˘ Easy Paint Tool SAI â&#x20AC;˘ Wacom Intuos3 Pan tablet
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Jan/Feb 2016
MagicalReality Caricature design is not always about distorting or making it funny, a little exaggeration with some fresh colours and bright lights can do the magic. In the caricature, without any brief, Mahboob Raja was clear on reflecting innocence and greatness of Gabriel Gracia Marquez ‘Gabo’. Here, he takes us through a behind the scene of this tribute to the legend.
01 Started with A4 canvas which can be resized at finishing level. The software comes with some default brushes but you can also make your own set of brushes. Many custom made brushes can be downloaded from the internet. I mostly start my sketch with Pencil B.
02 As per my observations, visualise the structure of the Gabo’s face with basic shapes. After the basic shapes starting with close set eyes loosely drew a wide square face, small mouth close to a narrow, spread out, down-turned nose and big square chin.
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