Eyjafjallajökull :: © 2010 tiffinbox

Eyjafjallajökull’s nearest active neighbours are Katla, to the northeast, and Eldfell, to the southwest. Hence they are considered the mom and the doctor in this representation of how when you are sick, and you try to speak while you puke, you can pretty much expect your name to be miss-spelt. Perhaps Eyjafjallajökull’s real name is Jake or Kaju or Jaku and while he spoke, he just spilt a few extra letters.

This is a somewhat delayed but humorous look at the Eyjafjallajökull eruptions that created some news. But, yeah, we are lazy.

Bizzare thought – Sriparna Ghosh    |    Illustration – Rohit Chaudhary

the wwf seals :: © 2010 Sriparna Ghosh

So, those (in the title) are the animal sounds made by each in the picture above. My favourite is the “wha”, which is made by the Red Panda.

These animals were drawn as seals for the WWF-India panda calling website. The intention was them to form the indentifying elements for the various partnership plans as mentioned on their site, and also appear on the various merchandise which is handed over to the partners.  Since this website spent a lot of time in making, a lot of decisions were changed midway, and hence these innocent animals were rejected of a place on the website. Well if it is of any consolation, their smiles did win some hearts , but their sounds went in vain.

So, in order that this post is of a bit more consequence than just showing some rejected work, here is a list of animal sounds that might come handy at  some point in your life.

Grrrrr. Now buzz off.

Magically, 2010 has started on a good note, showering us with some increase in wealth and also appropriate proactivity. We wanted to continue with the way our last cards were (due to the oft. recieved compliments ) and decided to have 4 different designs on the back of the card, with snippets from our work. The front side is common for both of us (we like conserving paper).

We are also lovers of screen printing, for reasons more than one. It adds texture. It smells amazing. It is also cheaper than offset when printed in low numbers (anything less than a 1000 pieces which is a lot for a small firm like ours). We would also like to argue that it is more environmentally friendly (we have an environment reporter trying to figure our the truth… updates soon).

But it entails certain low points as well. Like, we are bound by the number of colours we can use. It is recommended that each face not have more than 3-4 colours at the max. We cant print gradients or bitmap images. In case we want plenty of colours, then it is both complicated (for us and the printer) and risky (the printer is human after all).

So, as opposed to a single file one would need to send to their offset printer, this is what we had to provide to our screen printer.

© 2010 tiffinbox

The colours each of these 7 screens will be printed in is shown on their sides. And by the end of it all, we expect our card to look like the one on top.

There are 3 other designs, none of which are as complicated as this one. Those will not be posted online, and we wait for you to meet us if you really want to see them, and the end result of this

Cards are being printed on Karess Springo Sandgrain White paper (300 gsm).

A Horse wrapped Zebra :: © 2009 Sriparna Ghosh

A Horse wrapped Zebra.

I consider Zebras to be graphically spectacular creatures.  To me a zebra is a horse wrapped with a ribbon.

So when I started making this illustration, a problem came about when I had to choose a color, for both the horse and the ribbon to wrap it in. There was no clear word on whether the stripes are black or white. Hence there was no way to decide the colour of the horse in question.

So, my Hobra here has both.

Initially, the theme for this illustration was to be ambiguous about the colours, as it is not clear here whether this animal has white stripes or black. But later on after some more research I came about this following information on Wikipedia which clearly states that the stripes are in fact white.

{It was previously believed that zebras were white animals with black stripes since some zebras have white underbellies. However embryological evidence shows that the animal’s background color is dark and the white stripes and bellies are additions.}

This artwork was made as a submission to the weekly illustration challenge at illustration friday

The Swine Flew :: © 2009 Sriparna Ghosh

The Swine Flew
Not many, but few
Had any clue
That in the city
It grew
_

© 2009 :: tiffinbox

This illustration was part of a larger cover idea for the magazine ‘The Brand Reporter’ by afaqs. The Jun 16-30 issue had a cover story on media houses diversifying into event management. This poor chap lost to the other concept we had given.

When I first received THE call from WWF offering us a project to design a brochure on the topic of high altitude wetlands, I almost dropped the phone. Similar waves of pleasure gently hit us repeatedly through the next 2 months to its completion. The costing wasn’t an issue, since we would have done the project anyhow.

The initiative goes by the name Saving Wetlands Sky-High! or SWSH in short. Under this project WWF is striving for conservation and sustainable management of the high altitude wetlands in the 5 Himalayan countries of India, Pakistan, China, Nepal and Bhutan.

A note of personal achievement before I start talking about the design:
We have been to 6 out of the 13 wetlands currently under the focus of this project – Tsomoriri, Tsokar, and Pangong Tso in Ladakh; Nako Lake and Chandratal in Spiti, Himachal Pradesh; and finally Tsomgo in Sikkim. Two were missed by a whisker: Gurudongmar in Sikkim (cause we had polished off our vacation fund by then) and Manimaheshwar (cause of lack of planning and proper winter clothing). A note to self: 7 more to go! And well 4 more countries.
One of my photos got used as the back spread for India. Not the tiny inset ones, but the big one.

Gradually, through the days, the design was converted to a folder-insert format as opposed to a brochure in order to make it more flexible in terms of addition of information later on. The outer cover is a simple folder with 2 flaps, one with a map and the other with some excerpts from the introductory text. One can see the intro text on the left side, while the right side holds all the inserts. There are 6 inserts in total, one each for all the five countries and the last one on the topic of regional programme. Each insert carries the name of the country in bold, flanked on the right with a bird or animal endemic to that specific region. Along with that, what forms a part of the template is a blue box at the bottom with another symbolic icon from the country. The reverse side has 3 photographs each, with a more topical information on the specific wetlands.

From our end, we considered this project a lot more personal than measuring it about its cost effectiveness. It wasn’t asked of us, but we rummaged through all possible encyclopedias on birds and animals, looked through zillions of ineffective photographs and zeroed in on a few successful ones. After each stroke of curve, we tilted our heads back to admire the difference. Chewed off our fingernails till we got to see the printed version. And whenever we got a visitor, we rushed to show it off, with the happiness of flaunting a newly acquired toy.

Why? This is a question that won’t have a logical answer, but perhaps I can answer it with a few more questions. Why did I spend Rs 4000 on trekking boots, and not buy instead of it four shoes of different kinds? Why do I want a cottage in the Himalayas overlooking a lake? Why don’t I have 40 thousand rupees in my bank savings, but a drive of 40 GB on my hard disk dedicated to travel photographs, fast approaching its capacity?

…and the final product has in fact surpassed our own expectations.

Following are the posters designed for this exhibition by tiffinbox in collaboration with door number 3.

The thought behind the designs was to be as bold as possible since we always write something that needs attention in bold letters. From afar, when you will first approach the exhibition you can read the letters very clearly as “CLIMATE CHANGE”. And on going through the posters at a one-on-one level you will see a lot of things that are happening in and around the alphabets. Each poster deals with a different issue. Also we have tried not to use any scary apocalypse type imagery or language, and tried to keep it as simple and everyday as possible.

Secondly, you may or may not notice that all posters are aerial views. This is to reiterate the fact that we are looking at our world from a birds eye, since this is the only view that gives us complete understanding of what’s happening. Standing on ground, we only seem to see what’s going on in the immediate surroundings, and not care for what’s happening some 1000 or 100000 kms away. But for a healthy planet we need to look at our globe in totality, since climate affects all of us.

As these posters are meant for a larger display (3×4 feet) you might not see the detailing in each poster as well as one would in an exhibition. Similarly for the text, it might seem small or illegible at this size. But you get the idea!

An important thing to note here is that poster numbers 11 and 12 speak of regional issues, the rest being generic in nature. The 13th poster is the concluding poster which urges the viewers to sign onto the poster to show solidarity in the fight against climate change.

Though we would have loved to have your suggestions and views on the 13th poster itself, but for the time being we’ll settle for comments on this platform

Agartala Chapter

Coimbatore Chapter

Bhopal Chapter

Ranchi Chapter

Pune Chapter

Lucknow Chapter

Hyderabad Chapter