NEW ZEALAND | graphic designer
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Meena Kadri won a Kentucky Fried Chicken colouring competition when she was six years old and has been involved in Visual Communications ever since – more recently as a graphic designer and design educator. She has taught for 10 years in China, New Zealand and at the National Institute of Design in India. She currently works as a senior designer and strategist at Tardis Design & Advertising in Wellington. She exhibited collaborative works produced with Indian street painters at the Glasgow School of Art in 2007.
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L E C T U R E | 1215h | 15.02.09 | view programme
Indo-centric, typo-centric: Hand-lettered typography of the streets of India
When encountering the Indian streetscape, one is struck by the diversity of competing signs – combining the informative, persuasive and the decorative to varying degrees in a visual cacophony of styles. Though digital technology is present much typography is still commonly hand-lettered – on the street, for the street. Here, Meena Kadri presents an exploration of such work as applied to vehicles, walls, signboards and all manner of surfaces with vernacular flair by painters who have often gained their skills on the job. Though usually not formally trained they collectively evolve styles that are pervasive to Indian visual culture. Kadri will scratch below the surface and give insight through investigation of the painters, their work and its communication context. She will explore the results of extensive interviews of Indian sign-writers and sticker-cutters and photographic capture of their works. Issues such as multiple language, globalised brands and competing technologies will be touched upon alongside the flamboyance of such idiomatic typography.
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About the images
Colouring Cola: Indian sign-writers usually gain their skills on the job. Coca Cola provides ample work across the country and in popular locations recommissions signs every few years to combat harsh sunlight and monsoon rains | Driven: Sticker-cut sign on a Mumbai taxi, announcing the driver’s name | Counted: A sticker-cutter’s tray used in the compilation of vehicle decoration.
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