We had a nice Vijayawada teaching-road-trip last month. It was the first post-Covid-lockdown offline course (abstract doc) for Communication Design so the benchmark for awesomeness/okayness was set quite ground-level and below. The bachchalog did well, with some well-written books in the last week. I was impressed (capital I) with the depth and breadth of work; kind of reminded me of the good old times as a student in Paldi. R cooked everyone dinner (like the good old times in Paldi). We had fun (capital F) and some spicy Andhra food. On the way back (Vij–Chennai–Coimbatore–Kozhikode) there were friends, Tamizh food, football-field-sized roads, shady hotel rooms, aeroplanes, Burmese food, near-miss Tollbooth stucknesses, etcetera. (More on all that later.)

Here is everyone making posters out of thin air and newspaper at the makeshift CD-studio (IT Lab) at Vij. Capital F.

At home in Wayanad, Podimol is ‘in’ the Monsoon way more than we are. We just had her power-washed yesterday (because she was looking more terracotta-sculpture and less metal-sheet-stamped) and today, she looks like this (below). We—not so—accidentally drove into a green patch that turned out to be a Rasayanam-consistency patch underneath. Getting out was harder than getting in. The mud flew everywhere.

The Monsoon (coupled with rising prices for everything) is really hard for many people in many places in Kerala, but we are okay. Dealing with leaks in the kitchen and more-slash-bigger wasps-and-technicolour-bugs is not much of ‘dealing with’ really. We had some hard-ish times a couple of months back (delayed payments and some such logistical effups) and sailed slowly through them.

KL11 has resumed work on River and I’m looking at multiscript wordmarks. We are also looking for interns/project-associates to help us for three months (more on that too, later). Some expansive icon-sets, web-design, brand-guidelines and extending the product identity, etcetera, are in the works. Drop me a line (KL11 mail) if interested. I’m putting together a document on the what and the why and all that soon. We are kind of particular about some basics (like third-year-in-college-basics; not unreasonable basics) of type and form but are hoping to be able to mentor people as well. We shall put our semi-abandoned Instagram page to some use, maybe. And I have so many emails to catch up to.

Chelgato has put on good weight and has no hesitation anymore before jumping into bed before we do. That usually means we end up fighting her for realestate but are also kind of halfhearted about it thanks to the added warmth. (Our part of Wayanad gets cold like most other parts of Wayanad). She pretends to guard the house while secretly hoping for strangers to come and pet her.

Sulthan Bathery’s arguably-best print shop is called CopyCat. We moved here (not exactly SB but close/far enough) in March and sometime last week was the first time we needed to commit-control-pee anything into pulp. This (below) is from Nellarachaal, a buffaloe-grass-carpet showroom over a hill overlooking some water that seems to be going nowhere in particular. Chellam likes the place despite the three dogs who are a bit too jumpy, and because of the one who is a sweetheart. (R—obviously because everything is photographically appropriate—took the pictures.)

Chelgato loves taking naps in moving vehicles way better than any of us can ever hope to. (She’s halfheartedly sleeping off a vet visit to Aruma in this picture.) She finds nooks where there are none apparent.

This is home. It is an old (60+ years) singlestory sloped-roof affair with flawed wooden ceilings and a kitchen that leaks in five places (so far) when the rain turns extrabold. Like many houses from that decade, ours is a simple square-plan divided into two big rooms, two small rooms, and the kitchen-cul-de-sac-combo next to a bathroom that stays consistently in winter-mode. It is a 3-column modular-ish grid with odd gutters. We lost the green cover in the backdrop to some seasonal clearance sale. On the plus side, the fore-noon sun warms the house up in time for night-chill. Out front, there are birds (bulbuls, kingfishers, tiny sparrows in a rainbow’s worth of hues) everywhere. Plus everyone’s chickens are everywhere all the time. Chelgato has kind of stopped barking at some of them regulars.

Great print-shops don’t just print well; they reciprocate your love for print.

It isn’t often (more like never than ever) one looks forward to seeing a PDF that has gone to the printer come back all inked and kissing paper in ways nicer than what the screen approximates. It is rare for a printer to be consistently good at what they do at prices that aren’t approaching personal-scribe levels of indulgence. That brings us, conveniently, to this thinly disguised love-letter to our friendly neighbourhood print-shop in Kozhikode. Trendz (Flash? TrendzFlash? FlashPrint? I never get that right or anywhere near consistent; you will see.) is a big-ish floor of discerning (but mostly—for no fault of the shop’s—restless) people seeking print-outs (mostly Xeroxed copies of huge A1 sized architectural drawings, lanyards of pretty colours, large sheets of business cards that most definitely need to fit into A3-express-es and not just A3s, etcetera), unimaginable-otherwise-ly patient designer-DTP-professionals who know what they are doing and are in no hurry to let you know they know, the odd Errando person who is amused and restless in turn (thanks to how crowded and how on edge the rest of us leave the floor), etcetera. Trendz can print white (and silver, and gold) on all kinds of paper and not-paper. Trendz can print and frame photos on canvas. Trendz can print on off-the-menu-paper if you promise to bring it (the paper). I don’t think they can walk on water. I haven’t asked for a quotation for that, yet. The point is that printing at Trendz is much more exciting than it theoretically has any right to be.

Printing is meant to be hit-or-miss (hit-and-miss) in most small-ish towns. We were worried about finding passable quality printers in Kozhikode moving in, in 2014. Then we found Trendz and haven’t looked anywhere else yet. (I—regrettably in 20/20 hindsight—did, once, in 2018. I apologise for the Pantone promiscuity.) The flat swathes of colour don’t look like a second-year textile-design-student’s weekend (no-lines!). The flat-colours are flawless. The flat colours sing in that special voice only coloured-paper does, otherwise. The registration, while not perfect under bright light and some push-pins, is easily masked with 3mm bleed on all sides. The colour reproduction is great, considering how slightly off all the monitors at the home-studio-setup tend to be; the shades almost match their Pantone swatches more often than not. They’re great even with bad (RGB) sources. They’re good with scaling/cropping/flipping/rotating. You don’t have to ask them to ‘leave the artwork be, don’t fit it’ every time a PDF goes to get birthed again. Etcetera. You know what I mean. This is print the way print should be. With people-who-care manipulating the machines. Etcetera.

The people there are perhaps overworked but manage to find joy in helping when they hear you speak of spot colours and wait patiently behind their supposedly revolving chairs. I have had plenty of time watching people like B-chechy at work on CorelDraw and Photoshop (she admits she’s not good with Illustrator, fixing white spot-ink selection for my sorry CC-ed ass) and I am convinced she/they can race me to a corner, with their left index finger alone finishing alignment on some unnecessarily complex client-layout. I watch them deal with pressure and a need for making things right. I watch them deal with disillusioned customers after they realise source-quality matters. I watch them levelheadedly deal with bad contrast and esoteric typeface selection. I watch them deal—with grace—with fellow enthusiasts who are eager to teach them how to do their jobs. Often the younger ones would crane their collective necks to B-chechy and ask for expert advice on some obscure paper-sizes or print-processes. (I just go straight to her or to one of the print-engineers who come out and work the DTP-end once in a while. There was a DQSellman-haired youngster there who used to be a pro, too, but I think he found greener Pantones.) The work isn’t easy, with people whose mental-models of how print works is modelled after wide printer-margins and ant-sized type on everything, demanding multiple edits at once and ‘discerning’ eff-ers like yourstruly looking for a special-colour-on-craft-paper fix to deal with loneliness, and some misguided sense of purpose. Etcetera. The lady at the counter (simply, chechy), a lean, forty-plus-ish looking woman of impeccable dress-sense and solid work-habits (who reminds me of a Maths teacher that likes to moonlight as girlshostelwarden for kicks) is curt in a likeable way with impossible arguments and requests from customers. She’s all politeness and care the moment she spots my mug from across the counter; because I have learnt the superpower (the only one that makes sense at a print-shop) is patience. Patience and an ability to bend and support yourself on your knee-balls without weirding out the designers. So, counter-chechy (whom I assumed to be Christian—but isn’t; she worked the day before Christmas so some colleagues could take the day off—for the longest time because of her convent-like manners) is all efficiency and nothing much else, often. (She recognised me through the one-and-a-half inches of exposed specs and said ‘goodmorning’ as she walked in late today. It felt great. No. Scratch that. It felt effin fantastic and I smiled through all six layers of my mask.) Even the behind-the-scenes-but-actually-the-whole-scene-people, the print-engineers (including R and the chettan with many threads on his wrist) are fantastic beyond their job-title. Most would come out with your print and make sure things are okay before they commit acres of forest to torture.

Trendz recently got a Xerox Iridesse press to Kozhikode and I had been waiting to print with speciality inks. We have been working with an EV startup that doesn’t call itself such, for the past year, and had the opportunity to make something that stood out in print for their up-coming presentation at CES. The covers (C1 through C4) are craft-paper and white and glorious, printed at T. I had to keep myself from ordering unnecessary test-prints after the first two. I’m looking forward to picking fifty copies up in the evening.

The white isn’t screen-print-thick (of course) but has that nicest of show-throughs when looked at from an angle. The paper feels great. And the whole affair smells great—kerosene-ey and paper-ey in equal measure while managing an essential earthy nuance. It screams ‘ecofriendly’ in subtler hues than green.

So, yes. We have a great print-shop in town and this is—as promised in UG-third-year—my love letter to the place. Please don’t crowd our little slice of ink-paper-heaven on weekday mornings; that’s when we get our kerosene-pulp-fix. If you choose to anyway, maybe we’ll let the shop-folks know how well-loved their work is.

The side-road parallel to the one with fancier government offices is busy with undergrowth and vines nobody cared to watch. I haven’t been outside much since the testing-positive-and-then-negative ordeal. (It was hell and then it was okay.) These short morning rides are a good respite from sitting on a work-chair all-day. Things that were easy are hard again; climbing a short (tiny) hill steals all the energy and breath and replaces them with aches and a wheeze audible through the mask-layers.

I can smell the flowers again. (And there are many!)

This not-meant-to-be cycle path joins the main road beside the BSNL office (roam). The short detour is well-worth the scratches and true-random spider-web installations.

This is much verse than a poem. Go forth. (Retrieved from the good-ol’ Tumblr from 2013. ‘Found’ poetry [mostly] from an old geyser at a temporary-accomodation-type-situation in Gurgaon.)

Do not operate this pressure-type geyser before connecting to a water source. Do not plug the top-vent ever. In the absence of a vent pipe at the place of installation, it is necessary to use modern safety valve on the top-vent. It is advisable to use a non-return valve on the inlet water line to prevent accidental damage to the inner water tank. Always use a three-pin plug with this water heater. Green is the universal symbol for earth. Never use the logo on a grey, ambiguous, white, rainbow, yellow, magenta, cyan—or the combinations of the above—background. Do not put a drop-shadow around the logo unless your branding agency tells you it is good for you. Never stretch, squeeze, mentally torment, humiliate or drop water on the logo.

Thank you. Ask for refunds at the exit gate.

The Mayflower outside has may-flowered and the ungg-tree’s leaves are that shiny dark green again. Via the quarantine-window at home.

Been teaching on-and-off (typography with NID-V, mentoring final-year students from NID-K on a brand-identity project) and neglecting most other important things including Exif. I have also been referencing some architecture bits for some potential architecture-ing; I’ve always loved that discipline and consider dropping everything to enroll into a full-fledged program, often. Been reading through 30by40 (I love the LongStudio) and *faircompanies while keeping things local with AtticLab.

What I haven’t been neglecting is feeding Kamal(a) in his habitat (now sans-the-plant thanks to filterlessness). The betta is intelligent and quite angry-slash-excited to see people. I’m extrapolating; he is probably happy seeing other people and is just temporarily pissed off having to deal with me all the time. We got him from one of those shops where bettas are in tiny blue-tinted cups and look space-starved. The tank is large and sits on the other end of our shared work-table, facing the road and its election-related-brouhaha. It looks like there will be more tanks-on-tables soon. Kamal(a) is impossible to photograph; I’ll have to invest in some sports-photography-level gear to catch him sans all the blur.

The past month has been painfully slow and it looks like I would have read far fewer books than the last year by the end of December. It is a depressing thought and the whole working-alone-staring-at-angry-Kamal(a) isn’t helping. Podcasts and non-serious RSS-feeding has helped deal with it. So has a lot of calligraphy practice. I’m loaded with new pens, nibs and inks and cheap-and-perfect-for-fountain-ink papers from Kanakam PaperMart in town. The copperplate practice has helped mitigate some stress (good-joke; copperplate and stress), with random flourishes for extra effect.

It’s been a while since I cracked that joke. Lovely sunset somewhere.