Cake Day

R completed another round of running-around-the-sun. We had a slow day with her friend dropping by with cake #2 (unexpected, unexpected place, etcetra) that made it quite special, some nice food at this quiet-ish two-storey food-complex finished in exposed bricks and cement and littered with wire-backed chairs in yellow and blue, and some harmless IKEA web browsing for artificial plants. We played some Snakes&Ladders (she won). We also made some art away from the screens. Here is what I started off with.

The birthdaywoman did not approve the first one fully so I moved on to this (it says ae-bee-see-dee in Malayalam). Cleaned up, whitebalanced etcetera.

R made a portrait of me. I am going to take it to the HQ and show it off on the desk.

She had a ligament tear some weeks ago—distracted by Chelgato getting into a car—and walks in pain. Hoping things turn out okay soon.

Other (Work) News

Work is harsh and fun. Store #2 is on, signage project is on, web is off (should be on). On Friday I picked Pantone shades for some tintsandshades from the brand palette for River and topped them off with corresponding-ish AsianPaints Cosmos swatches with fun (?) names. By the end of it I couldn’t tell red from orange so just focused on what was needed ASAP.

New neighbours at the ID Studio. Good conversations and sharing references.

We need more people to steer this graphic-design ship, clearly. If you know someone who knows the only right way to align monospaced type and whose filenaming game is chefskiss awesome, please ask them to come meet us online.

Technologee

Ordered one of these in white (darth was out of stock). Binepad is an Indian startup from Haryana; the person at the other end of their phone number was nice enough to run me through basics and share a discount code. They also sent me a nice little machined aluminium tray with the order. More on all that after I have a chance to work with it at the Cintiq.

I am not reading enough. Another K-ink device died its untimely death and I find it really hard to justify throwing another 12K at something that is going to go the ghost-touch way in a year. Also need to visit Blossoms soon; it is almost illegal at this point to say I’m in Bangalore and I haven’t been to the big B yet.

KL11-10

This deserves its own post. We have been at this for ten years! Almost all of it is thanks to M managing the stuff so well and keeping the standards high up when it comes to work. The rest thanks to great clients and folks we work with. We had a small (surprise for M and I) gathering with great friends and tasty food. It was overwhelming and fun. We may do something of our own, later if everything works out well. Fingers firmly crossed.

Here is a thing I was part of, for Keralappiravi day. (My sunlit mug comes in at around the 3:50–3:51 mark; don’t blink too much or you will miss it.) The rest of the folks are all very good at what they do and it was doubly nice to see a former student of mine in there! (Do they ever become ‘former?’)

This (and the others) illustrates Bodheshwaran’s 1938 song on what makes Kerala, Kerala. My bit reads ‘malayaja-surabhila-marutha-nel-kkum’ and translated, that says touched by the richly sandal-scented breeze. UnniMaman explained the meaning in detail and suggested we shoot against some trees. (He is my first calligraphy-teacher and used to cut normal-tipped sketchpens into chiselled tips as if by magic. These letters reference what I remember from the college magazines he used to lay-out by hand.)

R shot the clips and framed it so the sunlight made it all look presentable. Thanks to GV-sir for the opportunity. Thanks to Somettan and Vijayettan for forcing the coconuts to fall so they didn’t have to on their own, ruining the shoot.

Here is the un-hyphenated (normal? broken?) composition, drawn on cheap-ish chartpaper with a dip-pen and counterfeit Parker Quink. There were so many trials before this one (and after) since I was nervous and the papers kept texturing the letterforms where I didn’t want them to.

Mecha-human-Robot-type-thing. Luxor SuperChisels on parchment as old as third year at NID. Very sad scanner-bed.