Driving up the hills on a Wednesday morning. Away from the rain, into the mist. A few minutes later, this turned to an even grey. A few tens of seconds before this photo, one could see a couple more layers into the mountains, too. Opacity changes the geography inside and out. Much to write about Jodhpur and the XR-Design typography course and the folks there. Also about feedback, answers, and taking care of machines.

Wayanad, rain, Bhaskaran Mash (MHR, Gowri Lekshmi too), Chellam under the table, R vibing to some other stuff while telling me the Manuka Condensed on screen is typically condensed, heavy dinner shenanigans, etcetera. Makeshift working from home.

My Bludit installation is misbehaving; I’ve had to manually FTP the image via CyberDuck and link to it the longwinded way to get it to show up in this post. That is not a route I want to go down again. It will take a while to set something else up and migrate content. We’ll see.

I just spent the major part of my Sunday getting Zettlr to work well as a distraction-free[1] writing interface, complete with a monospaced face and appropriate fore-ground-back-ground colours. (#000 and #8a8a8f for now. AND now I am noticing the octothorpes turning into jellyfish-blue tags.) I digress. Suffices to say working around blaming one’s tools takes way more time than coughing up 5K for that sweet single-device iA Writer license. I must say it is time well spent, except that it meant time away from my girls[2]. Conflict. I digress.

At some point in the five years (5!) spent on teaching pilgrimages[3], I realised almost all of the conceptual, nuanced typographic choices can be made with a deliberate extension of gestalt’s principles. Seen in that (to me) new light, the needless—but fun!—debate over ‘rules’ disappeared, and a demonstrable set of checks-and-balances replaced them. I felt an appropriate amount of self-pity at having taken so long to ‘see’ it. I’m trying to convince self the most appropriate penance for something of this magnitude, is to write a book about it. Considering how productive I have been with side-quests recently, it is only wise to use thisbloghere as a way to publicly commit to finishing the thing (including ink, paper, thread, staples, blades, and all) this year.

I have a rough outline in progress, as well as a few to-do checklist items. (Just making them up as I type, really. This is blog-post as performance. It is a potent mess.)

• Must be shorter than Jost Hochuli’s excellent ‘Details in Typography’. Around 50 pages. [4]
• Pages must work like slides. (Not wordy, have illustrated examples.)
• Discuss the principles in detail, referring original texts as much as possible. I have been using the Khan Academy video as a refresher for students all this while.
• Use a typographic problem to discuss a principle. This can be tricky; so not set in stone.
• Talk about lists. Talk about alignment. Talk about letterforms.
• Use Indic examples. Use bilingual examples.
• Use examples from KL11’s work. Some vulnerability there.
• Limit discussion to practise. Not a philosophy book.

Now that we have got that out of the way, here are some ‘asks’ to the 35 (R says; I say 3–5) readers of mine.

• If you have come across specifically gestalt-driven discussions of layout/typesetting problems, please let me know.
• Also tell me what you think of putting another rainforest to pulp for such a thing. Sensible?
• How are you?
• My email ID is abhijith@keyaar.in and I would love to reply to all the emails you can throw at it.

So this, is what I ‘eventually’ want to do: make books. Ink and pixels. It’s also been too long since Dekho and WID and MT.

[1]: Distraction-free implementation takes a while to get right. The right balance between focus and isolation is tricky at best. I see why iA is expensive. Safe to assume Ananthu has been a power user of Zettlr for a while, so I’m going to talk to him about this.
[2]: Chellam turned 2. R bow-tied and scarfed her. Our friendly neighbourhood-ish chicken-stall guy gave us so much extra parts the fridge is having a hard time. We believe she is famous in the town for coming along on all trips.
[3]: There is a link to some of the material at exif/teaching Justincase. ‘Infinite-Gestalt’ is what we had (unanimously in the way dictatorships are run) christened a Typography2 course in 2022.
[4]: Girish introduced us to the book. Short, to-the-point, fresh.

Links

While binge-skipping through Lincoln Lawyer behind an unmanageable large Figma file, came across this beautiful Mattiel Song. Forest has been good company. Such beauty everywhere on the internet. Here is ‘Introducing the Concept of Radical User Friendliness in Web Design.’

So… we were in Goa for a two-week workshop (R was documenting; I went along) and made some supertalented-neighbour-slash-faculty-slash-friends. Sampled all the curries at VP (practically next door) and found them all excellent etcetera. Robbed Siridao beach clean (the flat shells are otherworldly nice; we don’t know what to do with them, yet). Looked at some veryold verynice Portugese houses from the inside. And went to a total of three beaches. The sand was in the process of turning into glass (or so it felt at mid-noon). And there were lotuses sprouting from cashew nuts.

There were long walks in Fontainhas (pronounced Rajarajapuram or some such; most spellings had moved on from the spoken word counterparts) with bathes of friendly dogs on tow. We met some folks from Paldi and GN too and campus-jokes flowed. The place (Goa) was sand-into-glass hot, all the folks at R’s workshop were such sweethearts, and offered such warmth (and stuff; jackfruit, mangoes, kokum, pastries, crochet, the works). On the day the workshop got over, J gave me something to remember Kalyani by. It was a nice two weeks.

That is Siridao post our collecting ALL the fun/flat shells.

Serendipity!

Reshma is going back to Panjim (North) again in December for the Serendipity Arts Fest. She’s won the photography grant and is one of the five people exhibiting work. (It is a deeply personal project. Visit her/us!) Here is hoping for a good show! Maybe we’ll make small books to give away.

Kalyani passed away on the 10th. She was almost 11.

She had stopped eating (and drinking) three days prior, even refusing treats that Achchan had to usually feed her first thing in the morning. (She would keep writing infinity-signs around and between his legs until.) We took her to Aruma twice to get her blood tested and insulin injected and saline IV-ed. Reshma found her passed out on 9th night and we got her admitted to the pet hospital. Her glucose levels had dropped dangerously.

Kalyani was magic and grace. She gently (and sometimes peppered with a stern, loving whack) nudged me to being a better person. She loved winters, looking at the rain, and rolling around in the grass. She judged mercilessly and loved unconditionally.

The gif is from my backyard in Gurgaon, 2012. She loved the place and was too small to jump the tall walls. That did not stop her from trying once in a while, though.

The paddyfield in all its misty, blurry, newness. This is around 8–8:30 in the morning—people are already on their way to office-jobs, cows are already in their designated field-slots, etcetera. A beautiful (odd) thing about Wayanad is how cool (cold, even) the shades are while the rest of it gets superhot by 9:30–10. The lines on the road (in the first photo) are from tractors/tillers exiting the fields. The ride was uneventful; met a few regular dogs. Not Tiger. Tiger lives at the house next to the three-roads-intersection, down the hill. He’s mastered the art of sitting still outside his gate. We mistook him for a gunny bag once. He’s actively angry. The ones I met today were more shy than suspicious. The three puppies are gone. One of them had whined when Chellam gave him/her a nosing-exam last time. They’d looked well-fed so that is a relief.

The mist veils more cows—grazing between paddy-plots in the distance. You can—kind-of—see a black-and-white one to the right, facing away from the camera. Beyond that coconut-tree-line is where we live, atop a small-ish hill. A new paddy crop has come up in most of the fields, with plantain and spinach and weeds peppered in between.

The mounds of hay look like alien-movie monsters against the haze and the general people-less-ness of the field. Chellam keeps trying to find evidence of something around this particular one whenever she’s around. R thinks it must be rats. Or, less endearingly, snakes. Or both. Things are wild around these parts. (Last month we saw a bear along the road to Muthanga; it was a mostly casual encounter—for the bear. We freaked.)

Today, walking out to the butcher’s after the ride, we met so many (overwhelmingly large enough number; five) neighbours and folks we only sort-of know but everyone spoke to us as if we have been here for longer than a year.

R turned ◼︎◼︎ yesterday. (Happy birthday R!) Here is an excited-blurry longexposured picture. She’s been applying to grants and looking forward to teaching again. (She says young-er kids this time around and I have seen her deal with tiny ones in the last two weeks at temple festivals and family gatherings. She’s good.)

We went to Kappad and the sunset was otherworldy. Chellam pretends (?) to be afraid of the sea. Then laps up the receding foamy saltwater. There is sand everywhere under the backseat. Podimol indeed.

We have been working with the River team from when it was just the two founders looking for an office and a name on the office-door. They unveiled the Indie last week; it was a sweet-as-in-dreams milestone on a long and eventful and hair-pulling-tense journey. (The event was also a millstone on a hectic two-way bus-trip from and to Vijayawada—perfectly in the middle of a supershort course—over a day and two nights. More on that—hopefully—later.) There is so much behind-the-scenes on this project we may need a microsite for it on KL11.

At KL11, we had a lot of help from a lot of folks; some new friends, some old. We had help with visual design, iconography, photography, copy, animation, web—everything. We also grew in new and fun and painful and rewarding ways as an ‘organisation.’ I had sleepless nights and work sandwiched between more work and winter-courses than I could physically endure. And seeing the logo writ large and small on stages and backdrops and products and webpages and over videos makes it somehow worth all that trouble. I’m not sure I will do all of that nightoil burning allover again, though. 

The year was a mixed bag. Of many happinesses: Chellam and Podimol coming into our lives and bringing along joy and responsibilities in equal measures; moving into this lovely old house in the Nilgiris; R exhibiting work at the India Art Fair; KL11 being able to mentor students for the first time; many long trips for work and otherwise; good food; family gatherings. Of many things that humbled and saddened in excess: Kalyani’s many old-age-driven health problems; P and family’s sudden passing in a road accident; R’s papa leaving us after a week-long ICU-stay; associated complications and stresses; being with the many old people (‘bystanders’) lost in the corridors of TVM Medical College.

The courses this year were all excellent—the students did more and better work in the weeks we were together than I had any realistic right to expect. The colleges often felt less like going home—thanks to the bureaucracy and general slowness in moving things. KL11 has had a wonderful and exciting—if a bit too full of meetings—year.

But it has mostly been about loved ones leaving. Here’s hoping for many better revolutions around the universe.

Sun sets in Kuppady. Chellam on a superlong makeshift leash. Mathai’s snacks. Mellow conversation. Fog.

Here is the long version of our ‘looking-for-people’ document: bit.ly/WorkWithKL11. The short version is that we will be very happy to take care of graphic design graduates well. (As well as a two-three-four-person-run-studio out of Kozhikode honestly can; both in gold and adventure.) We have waited very many years to be able to afford the luxury of mentoring young graduates. As always, Codesign and Girish and Suresh and the many great mentors we have had, are the benchmark we’re chasing. And that bench is admittedly marked sky-high. Ha.

Gold and Adventure

On a dimly lit, chilly Gurgaon evening, Ghate (Abhishek) spoke to us about Gold and Adventure. Two things one seeks from a ‘job’ of any kind. Enough of a challenge so the milestones feel not like accidents but like discoveries and delight. Enough moolah so the whole thing doesn’t slide into a maggi-for-three-meals type situation. Most small (count us in) studios can’t afford to pay people what they truly deserve (compared to true corporates). People like Co did the best they could and we were happily in the top one-percent of studio-salaries. (No Maggi-days in three years.) Most often, it is basic maths winning over the urge to do (what to us is) honest work. When we started KL11 in 2014, we took out bus-money for salary. For many years. All our insurance payments lapsed, we stopped buying books and other luxury items, tea was limited to Swami’s and Bombay (who sold heart-melting stuff at pocket-friendly prices; and still do), walked to and from the bus-stop, etcetera. The adventure far outweighed the gold and that was alright. Long story later. The point is that we are trying to do the gold-adventure-mix right-ish for fresh-graduates. And it looks like we can, now.

Graphic Design with a Capital G

For these projects, we want to work with (and mentor) people who live and breathe forms, compositions and usable gestalt-principles. While we (mostly M) takes care of the business end of things, whoever steps up can stick to their roots, stick to what they explored in the classrooms. For that reason, we’re not necessarily looking at good-looking mockups and three-dimensional renders of not-so-resolved forms. Not that we have anything against such stuff per-se. Just that one can read way better from a well-made resume that respects readability and our intelligence. One typeface (maybe two), one or two sizes in the scale, supersorted groups and hierarchy. That is it. I’m looking forward to some exciting work. I hear it is hard to find people who stick to graphic design in the not-so-old-but-fairly-old-fashioned way of forms and blacks and whites and foundations. I want to believe otherwise. From under this rock. Yes.

Other Stuff

Logged in to Instagram on my phone after ten years-ish of deleting my own account. While I do hog R’s phone to look at cat pictures often, this is some other level of timesink doing that scroll on your own device. Not for me.

The evenings in Wayanad are bliss. Evenings with R and Chelgato sweeten the deal. Mathayi helps.