CREEPY' ideas

This New Year was a special one for Rahul Radhakrishnan, a second year MA Graphic Designing student of S.H. College, Thevara. His joy knew no bounds when his work ‘Male’ was selected as one of the four winning entries from India in the Typographyday 2017 poster competition for the title ‘Typography and diversity’. The competition had 600 entries from across the globe.  

“It was my teacher Anu Cherian who informed me about this competition and encouraged me to take part in it,” says a gleeful Rahul.

Typoday is an international platform where designers from around the world come together in February every year. This year’s event will be conducted from 23rd to 25th at the Colombo Department of Integrated Design, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka.

“I knew about Typoday as I had visited the venue last year. It was in Bengaluru then,” he adds.

Rahul, a native of Kottayam, has designed the poster titled ‘Male-Climbing Scripts’ for the competition wherein letters are drawn in the form of creepers. He links letters to nature through his work. “This idea struck my mind during a discussion with my friends when one of my friends said ‘ezhuthukal kaadu kayarunnu’. Writing is all about alphabets. So, I made the them like creepers, thus linking it to nature. Green leaves and stems also represent nature. Letters are derived from nature and they change as nature changes,” he explains.

However, Rahul has coloured the background in red. “That indicates destruction of nature,” says Rahul, who has designed cover pages and layouts of more than 50 books. The layout of ‘Suvarnalekha’ published by SPCS, Kottayam is one of the innovative works he has done so far.

Rahul inherits his talent from his father who is an artist. Although he did his degree in Botany, he moved to pursue designing later. “I took Botany because that too involves a lot of drawing,” he chuckles. “I had no clue about designing courses then. Before joining for MA in Graphic Designing, I had worked in the designing arena to get an idea about the field. Then, I got attracted to typography and started experimenting with that,” he says. Rahul wants to continue his journey. However, right now, his dream is to fly to Sri Lanka to take part in the meet.