A Peculiar Pictonary: Anjana Iyer’s illustrations of words

Ever met a Pochemuchka (a person who asks too many questions) or a Friolero (someone who is especially sensitive to cold weather and temperatures), or been deceived by a Bakku-Shan (a beautiful girl… as long as she’s being viewed from behind)?

Though Anjana Iyer might not have met them, she has illustrated them in her new series titled Found in Translation. The freelance media designer has taken about 100 untranslatable words and illustrated them in a way that has the whole world talking about them.

Born and brought up in Mumbai, Auckland-based final year student in Web design and media studies, Anjana’s work has been trending online and has been in the limelight for the intelligent illustrations of the words that would have otherwise not caught our attention.

The 25-year-old designer chose words from various languages that have no particular English translation and she credits it all to her passion for learning new languages. “I wanted my 100 Days project to be something compelling enough to do every single day. I just happened to come across this article about 14 words with no English equivalents. I knew I wanted to base my project around illustrations, since I have only been illustrating for the past two years and I still have a very long way to go, this was a perfect medium to improve my skills,” says Anjana.

Anjana did a lot of research on the words and no random words were picked. “I could think of one friend or another when it came to certain words. For example, the Yiddish word ‘Shlimazl’ (which means a chronically unlucky person), reminded me of a classmate who had the worst luck with all our professors. And so I picked words which we could all relate to in one way or another and maybe share a laugh or two,” she says.

While she had to drop the project after Day 41 last year, Anjana restarted it recently after it got picked up by Design Taxi. She had to complete one illustration in just a day. “Previously, I used to do several rough sketches and then get on to the computer. But for this particular project, I had to do one illustration a day, and there wasn’t really much time as I had a lot of other things going on. So, I would jump straight to the computer for this one, which isn’t ideal, but it helps you to speed up your process over time.”

And while Anjana is still looking for a job, her work is being appreciated by international dailies, something that she feels is surreal. “I still cannot believe how many people have responded to this. It’s been a humbling experience. And truly, it can be counted amongst the happiest moments of my life. Soon, I will be releasing my illustrations in the form of postcard sets and fine art prints,” she says.