The act of creating a card reminds me why I like being a graphic designer so much. The card making process has evolved (or degenerated, depending on how you perceive it) from a handmade process to an entirely digital enterprise. Due to the crazy life I lead, I allow myself no more than 30 minutes to create one. Its like speedy-dating Hallmark style.

This is a little card I created for the wonderful Jasia Reichardt and Nick Wadley (whom I met through their Themerson archive) for the wonderful lunch they had for us in January 2011. Its called Red as Remembered.

Kitchen door, 12 Belsize Park Gardens

Fridge door, 30 Overstone Road

Chilli powder from my sister in Chennai, India

Chinese New Year

Will Self, Dr Mukti book jacket

My wedding sari

This is the final brief of their second year and it ends in a very different sort of ‘Work in Progress’ show. The show (which is actually a non-show) will be a sale of items produced for the brief and sold in a pop-up shop space on Clerkenwell Road – the proceeds of which will go towards their final degree show next year. We have been intentional in not having a usual kind of London work-in-progress show where work is sanitised and glorified, and taken out of its actual context. Instead, the intention is to engage with the audience that London as a city provides – the passers-by and specifically non-designers.

I enjoyed very aspect of the making process of this brief.  The research (happily conducted off the books in my library), the writing, the editing (thanks to David Preston and Rebecca Ross who provided useful and clear critique), the design and final production.

The final 24-page booklet contained the brief, timetable but also important and essential readings. It was produced using 80gsm copier paper, laser printed masters, an ancient protesting photocopier, and rubber bands. As this is a brief about designers as producers, I chose typefaces designed by people rather than corporations. I used Archer designed by Jesse Ragan, Tobias Frere-Jones and Jonathan Hoefler for the body text and Leyton, a chunky yet astonishingly readable typeface designed by Ian Moore for the titles.

I was keen to make the booklet as sustainable as possible – working with the recycled copier paper that was available in college and simple rubber bands from Rymans (easier to recycle than staples). Rebecca had the idea to use coloured paper to separate the content – so the yellow part is the brief, and the readings are printed on white paper. On the day of production, I must confess that I struggle not to over design the booklet but to produce it with the materials available – even if they were a strange yellow and an almost-lilac paper and the photocopier toner was exhausted and weary.

Over the weekend I collated each of the 120 copies (1 for each of the tutors and students taking part in the brief), trimmed and cut them by hand. A mad labour of love (resulting in severe tendonitis!) that was intended to convey to students that this was a physical brief rather than an impersonal pdf document, and that tutors do practice what they preach! On the day of the briefing, each of the 7 tutors personalised copies for the students using a simple label space on the cover.

Dear Rathna,
Could you please remind me of why exactly I need to have a personal web page?
Thank you.
Best,
Rebecca

This wasn’t just a random email. It comes from conversations that Rebecca and I have often – about the tension and nature of our practice, of being both designers and tutors. We also strongly encourage our students to have their work websites up and online by the end of their second year. Rebecca’s email was a reminder to myself about the nature of what I do, and the purpose of this site. Here’s what I said, in response:

Dear Rebecca,
I think its important to maintain an archive of our practice, our work. You and I have a similar approach to our practice. We have intense journeys where we dig deep, and travel far. And then move on to something else. It is important to maintain a log of this journey, and outcomes, if any. This provides reflection. Helps memory. Threads the many journeys together. For me, ‘making’ is an important aspect of my work and practice. The site helps retain a sense of that – that it is not all about thinking and contemplation, but also about doing.
A personal web page is not a broadcast. Its a place of work. For designers who are tutors, like we are, the site helps us commit to our selves and our practice.
Best,
Rathna

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Here’s a teaching experiment: Put a group of well-behaved, thoughtful students in a room, and ask them to take a decision. No decisions will be immediately taken. An enjoyable conversation will be had but the focus will be on the space between each other; on engagement rather than on decision-making. Frustrating for some, lifeblood for others.

Print Matters began as a meeting space for second and third year BA students who were familiar with print, and had a special interest in printed matters and the act of publication. We were interested, as Herbert Spencer suggested, in the purpose of printed matters (whether words or pictures) to spark off ideas and activities.

At the outset, before we met, I hoped that some of the concepts we would explore included narrative, documentation, publicity, failure and mistakes, and spontaneous and peripatetic publications… We would experiment and engage with content, craft and sustainable production. I had no real structure or plan as to how we would go about this. Rather, I hoped this would evolve naturally from the group. For me, as this was not a formal academic curricular activity, it was important that it form its own shape and boundaries based on the people in the group.

We had our first meeting in the Letterpress Workshop. At that time, it seemed crucial to be where a part of ‘making’ was situated on our course. The interest group had no identity as yet – having a place of ‘making’ as a meeting point would give us a small sense of structure and belonging. As we gained confidence, Print Matters appropriated different spaces around the college depending on the nature of our activity – computer room, common room, design studio, library, café…

Attendance sheet from the first meeting

Early on, as a group, we made a few decisions. Print Matters was not about a print fetish or making beautiful things. We thought this seemed crass and unseemly given the recession, sustainability issues, and reasoned criticisms levelled at contemporary publications. We discussed the nature of print in relation to ongoing technological developments – the mass digitizing of books by Google, the birth of the tablet (in particular the iPad), and the rise of risograph printing in London. All of this would provide fodder for our discussions and impetus for future publications.

Our work, we decided, needed to be linked to the course – we spoke of providing some ‘physical evidence’ of our community, BA Graphic Design. This was important, as the size of the group was small (16 students in all) when compared to the number of students on the course. It was essential that our making and our activity extend beyond our own selves to engage and involve our community.

Email communication with Estates about the placement of posters

At the end of that first meeting, we came away with two aims. One practical, and the other exploratory: to provide publicity for the weekly Wednesday lectures, and to give us the chance of a journey, to find our own path (or put another way: to look for questions first, before we provided answers). We put our names to a manifesto.

Poster for a talk by Ken Hollings. Designed by Ed Cornish using Stickies.

In an age of instant gratification, this manifesto is deeply old fashioned. As a result, this has been an arduous journey, and the manifesto has caused us all sorts of trouble on the way.

We had casualties on the way. Some students dropped out because they had other priorities, others were unable to commit to the Interest Group and manage course work, and for some who had committed to a peripatetic path there was realization that they required more structure.

This has brought up several questions – What is the purpose of a special interest group on a BA course? Is it possible to have students learn and engage with facilitation rather than directive teaching? Is consideration a luxurious activity? Is print primarily evidence of doing? Do designers need to be respectful, thoughtful human beings? Is collaboration an important aspect of design?

Some of these answers are found between the lines in these pages.

Publicity for a talk by David Preston. Designed by Nia Murphy using a rubber stamp.

Today, as we put together this publication, we appear to have slowly but naturally found our path. With three publications in the offing, including a collaboration with AND Publishing on a publication related to Google Books, we have been strangely busy. Looking back at the Posters for Talks, I realize that we have been quietly but effectively producing in the background. Perhaps you’ve noticed us…

Publicity for a talk by Paul Rennie. Designed by Boya Latumahina and Magdalena Sobczynska as a postcard printed by letterpress.

Publicity for a talk by Larry Sider. Designed by Rose Brissenden as a tin can sound system.

The intention of this website is that it functions as a living repository of my practice. I say living, because maintaining it causes a necessary act of reflection of my process, method and output as a creative practitioner.

At the moment, my nose is pushed to the glass and my breath is fogging the pane – I am too close to reflect. I can only do. But over the next few weeks and months, the intention is to ‘upload’ all my previous work, and let the strands and nodes connect themselves, leading to a re-engagement, again and again of thought and process.

Welcome to my world.

For an informal summation of Rathna’s practice, make yourself a cup of coffee and listen to her Typeradio interviews. Or if you’d prefer to chat in person, do [Please enable javascript to see email address]get in touch.

Chennai is a city where politics is visible on the street in a variety of different marks ranging from particular semiology to giant cutouts that are nearly 100 feet tall. The cutouts are usually of film actors, many of whom use the medium of the masses (cinema) to launch their political careers.

The ad, uses very localised ‘insider’ language including graphic handpainted cutouts, Tamil folk music and dappankoothu dance to tell its story. As the creative director Senthil Kumar explains, the ad presents a short satire on the life of a giant cardboard cutout character through the course of one day in the life of the city of Chennai. It acts as a visual metaphor for the rise and fall of actor-turned-politicians.

Naaka Mukka (‘naaka’ meaning tongue, and ‘mukka’ meaning nose) is the title of the ancient Tamil folk track that was rewritten for the video, with the new lyrics sung by a folk singer Madurai Chinna Ponnu.

The video is well edited. There are several ‘gaps’ in the narrative that only someone who is familiar with Chennai and the social/cultural/political context could fill. The Times of India is a national rather than local newspaper, and by this film content and narrative shows very specific local knowledge and culture, that is both historic and contemporary. It gives the newspaper a credibility, but also signifies empathy, as if to say: Chennai, I know you, heart and soul.

The creative agency handling advertising for Fevicol (Ogilvy and Mather, my first employer) has done a brilliant (and very successful) job of introducing Fevicol as a metaphor for strength and bonding.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTav-vdht0E

The ads are memorable and humorous; Fevicol provides bonding solutions to various everyday issues and people in overflowing buses feel at ease, politicians glued to chairs,  large families are held together and wandering husbands are kept firmly in place.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq9ED66SbAY

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n6MHpKgyUM

Stefan and Franciscka Themerson were a Polish émigré couple who came to London after World War II. Their fruitful creative partnership spanned numerous media including experimental photography, photomontage, film-making, poetry, fiction, painting and design. This partnership culminated in a prolific publishing venture, the Gabberbochus Press, which they started in London in 1949.

Stefan Themerson (1910–1988) was born in Płock, Poland. While still at school he was writing poetry and had stories published. He went on to study physics as well as architecture. Drawn to the avant-garde, he became absorbed in experimental photography, photomontage, and film-making. When typographer and designer Anthony Froshaug first met Stefan Themerson, he remarked that he was impressed by the ‘universality of interests of this person’, which included in-depth studies in poetry, science, music, invention, politics and painting.

Franciszka Weinles (1907–1988) was born in Warsaw. The daughter of a well-known painter, Jakub Weinles and a pianist, Łucja Kaufman, she took to the arts as a young child, and studied music at the Warsaw Academy of Music, and then painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. While there, she met Stefan Themerson in 1929. It was the start of a partnership that would span 59 years. The couple married in 1931.

The Themersons’ first collaboration was Apteka [Pharmacy] (1930), an experimental film. Between 1930 and 1937 they produced four more films and played a seminal role in the development of avant-garde cinema in pre–war Poland. They also collaborated on a number of children’s books, written by Stefan and illustrated by Franciszka.

Cover of f.a., for the Polish film-makers’ co-operative SAF

The Themersons’ first independent foray into publishing was the journal f.a. [Art Film] for the film-makers’ co-operative SAF (Spółdzielnia Autorów Filmowych) which they founded in 1935, establishing contacts with London and Paris. The journal was edited by Stefan and designed by Franciszka.

In 1938 the Themersons left Warsaw for Paris in search of a wider artistic environment. Franciszka was illustrating children’s books, while Stefan edited a children’s newspaper supplement and wrote poems. When World War II broke out, the Themersons volunteered for war service. Stefan joined the army and Franciszka became a cartographer for the Polish Government-in-Exile. After two years of separation, they were reunited in London in 1942, and made two more films. Six years later, they founded the Gaberbocchus Press.

In 1954, they became British citizens. Stefan rejected any notion of ‘exile’ and spoke of his cultural heritage as the world at large. This lack of nostalgia, coupled with a sense of detachment and the Themersons’ policy of publishing writers on the basis of their work rather than their heritage typify what differentiated Gaberbocchus from other small émigré publishers of the time.

Writers are never, writers are nowhere in exile, for they carry within themselves their own kingdom, or republic, or city of refuge, or whatever it is that they carry within themselves. And at the same time, every writer, ever, everywhere is in exile, because he is squeezed out from the kingdom, or republic, or city, or whatever it is that squeezes itself dry. – Stefan Themerson, 1946

Stefan counted among his friends the writers, artists, scientists and philosophers they had come to know in Warsaw, Paris and London. Of these, Kurt Schwitters and Bertrand Russell had a significant influence on his work and philosophy. Stefan’s first book published in English, Bayamus and the Theatre of Semantic Poetry: a novel (1949) lays out the meanings and strategies of his semantic poetry. He wrote eight novels, philosophical and critical essays, poems, a short play, more stories for children and an opera. As a painter, Franciszka had important solo exhibitions throughout England and Europe, and participated in many group exhibitions. She evolved a style of figurative painting, full of drawing, that she called ‘bi-abstract’ and that one critic described as ‘modern cave painting’. Her prolific, fluent drawing ranges from the lyrical to the grotesque. A brilliant illustrator, she also designed for the theatre.

The Gaberbocchus Press
The Themersons founded the Gaberbocchus Press in 1948, registering it as a limited company and issuing 1,000 shares worth £1 each. The name ‘Gaberbocchus’ was borrowed from a Latinisation of Lewis Carroll’s poem ‘Jabberwocky’ (devised by Carroll’s clergyman-uncle). The Gaberbocchus logo is a drawing of a literate, amicable dragon often found reclining and enjoying a book. Franciszka re-invented the dragon many times over the years.

Franciszka Themerson reinvented Gaberocchus’ literate amicable dragon many times over the years

Publishing took the place of film-making in the Themersons’ minds and creative lives. The press enabled them to stay independent; to remain in touch with Europe, introducing the work of important European writers and artists to a British audience; and finally, to publish their own experimental work in whatever form they chose. When asked by a journalist as to how many copies of books they expected to sell, Themerson said: ‘I want this book to exist as a document so that someone can have access to it… some day.’

In the 31 years of its existence, Gaberbocchus Press published 60 titles. Among them were first English editions of such European writers as Christian-Dietrich Grabbe, Raoul Hausmann, Alfred Jarry, Pol-Dives, Raymond Queneau, Kurt Schwitters, and Anatol Stern. Gaberbocchus authors also included Bertrand Russell, Hugo Manning, Oswell Blakeston and Stevie Smith.

The editing, design, and paste-up were done in-house by the Themersons. Two other people were intimately involved with the press: Barbara Wright, translating texts from the French, and the painter, Gwen Barnard. For reasons of time, energy and finance by 1979 the Press was no longer truly viable, and Gaberbocchus was taken over by the Dutch publisher, Jaco Groot, whose company, De Harmonie, maintains a caretaking role.

The press also functioned as an important meeting place for those interested in art and science. The Themersons ran the Gaberbocchus Common Room from 1957 to 1959 in the basement of their office in Formosa Street. The members, 149 members in all, met informally on a weekly basis, paying a subscription of 10 shillings. 82 events – lectures, discussions, plays, poetry readings and music recitals – were organised during the two years that the Common Room was active.

Invitation to an event at the Common Room

A Gaberbocchus book
‘Book design,’ Hugh Williamson wrote, ‘tends to be at its best when carried out by a single designer, who can prepare a coherent plan for every stage of the book’s production.’ The unique look and feel of Gaberbocchus books was largely due to the Themersons’ involvement in the design and production. Gaberbocchus titles show thought, deliberation and planning.

Stefan Themerson described their approach: ‘When we design a book what we aim at is a best-looker not a best-seller. You may think it odd, but that is sound economic policy for a publisher of our size.’ The form of each book – achieved by their choice of typography, style of imagery, and format – was the result of their sympathetic and original interpretation of the book’s meaning.

The Themersons’ approach to the book as a material object to be touched and handled as well as read is evident in their very first publications, Jankel Adler: an artist seen from one of many possible angles (1948) and The Eagle & the Fox & the Fox & the Eagle (1949). They were printed on mould-made deckle-edged paper using a hand press, and bound with special cloth. As Nick Wadley noted, ‘manual assembly, not only of things but of the means to assemble things, was a natural activity to both of them’.

Page from Stefan Themerson’s Kurt Schwitters in England: 1940-1948 (1958)

While the Themersons also made use of commercial production processes – subcontracting the typesetting, printing and binding – their approach to book design combined something of the trade book designer with something of the artist. Their artistic approach is evident in their preferences for associative aspects of typography, integrated complex layouts that treat the page as a canvas, and the strong use of colour in their books. For the Themersons, the book was another medium for their creative expression.

Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi (1951). First English translation and preface by Barbara Wright, with drawings by Franciszka Themerson

Franciszka was Gaberbocchus’ primary illustrator. While most 0f the illustrations were drawings, other styles used in Gaberbocchus books include photographs, photomontages, monoprints, collages, diagrams, photograms, engravings, reproductions of a variety of material including illustrations on magic lantern slides, collages created using Victorian steel engravings, and gravure illustrations.

The Themersons had a deep interest in typography and typographic layout. In his writings on the placement of printed words on the page, Stefan Themerson noted:
A page of a book is like a human face. Look at a page by Hemingway and compare it with Sterne and Marcel Proust. They are different typographical beings. But force upon them those ragged edges, and the influence of the author’s style on the physical aspect of the page, their typographical physiognomy will disappear. No, unjustified setting is a sort of gleichschaltung [enforced conformity] through diversity, a very phoney diversity. Produced methodically by chance. For the comfort of the keyboard, and not for the comfort of the eye.

Aesop’s The Eagle and the Fox, the Fox and the Eagle (1949) shows the Themersons’ deep interest in typography and typographic layout

For him, an unjustified or ragged-edged setting was more appropriate in the setting of poetry. Themerson’s meaning of unjustified is that words in the line have fixed spacing and are not adjusted. Internal vertical justification, or IVJ, was the organization of words on a page in a more planar, less linear way. IVJ started with Themerson’s invention of semantic poetry, and was actually borne from his attempt as a writer and poet to strip language down to its ‘true reality’.

The Good Citizen’s Alphabet (1953), one of the Gaberbocchus books featured that year in the National Book League British Book Production exhibition.

Franciszka’s caricatures for Russell’s The Good Citizen’s Alphabet (1953) are a good example of the use of imagery in Gaberbocchus books. The visual, though related to the text, does not directly illustrate it but rather adds another dimension to the book. The Good Citizen’s Alphabet (1953) was one of the Gaberbocchus books that were featured in the National Book League British Book Production exhibition in 1953. The book employs a sophisticated multi-coloured palette with as many as ten different colours.

Although the design of Gaberbocchus books reveals an understanding of both structural and associative possibilities of typography, the Themersons were more clearly interested in the latter. Their skill is most evident in display composition (particularly book jackets and title pages), and in illustrated titles.

Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style (1958)

When compared to the ‘grey’ design and printing of numerous mainstream titles of the 1960s and 1970s, the Gaberbocchus output is both inventive and refreshing. Their work is best summed up in a review written by the designer Ruari McLean:
Originality of text can be greatly enhanced by originality of decoration, illustration, even of materials. Most English book designers are so paralysed by the obligations of good taste and the fear of looking like Americans (or, alternatively, of not looking like Americans) that they hardly ever take a risk. Gaberbocchus Press … however, is always taking outrageous risks; whatever the financial results, the aesthetic results are wildly stimulating and satisfactory.

Images produced by the kind permission of the Themerson Archive. This article first appeared in the St Bride Library journal, Ultrabold, Summer 2009.

The postman brought a delivery from Tara Books, India yesterday. This is a book that Sirish Rao and I have worked on. The project was introduced to me by Tara’s editor V Geetha and has been incubating in our collective minds for a long time. The available English translation felt too big and complex to illustrate and design, and I felt a bit overwhelmed by it. The project finally fell into place when Sirish came up with a highly visual translation of the original author Morgernstern’s text. My job was to typographically ‘illustrate’ the text and design the book.

I enjoy the challenges of approaching typography as sign, mark and image. For me, this is process takes me back to the origins of language – where letters are marks and images that can be read both ‘textually’ and ‘visually’.  The word is a mark on a page. At very first glance, the word is first and foremost an image.

As the blurb on the book reads: First published in 1905, German poet Christian Morgernstern’s Im Reich der Interpunktionen (In the Land of Punctuation) is a brilliant comic poem on language. Morgernstern called it a linguistic caprice; and it is a fun romp, populated by punctuation marks as characters with their own agendas … and yet the political undertones are unmistakable, suggesting systems of control that go beyond language.

A detail from a spread

An excerpt from an email to publisher Gita Wolf explains part of my process: I’ve taken a modernist (some may say militaristic approach) to the design. What I liked most about Sirish’s text was the visual but also staccato nature of the text. I’ve tried to maintain this by giving a very left-right, turn page, left-right, turn page rhythm to the book.
Other thoughts: Besides the obvious political nature of the text, I’ve envisioned this as a modern, contemporary conflict with visual allusions technology, machinery, war…Influences have been, amongst other things, the structures and rigour of letterpress and metal type, Russian posters of the 1920s and 1930s, the work of Werkman and modernists such as Weingart.
The look right now is flat and graphic – but this is the artwork. I envision the printed version as having uneven texture. Also, as with letterpress, if the black is printed first and the red after, then both layers should be visible… we can experiment.

The book is available here and was featured in Wallpaper magazine’s Reborn in India issue

View from the CCTV camera

The final artwork was a series of 4 A0 posters that ‘visualised’ Ken’s text (an essay he had written for the Embedded Art catalogue) as a network of connections. It also worked as a reflection of Ken’s process and essence as a writer, connecting what may seem like random “historical events, cultural allusions and epistemological shifts” in an impressive complete story with fascinating insight. The artwork is the result of a true and highly enjoyable collaboration, moving back and forth between Ken and myself. Ken covers the one, two, three, four, five stage process in detail.

Ken watching the artwork while being watched

Making the connections

Its all about the network

Photography by Ken Hollings.

Slides from Short run, an illustrated talk

The talk focused on important aspects of little press publishing such as the publisher’s direct involvement in the design and production of their books. The design approach of a little press was largely dependent on the publisher’s available resources and connections that contributed to the unique identity of the imprints.

Each of the five little presses featured in this exhibition had a unique approach to publishing and was run in a distinct, individual manner based on the publisher’s personality and agenda. The exhibition showcased how this was reflected in the design and production of the books they published.

The exhibition featured a variety of rarely seen artefacts from private archives and collections. First editions, photographs, artwork, correspondence, layout sketches and illustrations allowed the viewer to gain a true understanding of the nature of book design and production of little presses in this post-WW2 period.

I ran this as an introduction brief for my third year students on the BA @ CSM. It was a short one-week brief and a simple, effective way to get students comfortable with bringing their own perspectives to their practice.

Here are three very different results:

Ben Lee

Louise Naunton Morgan

Guglielmo Rossi

A6 invitation

These are books that, as Gita Wolf, Tara’s publisher puts it, ‘refashion traditional artisanal skills into fine contemporary bookmaking’.

Designing the poster and flyer for the exhibition was fun. Keeping in mind the spirit of Tara’s initiative, the publicity material was entirely (and painstakingly) printed by hand in India on handmade paper. The peacock on the poster is an image by the Gond artist Ram Singh Urveti from the book The Night Life of Trees.

A3 poster

Often, due to shortage of time & budget, I had to be creative with low-res options available via online image searches or find images in my personal photo library that would suit. These are some favourites.

14 Non-Latin Typefaces was a series of posters created to celebrate a bipartite exhibition and two-day conference on ‘Non-Latin Typeface Design’, jointly hosted by St Bride Library, London and the Department of Typography, University of Reading.

I worked on the project with the wonderful, hugely experienced typeface designer Fiona Ross. These typefaces were produced for Linotype in the UK, by teams headed by Walter Tracy in the 1970s and Fiona Ross in the 1980s. It is incredible to imagine that the beautiful graphic forms and non-latin characters you see below were each created and drawn by hand.

Script: Arabic; typeface: Linotype Yakout Bold

Script: Arabic; typeface: Linotype Qadi

Script: Arabic/Farsi; typeface: Linotype Nazanin Bold

On the posters, we featured the same character ‘ka’ (often the first consonant in non-Latin languages) in a white box on the top left corner. This, along with the script and typeface titles on the top right corner provided an index that grouped the 14 posters together. The main character showcased on the poster was chosen both for its characteristic as well as its representative shape. I chose bright, bold colours to suggest the flavour and vibrancy of these scripts.

The posters were printed by silkscreen on black handmade paper by Arumugam and his team at AMM Screens in Chennai, India.

Script: Arabic; typeface: Linotype Maged

Script: Bengali; typeface: Linotype Bengali Bold

Script: Devanagari; typeface: Linotype Rohini Bold

Script: Gujarati; typeface: Linotype Gujarati Bold

Script: Gurmukhi; typeface: Linotype Gurmukhi Bold

Script: Kannada; typeface: Linotype Kesari Bold

Script: Malayalam; typeface: Linotype Manorama Bold

Script: Sinhala; typeface: Linotype Araliya Bold

Script: Tamil; typeface: Linotype Samanti Bold

Script: Telugu; typeface: Linotype Tamara Bold

Script: Thai; typeface: Linotype Sukothai Bold

You can read Fiona’s paper on Non-Latin Typedesign at Linotype and a review of the exhibition by Eye magazine. You can also buy a copy of the exhibition catalogue from St Bride Library.

It’s not often that one gets a chance to discuss exciting and unusual projects created for rural communities in India in a top British design magazine. Many thanks to editor John Walter and writer Steve Hare for putting together a fine piece. Read an excerpt of the article ‘Roadshows and rickshaws’ and buy a copy of eye no 64.

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Most marriages in South India are arranged and while ‘love’ marriages do happen, it is not the encouraged norm.  It is an accepted fact for the most part that a boy or girl’s parents will play an important role in the picking of their marriage partner. A marriage in South India is not just the sealing of a bond between two people but a merging of two families. The merger is based on the compatibility of the couple to some extent but important criteria include religion, caste, class, social status and wealth.

Marriage in India is viewed as the culmination of one’s life and great preparations go into making this a grand and memorable social event. It is also a matter of social standing – the grander the wedding, the greater the stature. It is no surprise then that every aspect of an Indian marriage is carefully thought out and planned for months, sometimes years in advance by the families involved. This includes the design of the wedding invitation.

The tradition of wedding invitations
In pre-modern India there was no need for wedding invitations. Marriages often took place within families with cousins marrying each other or within small villages and towns where everyone knew each other. There was no need to inform anyone because everyone already knew of the event.  The parents of the bride and groom would simply visit their extended family and friends and family in their homes as a courtesy to tell them the happy news. This served as the invitation.

With economic progress, people began to move away from their ancestral homes into larger cities and things changed. The family unit was no longer contained within the village but was spread out across the country making oral invitations no longer feasible. This coupled with the spread of printing in India in the early 20^th century gave rise to these oral announcements being realised in print.

The traditional South Indian wedding invitation is not a card but a printed leaflet that borrows its form from the earlier tradition of oral announcement and from the form of a hand written letter.

The template of a traditional South Indian invitation

The invitation follows a traditional template and is always enclosed within a large decorative border. It always begins with an incantation to the family’s ancestral god at the top of the invite and is followed by clip art images of five different Hindu gods. The main content of the invitation is worded like a letter and informs the recipient of a marriage between two families.

This is followed by the bride’s and groom’s educational and professional qualifications as well as their family lineage and town. All these details are considered important as it establishes family status and lineage. It also links the past (who the bride and groom are, and where they are from) with the future of the couple. The information about the groom always appears on the left, centred and enclosed within a box while the bride’s details appear similarly in a box on the right. Following this sense of alignment, based on who the invite is from (usually the bride’s or groom’s father), the name of the addressee is placed either to the right or the left.

In general, great prominence is given to the family and often the names of various family members (uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters and cousins) are mentioned beneath the main text as well-wishers of the occasion. While this is portrayed as a visible indication of the family’s support and blessing of the union, it also works like a family tree, outlining lineage for the recipient of the invitation. The details of the actual event such as time, place and date are delegated to the base of the invite and are often in smaller type size. This hierarchy of information is telling because it clearly gives the family prominence over the details of the wedding event.

Traditional invitations are always printed on double-sided glossy art paper, yellow on one side, and pink on the reverse. The main text and images are always printed in dark green and red on the yellow side. Yellow and red in particular are considered to be auspicious colours in the Hindu tradition.  Traditionally, the announcements are in the vernacular (in Tamil) and carry very little English text.  However, nowadays it is increasingly common practice to have the English version of the invitation printed on the reverse (pink) side of the paper.

Traditionally, these announcements were letter-pressed though they are now also printed by mini-offset or screen-printed. The letterpress process could be partly the reason why the invites often have many different combinations of type. Letterpress jobbing printers very rarely had one complete set of text typefaces, and if they did it was usually Helvetica or Arial. Therefore, to set an invitation with different levels of hierarchy, they often resorted to using display type. A wedding stationery printer in Chennai gave me another reason for this multi-various type palette. Vernacular typefaces, he said (and I paraphrase here) are by the nature of their shape, decorative and script-like. In comparison, Latin typefaces appear ‘austere’ to the Indian eye and therefore require ‘creative mixing’ to match the ornamental feel of vernacular typefaces. Sometimes this creative mixing is done with such enthusiasm that it can involve as many as seven different typefaces in a single invitation.

A Tamil wedding invite which uses seven different typefaces

Contemporary Wedding Invitations
While traditional invitations are still common practice in Tamil Nadu, Hindu families in larger towns and cities go for a more contemporary format. The modern Indian wedding invitation is a riot of colour, typography and image. The invitation, seen as the first intimation of the wedding ceremony carries the responsibility of reflecting the family’s status in society as well as the grandness of the occasion. Invitations (based on the grandness of the wedding and the resources of the bride’s father) take three main forms. The simple card (very rarely used), the folded card (most popular) and ‘the book invitation’.  I also looked at envelopes. I was curious to find out a few things.

Which typefaces were most popular?

Did religion made a difference in typographic choice and final form? For example, were the Christians more for scripted faces than the Hindus? Did the Muslims prefer sans serif to serifs? Were the Hindus more ostentatious than the Parsis?

And finally, did the rich have less taste than the poor?

I proceeded to do a little research on this using my collection as a sample. 

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Which typefaces were most popular?
The typefaces that find most favour for Indian wedding invites are a mixture of serifs, san serifs and script typefaces. They are, in alphabetical order:  Amazone,  Arial (Regular and Italic),  Century School Book,  Dauphin, Edwardian Script ITC,  Georgia (Regular and Italic),  Helvetica (Regular and Italic), Kaufmann,  Murray Hill, Nuptial BT, Park Avenue, Poetica Chancery, Pristina, Shelley Allegro, Verdana, Vivaldi, and Zapf Chancery.

Did religion made a difference in typographic choice and final form?
Across all religions and class, envelopes seem to work as brief announcements of the event.

The envelope carrying the wedding invitation holds key information

The recipient at single glance is informed of the event (wedding, reception etc.). This is almost usually in Zapf Chancery. They are also informed of who is marrying whom, of the date of the wedding and whom the invitation is from. Hindu cards often carry the address of the invitee as well so the recipient can send a telegram wishing the couple, which is still common practice in many parts of India. In the case of Hindu invitations, the envelope most often carries a clipart image of the Hindu God Ganesha, who is seen to be the remover of all obstacles.

The envelope for a Tamil wedding

Simple wedding cards
Simple wedding cards were rare to find. In a selection of over 300 samples, there were only four simple card invitations.  One was a Christian invite, one a Parsi invite and the other two were Hindu invitations. In general, with both simple and folded cards, Christians and Parsis tend to be more minimalist in their type selection. They rarely go for more than one typeface and the type is almost always in gold on a cream background. If two typefaces are used, one is a script face such as Shelley Allegro. This is used to highlight the names of the parents and the bride and groom. The second typeface is a serif such as Garamond or Georgia for the main body text. There is an European influence evident in these invites.

An invitation to a Christian wedding

A Parsi wedding invitation

It is difficult to draw similar parallels with Hindu invites other than the prominence given to the names of the parents and the bride and groom, and the preferred colour for type being red or maroon. This colour preference probably derives from the fact that red or maroon are the colours of the ‘sindhoor’ or the mark that is placed on a bride’s forehead indicating that she is married. Hindu invites also seem to go for serifs or san serifs based on personal preference more than anything else.

A Hindu wedding invite using the classic palette and printed on handmade paper

The most popular format for Hindu wedding invitations is the folded card. In Chennai, capital city of Tamil Nadu, there are numerous speciality-wedding invitations shops that have pre-designed folded cards for parents to choose from. Only on rare occasions (and with more affluent families) are the invitations custom-made. Numerous samples of invites (with their corresponding envelopes) are pasted within large photo albums and displayed on counters or exhibited individually on the walls. There are helpful assistants to guide parents in their selection. The samples are helpfully categorised by religion: Sikh cards, Muslim cards, Christian cards, Hindu cards, and Interfaith cards.

They are also categorised by levels of grandeur (plain wedding cards, designer wedding cards, scroll invites, and cards with jewels). None of the invitations contain any typography and the first choice of design is based on paper, image and colour. The front of a folded card also never carries any text (though I did find a marvellous exception to the rule).

A Hindu wedding envelope

Grand designs using plenty of gold or silver are usually popular. With Hindu invitations a clipart image of Lord Ganesha is common. Only after the choice of the card is made does type come into the picture and even then it is of secondary importance. Parents are more concerned with the content than the typography and the choice is often one recommended by the salesman behind the counter. With Hindu invitations in South India, three typefaces win hands down – Zapf Chancery and Arial Italic or Helvetica Italic.  Zapf Chancery is used for the main body of the invite. Arial Italic or Helvetica Italic is used for more factual information such as lineage, address, profession, educational qualifications. The type again usually appears in maroon or red.

On the insides of the cards, the text is always centred, never in capitals and never in black, which is considered an inauspicious colour; this applies to all cards whether grand or simple, from any religion. As with single card invites, the invitee’s names and the names of the couple as with the single card invites are given most prominence in the card. The main difference between the single card invites and the folded invites is that the folded invites often carry the programme of the wedding on the left side of the card. Keeping in mind that weddings are events which affirm one’s social standing in the community, as many details about the wedding are mentioned even down to the orchestra that has been hired to play at the event.

After the choice of type has being made, the cards then go through a swift proofing session (usually on the very next day) and are screen printed with the approved text. The turnaround time for these invites is usually 48 hours. So if you’re having a shotgun wedding in India, you’d still probably be able to get the invites out in time!

Do the rich have less taste than the poor?
With affluent families, ceremonies for Indian weddings can often stretch over 4-5 days and invitations can often be confused with books as each ceremony demands its own invite.

One example of a ‘book invitation’

The invitations are grouped, sized to work as a set and encased in a grand folder. This style of invitation probably provides great relief to parents as all family members can be appeased by the placement of their names on at least one of the many invitation cards. The design and typography of these invitations seems to have no limits as each invite tries to outdo the last.

It is in these custom-made invites that the Indian love of technology comes through. Invites are die-cut, handmade, gold foiled to make them appear as grand as possible.

Sometimes even semi-precious stones and miniature Hindu gods are stuck onto the invites.

The biggest difference between South Indian wedding invitations and Western wedding cards is the focus. While western invites go for the more minimalist, simple and elegant look, Indian invites focus on imbuing the card with the splendour and grandeur of the occasion. We all know what ‘happily ever after’ means in the Western context. But what does ‘happily ever after’ mean in the context of a South Indian arranged marriage? I suspect it is Zapf Chancery in bright, shiny gold!

I thoroughly enjoyed my time working with Pushkin on their Classic series, and on their first titles in the Modern series. Melissa played a key editorial and creative role and was a hands-on publisher. In our first design conversation, she spoke of Pushkin’s visual identity and interest in continuing to use the typeface employed in previous titles.

The typeface used in previous Pushkin titles is a transitional serif and a masterpiece. Transitional typefaces are so-called because they bridge the gap between old-style typefaces (low contrast) and modern typefaces (high contrast). This transitional serif, Baskerville, was developed in the 18th century by John Baskerville. The typeface is said to be the culmination of a series of experiments (including paper making and ink manufacturing) by John Baskerville to improve legibility.

A print sample by Baskerville, image courtesy ILT.

One of the most beautiful alphabets in the typeface: the calligraphic capital Q.

My first step was to invest in a good quality typeface. As most graphic designers know, there are several revival versions of original metal typefaces. I narrowed my choices down to ITC New Baskerville designed by Matthew Carter and John Quaranta and a Baskerville revival by Linotype. I chose the version as digitised by Linotype which has six different weights and a reasonable but not overly emphasised contrast which made it perfect for both titling as well as long text typesetting.

I had two design responsibilities with Pushkin. The first, was to standardise the logotype and series titles. We kept the design stark and simple, focusing on the beauty of the typeface.

A detail of a book cover which shows the Pushkin and series logo

Detail of the Pushkin paper logo on the book spine

My second responsibility was for the design and production of the books which included everything from picture research for the cover to doing a final print check on site. Included below is an example of a typical Pushkin title page, and a few of the book covers from the Pushkin Modern and Paper series.

A typical Pushkin title page has a classical design

Detail, title page

Cover design for Anthology of Apparitions by Simon Liberati. The photograph of the moth is by Thomas Nützl.

Cover design for Lovers or something like it by Florian Zeller. This image shows the spine, front cover and front French flap.

Cover design for Fantastic Night and other stories by Stefan Zweig. Image of Donati’s Comet over Balliol College
by William Turner of Oxford (1789-1862) from the Bridgeman Art Library.

It was possibly my first real freelance job in Reading. I learnt a great deal from the process of working on these simple postcards which were later placed in various libraries and universities as hand-outs.

Having no ‘contacts’ or network in this new country I had chosen to call my home, I had to research and find available paper stocks and cards and find a printer who would be able to print the cards. The print run was small – just 1,000 in total – so we could not afford offset printing so I had to explore various printing options.

The first task however, was a design problem. John was keen on a contemporary yet crafts-based feel and preferred some kind of illustration or imagery rather than plain typography. He wanted to steer clear of the usual kitsch that accompanies such marketing material.

Being crap at illustration, I resolved the design problem by trolling through tons of good quality clip art online (yes, there is such a thing) and finding my final selection of possible images in the wonderful Briar Press archive (pointed out to me by fellow Reading student Ben Weiner). Here are some of those that we considered as possible images:

Rejected as it implies that the Book History Research Network is mainly about printing (which it is not)

Rejected because she looks really worried about joining the Book History Research Network

Rejected as it is too ‘Aubrey Beardsley’

Rejected for being too generic and directive (i.e. you must join the Book History Research Network!)

As it was a low-cost job, we chose to go with two-colour digital printing. Armed with Reading’s telephone directory and yellow pages, I rang around and asked for quotes. We finally settled on using a good quality printer in Caversham called Conservatree (whom I use till today and would recommend) who offered to do it at reasonable cost and was quick to respond to my query.

Front of the postcard

The entire job took 20 days from design concept to final production and delivery. I’m reasonably happy with the final product except for some horrific justified type on the back of the card. The quality of the digital printing is pretty damn good.

Back of the postcard

Importantly, I learnt some crucial lessons about freelance graphic design which are relevant no matter where you work:
1) Trust your contacts and network and ask them for recommendations. I would not have found Briar Press without Ben’s recommendation.
2) Be confident in approaching printers for quotes and samples. They are usually keen to establish a relationship and are  approachable. Go with the one who treats your job as valuable even if it is small budget.
3) Print your work to check it before it goes to final production. Test, test, test. Check, check, check. Clearly something I did not do for the back of the postcard!
4) Never underestimate the power of clip art.

Despite a police report, and a most helpful train manager, I had no luck in finding the culprit (or the battered portfolio). I spent several sleepless nights after, and would wake up in the middle of the night and open the front door imagining that some kind soul had returned it to me. I was shattered – I had no way of recovering many of the artifacts in there, lost to too many misbehaving hard drives.

As trite as it sounds, it is true – in case of my house burning down, my portfolio would have definitely have been one of my top 10 things to take with me. It’s a mystery. The case was of little value to anyone but me, but there you go. Someday I’ll do a project that imagines all the places my portfolio turned up. In the meanwhile, if you happen to find it, email me! I promise a fine reward!

The spirit of the old site is much like the present one. It offered a choice. I call my design studio Minus 9 in reference to my eyesight. Central to the concept of the site was the idea of ‘vision’ (referring both to the name of the studio as well as the vision or mission of the studio). Visitors to the site could choose ‘normal vision’ which (like the name indicates) is a more direct way of accessing the work. Or you could choose ‘m9 vision’ which was my way of looking at my work.

Front page of the site

A key aspect of the design concept and narrative of the site was the typography. Words were all blurred (as they would seem to someone with short-sight) until your mouse hovered over them, at which point, the word would come into focus.

Pop up screen for normal vision showing the various categories.
Clients interested in only a particular type of work (for example, publishing) could directly and quickly access previous projects.

A selection of work under the Corporate/Screen category.

Explanation of a branding project for the British Council.

m9 vision which organises work using ‘active’ descriptions of the design process.

Work done under the category ‘educate’

Work in the ‘illustrate’ category

Explanation of a book design project for Tara Books.

Using their own words (excerpted from emails), the concept of the exhibition was to reconstruct the personalities and individuals which had been erased or ‘flattened’ by electronic mail. Virtual Faces gave the words of the emails, a new graphic dimension. Friends were envisioned as PCO (Public Call Office) posters, postage stamps, business cards, books, and other graphic objects.

Unfortunately, due to a stolen portfolio situation, I have very little visual record left and will have to try and ferret more out when I head to the archive in India. For now, here’s one friend ‘Hitch’.

The Council was an interesting, challenging and really fun client. Due to the range of activities undertaken by the Council, each brief was unique in itself, requiring a different approach and thinking. The projects I did for them ranged from invitations to plays they were hosting to maps for their library. Due to the lost portfolio incident, I have very little of the work I did for them. Here is a leaflet used to advertise the services offered by the Culture Cafe, a forum for young people interested in the visual and performing arts to exchange ideas and share experiences.

Anything But a Grabooberry is a book of nonsense verse for children aged 4-8 years that employs typography as word and image. Written by Anushka Ravishankar, and typographically illustrated by me, the book was bravely published by Tara Books in 1998. Working on the book was my first true foray into both typography and collaboration. In the process, I fell in love with both the ability of typography to convey ideas, and with collaboration as a method of engaging with creative practice.

Anushka is one of the most inspiring and easy people to work with. The poem she wrote for her daughter Akshara became the fodder for a book enjoyed by many children.

For an outsider, it is easy to presume that all books develop in the same way – text comes first, illustration next, design and production at the end. This rarely happens with independent publishers such as Tara. In this case, Anushka gave me the text simply typed out on an A4 paper. I began to experiment with different typefaces and tried to ‘visualise’ the ideas contained in the words. Some descriptions worked better than others. Anushka and I reviewed them together and she suggested other more visual words.

During this, I tested the pages out on several friend’s kids – their reading aloud of the typographic text on the page was an invaluable input. It gave the bee many more ‘e’s, and the grabooberry more ‘ooo’s… It was important that the design rather than being intended for adults was understood by the audience of children. There was a pleasurable to-and-fro designing and editing process. As Gita Wolf, publisher at Tara Books explains, ‘We found that children enjoy figuring out words like puzzles, since they have no pre-conceptions about this. Adults are not necessarily faster at comprehending it.’

The typography in the book sets off associations in different ways: sometimes the word is a direct visual representation. For example, the word ‘cup’ looks like a cup. Other connections are indirect and lateral. A smelly sock is suggested through texture, a rocking chair is its movement, a bee creates sound, and the colour blue bubbles through water.

A simple, punchy verse that was so distinctly visual in itself seemed to ask for a simple, graphic treatment. I chose to go for a typeface with multiple weights. The only multiple weight typeface I had on my computer at the time was Arial and we certainly couldn’t afford to buy a new one so the decision was quickly made. The book needed to be low-cost – we couldn’t afford for this to be an expensive production. The book was printed on a single-offset machine in red and green. We simply worked with the restrictions we had and searched for inspiration within them.

Anything but a Grabooberry by Anuskha Ravishankar and Rathna Ramanathan was published in 1998, and reprinted in 2002 and in 2004. It won a White Ravens Special Mention in 2000 in the category of ‘World’s Best Children’s Books. The last time I checked there was only 1 copy available for sale on Amazon.