I created this pencil sketch while experimenting with compositions of unrelated objects
Jul 162009
Jul 142009
Jun 302009
There is a unique space in my heart for each of the places that I’ve traveled to. Each journey holds a small corner of memories. Besides Ladakh, there is one place which has a permanent address and its as lavish as its havelis. The place is Rajasthan, my birthplace. The place has acquired another jewel in its crown. The colors of Rajasthan that I captured during last year’s visit to Jaisalmer have been published in a booklet for EMI music’s “Urban Grooves Project” music album. This brings me my first ever professional association with music, that too a fusion of Rajasthani folk towards which I’ve a natural affinity.
Here are the photographs that are a part of the booklet:
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Jun 252009
Many of us dream of owning a beautiful house somewhere in the midst of serene beauty. A cozy home nestled in the calm of nature far away from the maddening rush of the city. Reminds me of the K.L. Sehgal song, “Ek Bangla Bane Nyara”
For a lucky few the dream bungalow does materialize. For instance the Tehelka bosses. I guess I am jealous and I can’t help it. Their house in a lesser known area of Uttarakhand can be a cause for anyone’s envy. All the more so when you’ve to spend a week building a website for it.
The bosses have converted their house in Gethia into a boutique lodge. Hence, I was required to build a website so that the lodge can be advertised online.
The task was simple—to have an online space where potential guests can find the details of the place, mostly through visuals. The execution was simple too—simple design with photographs taking the most space, and flash based photo galleries with preloaders.
The design options and the final design are here:
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May 242009
Mar 262009
Just a spare time doodle...
Mar 232009
The Tehelka brand has a mass appeal of fiery journalism. And, to the people who made it happen and are still making it happen, Tehelka stands for much more than that. Of these assets the one I relate to most is survival against all odds; because that’s how my journey with Tehelka has been. Coming from a 6-Sigma organization where everything is by the book (a Green Book for processes and a Playbook for deliverables), I never thought I would survive here even for a year. Over here, publishing the book is a weekly miracle.
There is not much hope for a website to survive in an organization with just about enough resources to get the print cycle going at the speed of rusty computers clicking away like typewriters. I feel out of place in an infrastructure that seems reminiscent of Jurassic age! Yet, for some reasons I’ve been marching ahead with the website mostly as a one woman army.
Fifth Anniversary Edition
Tehelka has finished five years and the recently finished task was to recreate the past on the web. The challenge was to accommodate the massive number of milestone stories and the usual ambitious expectations of the bosses to bombard as much information as is possible or not possible. And, all this on a static, manually generated HTML website. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said Jurassic age. A manual news site in the era of convergence is as ancient as dinosaurs.
Yet, one has to do the best one can. After much brain crunching, I’ve finally laid out the home page as my best effort towards effective communication design, if not technology. The objective was to create an organized framework of the various vistas that Tehelka has explored over the years and under each category present a glimpse of the star stories and give a subtle hint to what more lies underneath.
This is what I did:
- Organize information so that it is easy to assimilate.
- Create a structure to guide
- Present just about the enough number of highlights – not too less and never too much to dilute the effort and confuse the reader
- Leave a scope for further exploration
- Allow easy updates on a regular basis to keep the page looking fresh
Feb 022009
The latest addition to my shelf of web designs is the new face of www.taruntejpal.com – the web space of Tehelka’s Editor-in-Chief, Tarun J Tejpal. I’ve redesigned his website to go along with the promotions for his new book “The Story of my Assassins”.
It’s a very simple and basic website at present. Hopefully there would be some dynamic and interactive additions to the domain soon. For now, the design objective was to create a space that has the class and character depicting the author’s and book’s personality.
Do have a look at the site and share feedback here … thanks!
“NATURAL INSTINCT” is a copyright of PATHFINDERS (earlier BICE).
Nov 212008
Artwork created in Adobe Illustrator