An amazing thing about visual artist Tanvi Chunekar, is her innate attention to detail. One can trace this quality back to her childhood, where she would spend hours on end filling coloring books. ‘I had immense patience even as a kid,’ Tanvi tells me. She obviously had an overwhelming interest in art over academics and that was nudged in the right direction by her family. Currently, Tanvi is working as a Creative Director at Rezonant Design in Bangalore, where she plays different roles, from visual and brand strategist to graphic designer and illustrator. Beyond office work, she is passionate about illustration and typography and always has a pet project or two in the making. We’re in conversation with her below:
What are your influences/inspirations?
There are so many inspirations! I find that I am easily inspired by creators in general. Right from illustrators and graphic designers to typographers, lettering artists and mixed media artists. If I had to name a few, I would go with Pascal Campion, Christoph Neimann, Mallika Favre and Timothy Goodman. Pascal Campion was one of the first illustrators I discovered, before I even knew what illustration meant. I was blown away by his work. His illustrations tell stories of love, family, friendship and they are incredibly evocative. His understanding of colour, light and shadow is phenomenal. I remember wanting to be that good at drawing!
I also admire the quirky and witty illustrations of Christoph Neimann, Mallika Favre’s impeccable use of colour, shadow and light, Timothy Goodman’s brilliant lettering and Paula Scher’s iconic and bold typographical and design works. Oh and anything made by Studio Ghibli.I also get inspiration from travelling, talking to new people, reading books and watching films and television shows.
Where does your inspiration for colour come from?
I find that I get a lot of my colour inspiration from things around me. When I travel, I take pictures of interesting colour palettes around me, like a brightly painted pink house amidst green trees against the blue sky, or a parrot green vine climbing up a red brick wall or the way light falls on trees and appears golden-orange at dusk.
What does a day in studio look like for you.
My personal creative process is more fluid and also more temperamental compared to the process I follow at work for design projects. For my personal work, lately, I usually have a list that I keep adding to — of ideas, fleeting thoughts, words, poems, phrases et cetera — whenever something inspires me. It could be a beautiful poem that I read or a word someone said that sounds nice or a random memory from my childhood. I often open this list and find one that I relate with and simply start drawing! I find that if I spend too much time honing the idea or mulling over it, I lose my enthusiasm and then go down the slippery spiral of procrastination. So these days, I pick an idea and simply start drawing!
At work, I follow a more organized approach. I like to dive deep into the research aspect of any project and also benchmark top work done in the same sector. I like putting things down on paper — making mind maps, flow charts, keywords, initial ideas and little notes to self. I also like to sketch out things before I go to the computer. I make little thumbnails of what something can look like, logos, layouts et cetera. I work closely with a team of designers and writers, so brainstorming sessions, discussion of ideas and concepts and design feedback sessions are an important part of the day.
L: Self Portrait ; R: Coorg
Tell us about a project that has stayed with you and a project that was most challenging?
In my job as a graphic designer, I’ve found large-scale projects that involve customer experience design to be the most challenging. One that comes to mind is an healthcare experience project that I did for Care.fit Centre a few years back, as part of the Rezonant Team. I was the design lead and got my hands dirty doing everything, from mapping the patient experience to detailing the clinic concept to working with interior designers in selecting furniture and paint shades. It was a huge learning experience unlike any before.
A project that has stayed with me is something personal that I worked on for my graduation project which I never really completed fully. It was a wordless graphic novel exploring the concept of solitude and what it means to me. I wish to take that up again one day and finish it! I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the 36 Days of Type Challenge. I try to participate in this global typography challenge every year to force myself to create something new everyday. I’ve explored new styles, gotten better at my techniques and even surprised myself a few times by putting out something when it didn’t seem like I would. It’s definitely challenging but I thoroughly enjoy the creative energy and wonderful typography that takes over my feed in those 36 days!
Text Hansika Lohani Mehtani
Date 28-01-2022