The strange and the Unusual TEJAS JAGANNATHAN
“We’re always Searching for Definitions To explain ourselves But maybe I am just A word not Thought of yet One hidden inside Dictionaries Swept tragically Away From this world”
am I ?
an
k o o l e d i s In
The real drama or story of my life and personality is interior. To the world I give different impressions and usually it’s of discipline and it even may seem remotely distant. One thing that really associates with me is hidden emotion, hidden passion. I try to internalize things a lot. Once people get to know me better, I can seem intense to say the least. I am very aware of my restlessness, controlled intensity and the constant nervous energy that churns beneath my calm exterior. My desire is to be up and doing, rearranging, improving and getting things done. Since my only goal in life is to make a difference and being good at doing it. This is a small glimpse of who I am.
How people view me Psycho Deep thoughts Know it all Aloof
Serial Killer Confused Weird Sporting Overthinking Lunatic Strange
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Now that I have you all confused, let me explain... As I started working on this, my first focus was to know how people saw me. With my natural over-thinking behavior, I thought I knew what they would write - but yet I created this online page where my closest friends could write what they thought about me with their identity being anonymous! Now strangely enough, what I got was long, nice paragraphs about the good human being I am! (The Perfect disguise a serial killer needs, ‘evil laugh’!!!) After hearing all the nice words, I was hoping for more flattery from my college mates and this is what I got. I found this a lot more interesting as this is exactly how many people see me?! Whenever I reach a certain level of comfort with a group of people, my behavior tends to get rather bizzare! To anyone who doesn’t know me, I think a conversation or two with me would explain what I mean. To sum it up, I am funny to watch. Most of the times I don’t really know why people laugh at me?! When I do - I over do it. I embrace it. But Why? It’s simple. Take an example of mimicking. We all loved a good mimic back in school. Why? Because they made us laugh at the expense of the teacher! This is exactly how I see myself. I make people laugh, on MY EXPENSE. Why?.. ...Because I can!
In the summer of 16th September. A Boy was born (Dramatic music) My first recollections of my childhood are the times I just laid flat in the gardens that surrounded my home. Just looking at the skies with no worry in the world. My days were happy ones before I started going to school. I had good neighbors to play with from morning till evening. I also loved art from a small age. At the age of three, I had to attend Pre School and this turned out to be quite an ordeal for me. To begin with, I felt very sad having to leave my mother and go off each morning to be amongst strangers (I still don’t feel comfortable around strangers).
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As the days went by, however, I made friends easily in class and found company. I became happy again and actually looked forward to leaving the house each morning. I still remember the days when I was learning to ride a cycle. I fell and bruised myself several times. I also nearly drowned myself in the pool. But I loved doing them and never gave up (Motto of my life). Overall, I had a wonderful childhood. It may not be clear in my head, but it’s the base of who I am today and I wish I could relive those days.
an INSIDE LOOK
Traits I developed. Curiosity: I asked a lot of questions. I loved knowing and learning new things. This sure made me annoying, as I wanted to know about everything. (I still am to this day. Annoying and curious)
All I remember clearly of this time was the birth of my brother, which was a big change for me. From all the flashy big birthday parties and attention I used to get, to then the long rides on my cycle alone for hours. This was new to me, as I started to feel invisible at first. I felt jealous because he got the attention, but with time I got more protective of him. It was around this time that I also moved from my pre school to kindergarten. This school was huge. With 40 students in class, I also lost attention in school as well.
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I spent a lot of my time alone and this was when I got more in touch with art. I loved drawing all day on my notebooks and just cycling for hours. With time I got very close to my brother. This period of time made me more reserved and I learnt to be happy by myself. I didn’t need other’s company to cheer me up. I would just go out and watch people work from the gardener to the electrician to the carpenter. I started to watch and observe in silence (I am a good observer of surroundings).
Consciousness: This was a time when I started to care about people’s opinions. I felt it was something I did that stopped people from caring as much as they did. (Contradicts what I said earlier about not caring, but I get conscious in new environments).
an INSIDE LOOK Independent: I started to do things by myself. I was conscious, but I hated asking for help. I wanted to do things my way. I needed control, (I don’t like the feeling of owing people for something they did for me. I prefer doing things myself).
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This was when I found my purpose in life, without ever realizing it. This wasn’t a good time in my life. My closest friends left the country and I started to feel trapped. Saudi Arabia was an awesome place until I became a teenager. I lived in a world confined within the walls of my compound. People often ask me, how I survived in the Middle East for 18 years. I simply didn’t know what life was like outside of it. I would read and hear stories from people and try to visualize what life was like for them. I was an internet addict at this time. I started to make characters in my head. People with different personalities and write a story about them. I wanted to try and live each one of their lives. I used my imagination, I wanted to experience everything but I couldn’t. I was stuck; I was trapped in my monotonous life. Living with rules and a routine that never changed. The internet was my escape from reality.
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In my mind, I could create characters and write about being them. This is when visual communication caught my eye, as I started visualizing those characters. I used to read many blogs and they had fancy banners and pictures. My naturally curious self just wondered how they were made. I looked around, asked many questions, annoyed people as I always did and I found the software ‘GIMP’. This was what led me to Graphic Design. I would experiment all day on GIMP. None of my friends ever knew what I did. I found all of this myself, I wrote and designed because I loved it. I never sought for any appreciations. I did it for me. (Breaking bad reference)
Tolerance: As I kept more to myself, my grades went down and everyone around me made their assumptions for what they thought was wrong. I was able to tolerate it and vent it all out while writing and drawing. (I internalize things. I don’t break down or blow up. I can resist it.) Perspectives: I started to learn to see life from others perspective. This opened the world for me. I could live life and experience things that I couldn’t from my real life. From movies, poetry, wrestling to the stories I heard from people. I would put myself in others shoes, which helped me understand them better. (I love stories, always have and always will. The reason I love design is because, I feel like it is a story for itself. Being able to bring an emotion through design is what I aim for.)
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OK an INSIDE LO
Secrecy: (There are a lot of things I do, that I never mention about. I just don’t feel the need to tell everything. I still write and never usually show them to anyone, unless they are very interested and I feel comfortable showing them.)
When I w as 16. I stayed in my ho u se for 2 month s d uring my summer vacation. I never got o ut and it was one o f the best vacations.
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FEAR This was an artwork I made to depict fear, using Dadaism. ‘We are afraid of things, even when we aren’t the ones facing them” Concept: Here you see the hunters and you see the deer. Most people miss the birds. The meaning behind this is that, when a hunter hunts the deer, it’s not just the deer that gets affected. But it is also the birds that fly away even when they aren’t the ones in danger. Inspiration This concept was simply inspired by this very phase of my life. I spent all my childhood and now my teens with people who faced the darkness, that I started fearing it and almost feeling their pain when I wasn’t the one facing it in the first place. It is this very fear, that results in my strict self discipline and lifestyle.
“Never forget what you are, The rest of the world will not Wear it like armor And it can never be used To hurt you“
This was the most eventful period of my life. My life in school started to become relevant again. With time, I stopped depending on the Internet as much. All my life, I was always about order. I wanted to be perfect. I didn’t do things, because I felt I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t say things, because I thought I was wrong. But what is perfect. Nothing. My naturally clumsy, goofy behavior started to get noticed. I was made fun of every day for months and for some strange reason they started to respect me. I was the only person who could take it. Though it bothered me a lot, they never knew. They wanted a reaction and I never got angry or showed any signs of it bothering me.
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With time I was the center of attention. This was very strange because I hated attention and I hated being laughed at. But... It felt good. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was never trying to be funny; but I was able to control all their reactions with the palm of my hand. I could make anyone laugh. It was these friends who made me confident. They forced me into doing things I feared to try. I played Badminton for my school, (which had 18,000 students) I won first place in an impromptu speaking contest (in front of 300 people) I still don’t know how. Of course I took a very long time to realize that. My fear was always being embarrassed in public. I wouldn’t take part in sports or speeches because I didn’t want to make a fool out of myself. (I make a fool out of myself every single day now and I love it.) Everything was absolutely perfect. Until (Climax)
BAHRAIN
Moving from Saudi was very hard. I lived there for 17 years and I left at my happiest. I didn’t have much hopes of Bahrain being a good place. I thought Bahrain would be really bad and I was so wrong. This was yet another fear that I came across which was to adapt. After staying in a country for 17 years I didn’t think I would adapt, but when I was put in that situation I excelled. My new school was very small compared to my old one. This helped because I mixed in very easily. I made many friends in a matter of few days. I was also able to Vice Captain my cricket team. We won first place and I also won a magazine cover contest using GIMP. All these small little achievements may be worthless things for some people, but it meant a lot to me.
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ame I had the s tiffin breakfast & r to school fo . s r 15 yea
“I wanted a perfect ending. But some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, having to adapt and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.“
expectation This was an artwork I made to depict Expectations, using Dadaism. ‘Your success doesn’t have to depend on others” Concept If you look closely, you see a pyramid and Dahi handi. It’s a mash up of them together as both of them signify a base and then a pointed end. We all wish to be the man in the top. We want to be the pointed end. We expect people to push us up. With our family and closest friends right in the bottom, who are the ones we neglect the most. They are the base and once they leave, the whole Pyramid falls. We expect them to be there forever. Inspiration This was about the time when my friends left. It was the start of my rebel behavior. I stopped expecting things from people. I saw the reach of the internet and wanted to live my life without the need to trust and need anyone else as one person could drop me down. I still loved stories, but I was careful with whom I shared my story with.
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“Everything and everybody, was on the move In every direction, there was no place to stop, No place to dawdle, you either move on or you got mowed down�
MUMBAI
ot “We cann , wind direct the n but we ca adju st the sails.“ After 7 months in Bahrain, I had to make a move again to Mumbai. Moving is never easy. This time however it wasn’t the leaving that was hard. It was realizing that I had to start over. It was like a game and I was down to level 1. Unlike Bahrain, I didn’t have a routine to depend on nor did I have any friends. Everyone was busy in their own lives, my family was away and I was by myself. (Yes, I live alone by myself in my own house.) I had never seen so many people in my life. Though I am an Indian, I never felt this was home, Saudi was never home as well. I always felt like an outsider but it was now that I started to realize that maybe it was not a bad thing. When you have no home, you are free to go wherever you want. That is exactly what I did. I spent a month just going to different places I never knew by myself. Using trains, cabs and buses. Getting lost each time. It was interesting. I had nowhere to go, no destination to reach. I was just walking and seeing different places for no purpose at all.
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n g i s e D c i h p Gra It was now, that I decided to pursue Graphic Design. It was my friends who found out my interest and my parents who forced me into doing what I loved to do. I didn’t have a choice as I hated everything I studied prior to it. To people who say, this isn’t a real job. It isn’t.. Graphic Design is more than that, it’s a lifestyle. It is everything I see. My life has changed completely since I got into this. The way I see myself and the things I do, have changed. From the countless restaurants I visit just for a glance at the menu cards, (I don’t even care about food.) or to look at their interiors. I search for inspiration in everything. Fear is the worst, overcoming them has always got the best moments in my life. I learnt to be myself. Getting into Graphic Design gave me the confidence and hope that I was good at something. I wasn’t just anybody. I had a purpose. I am naturally competitive but I try not to be. I have learnt not to focus on where I want to go, but enjoy doing what I do. I focus on trying to enjoy the present, because the future is not in my control. I can’t make everyone like what I do. I can’t make people like me. But I can enjoy being myself. Graphic Design lets me be myself. I visualize what goes inside my head. I am able to depict a story with my thoughts through design.
calendar Concept This was done in my first semester of Raffles. We had to make a sock creature for kids and make a story around that creature. So what I ended up doing was a ghost named Gasper. The basic story surrounding the ghost was that, no one ever found him scary. People used to laugh at him and one day he farts (Climax), just before he left all disappointed. But he looks back and all the people start to run away. From then, he farted everyone away and was feared by all. Inspiration The only reason I ended up doing this was because I was simply trying to be different. I had just moved to India and all I could see was colors. It was very lively, which for some reason inspired me to do the exact opposite. I used no colors and made it dark. (Yes, it was a strange way to come up with it)
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Inspiration dada
Concepts like Dadaism inspire me a lot. I don’t like the work they produce, but I love the idea and intent behind it, which is that Art has no boundaries. This very concept has changed my design completely. It has given me different ways to grab people’s attention, by bending and breaking the rules. It could be whatever you wanted it to be. The Dada Manifesto inspired me.
David Carson
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I love David Carson for a similar reason. Many may hate his work, but he doesn’t let it bother him. He has his target audience and he knows what they want. He doesn’t let everyone’s opinions bother him. It is the idea behind his work and concepts that inspire me. They are random and sometimes have absolutely no reason but it comes from within.
Inspiration Swiss Style Typography I love publication and typography and Swiss design is very inspiring. While I love chaos, I also enjoy perfection. Swiss Design is modern and it emphasizes on neatness, eye friendliness, readability and objectivity. It is very simple yet distinct which is what catches my eye.
Inspired from Dadaism, the Randomizer is for the unique and breaks the conventional rules of aesthetics. It serves the purpose of being random and abstract. It is more suited as the header. Its main appeal comes from its mechanical look and the random patterns that fall into place with it.
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an Inside look
HOW I see myself
At first I may seem rather aloof, this is simply because I am very careful about revealing too much of myself to strangers. Different people have different impressions of me at first but when they get to know me better that impression certainly changes. I first have my microscopic vision of new people I meet, trying to understand them before I can open up. Everyone has different things that drive them, for some its money for some its adventure. My ceaseless drive is to fix things. It is important for me to push myself. I am my worst critic and I look at things from a very different perspective. I don’t like being given something. I hate being lucky; hate having things be easy for me. I like things tough, I like the long route. I want the struggle, because I feel that is what makes me learn my craft.
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Part of my problem is, I fail to see the bigger picture. I focus too much on all the details, which most people don’t notice. It annoys me when people outside ‘The graphic design community’ don’t notice or appreciate the amount of work we put in, but I guess that comes in all forms of art.
FIXING THINGS
aloof
I also run into difficulty because of my tendency to complicate everything. No problem is ever simple to me. For every answer I have got a question, and making mountains out of molehills is one of my specialties with my urge to question everything. A highly developed sense of discrimination may lead me to seem hypercritical. I am usually unsatisfied with my work as I continue to analyze it, in hope to finding a way to make them better. At times my finely tuned sensibilities are what ruins my mood and annoys me, for they give me a heightened awareness of how small I am and how much I need to learn and perfect.
Denial
I tend to have difficulty getting in touch with my deeper feelings and self, because my mechanism of denial is very firmly set in. Whether it is a bad situation, I force my head to believe everything is fine and calm, trying to solve and fix the puzzle. This helps me a lot in my work as I don’t freeze and panic in stressful situations, but my mind simply denies it and I just move on.
i analyze
disciplin
I focus on mastering the smaller details, as if this keeps me safe from the larger chaos of a random world. I am often a victim of a deadening routine, duty, discipline and a self-created regimented routine. I accept a lesser role than I deserve because I feel it is safer to remain as underlying than reach out for power and risk failing. I do this simply because, I cannot see myself fail or let anyone down. If I have a job, I want people to know and be assured that it will be done. It’s simpler to follow the rules and deal with black and white. I often feel overlooked and undervalued and that is something I accept to begin with because it’s less challenging than feeling victimized by others. I see myself as the ‘other’, the one slighted, passed over, unseen and taken advantage of. On its deepest level, my turned off attitude is the fear of rejection. Yet I tend to bring on that very rejection. I often feel powerless as I avoid it and become more critical. To me the only way of overcoming the fear of rejection is by pushing myself and improving, even though I may actually be good enough for the job or whatever it maybe. I feel superior, yet inferior and in this negative cycle, I drive myself away from people.
OVERLOOKED 39
DIFFERENT Yet shining through everything is the fact that I have this natural personality that always gets attention, whether it be by my strange behavior or my natural goofy and clumsy nature. This personality used to bother me; no one ever wants to be the guy that people laughed at. But with time I have learned the art of taking a joke and not caring too much of what people thought of me. I would like to say I am kind and very loyal to my friends, they certainly feel that. (I think) I find it hard to relax and hate small talks or be gregarious with strangers. But I am good at maintaining old friendships. I pay more attention in knowing the friends I have, than making new ones. I am far more comfortable in one on one encounter than a crowd. I like it when I can offer my insights and opinions to the different things I know, with my different perspectives and careful attention to detail that I don’t get to show in a group.
I don’t see myself being different. I am just like everyone else. I am simply brave enough to be myself and not conform to the trends that everyone follows. I am strange I am unusual... And I am myself