Friday, March 25, 2011

Sneak Peek

Here's a sneak preview into the books we'll be presenting at the Bologna Children's Book Fair 2011!
Karadi Tales is exhibiting at the Bologna Children's Book Fair at Hall 29 Stand D43. If you're around, do drop in and take a look at our wonderful titles! The dates of the Book Fair are 28-31 March 2011. 

The Rumour
Author: Anushka Ravishankar
Illustrator: Kanyika Kini


Dorje's Stripes
Author: Anshumani Ruddra
Illustrators: Gwangjo and Jung-a Park


Monkeys on a Fast
Author: Kaushik Viswanath
Illustrator: Shilpa Ranade 


The Blue Jackal
Author: Shobha Viswanath
Illustrator: Dileep Joshi


The Lizard's Tail
Author: Shobha Viswanath
Illustrator: Christine Kastl 


When the Earth Lost its Shapes
Author: Shobha Viswanath
Illustrator: Christine Kastl 



The Last Bargain
Author: Samita Aiyer
Illustrator: Garima Gupta


To know more about these books and our other titles, download our Rights Catalogue!

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Bologna: Call for Illustrators

If you're attending the Bologna Children's Book Fair 2011 next week and if you're an illustrator, we want to meet you!


Thursday, March 17, 2011

Freelance Writers

We're looking for a Chennai-based freelance marketing communicator to create some material for a performance-arts project we're collaborating with. Minimal design skills and excellent writing, research and communication skills are required. The candidate will need to work on a freelance basis for approximately 3 months. 

If interested, please email contact@karaditales.com with your resume.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

National Typography Day 2011

Senior Visualiser from Karadi Tales, Vandana Shah, attended the typography workshop at National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, conducted earlier this month. Here’s a report from her on her experiences!

Day 1 began with registration at the entrance of NID. We received welcome kits in the form of vernacular paper bags, making it a creative beginning to the whole experience. From the entrance to the auditorium was a pleasant walk with glimpses of the campus.

At ten, the welcome session began with Tarun Deep and G. V. Sreekumar. It was a promising and a heartwarming welcome address, which promised us that we will have a great time… and we did! The auditorium started filling up and soon it was so full that a few participants had to sit on the side steps, the excited students and professionals were looking forward to three days of learning with fun.

A kadak chai session followed and the first speaker was Mr. Rafel from Peru, who spoke about identity and explained how culture plays a great role in creating type.






This was followed by Professor Fikret Ucar Turkey. His approach was very natural. He presented the organic typography approach which he and his students had explored. Several organic / natural materials and shapes were used to create type without the use of computers. Lot of interesting typefaces were created, the one that’s registered is a letter form out of folded books.





The day moved on with speakers from across the globe with extremely interesting approaches towards typography. People from Sri Lanka, Iran and hamara India spoke about their national languages and their nuances while creating the type. A font called Meeti Mayek created by Neelakash took my attention as he created the script and got it officially approved by the Government of Manipur and included the font in the academic curriculum of the state. 

The refreshing tea breaks were the need of the hour. Back with josh, we had Nooper Datye who spoke about her very interesting organization called Aksharaya, which had conducted an outstation camp on Indian letterforms in 3D with participants from the industry. The outcome projected a new insight to Indian scripts and how we as individuals can sustain our culture and creativity. Their 2011 calender was a visual treat.





The day ended with an interactive session between the speakers and the audience. The drive back home via law garden was nostalgic one and ended the day at a smiley note.

The next day began with the session from the most respected speaker of Indian typography. Mr. Mahendra Patel, also known as father of Indian typography, started the session by talking about the impact of technology in creation of the type. 

Erin McLaughin session had a fresh approach towards the Devnagri script which was based on research and her journey of creating them made us think beyond boundaries.  

From boundaries to point of view via Felix Ackerman was the best session of the morning. This creative mind explored perspective type with an approach to 3D. He spoke about perspective type which displays three different words from three different points of view. This is possible only when the exact placement and orientation of each character allows the viewer to read the message from 3 viewpoints. His understanding of perspective was mind boggling!



A sure tea break was required to register the loaded gyaan.

We then had Yogita and Sreekumar from Bangalore, who started on an intersecting subject – correlation between the Devnagri script and the Bharatnatyam dance form. But to me, the correlation seemed forced and their entire talk was fairly vague.

Following this was Chan Chung’s vibrant mix of Chinese and Western cultures. He brightened up the session speaking about influences of copywriters using multilingual writing to attract the target audiences and designers exploring the creative typographic expression in visual communication.

After a sumptuous North Indian lunch, we returned to a session from South Indian speakers, which was a cultural contrast in itself. Hasin from Kerala spoke about the Malayalam script. Tthe purpose and the complexity faced while creating type was presented. Hasin is a star of Malayalam typeface as his type family is used in the most widely read paper of  Kerela ‘Malayalam Manorama’. He has also created the typeface for Matrubhumi, another famous Malayalam journal.

After our Mallu neighbours’ presentation, it was namma Chennai by Rathna Ramanathan, who pepped up the half sleeping north Indian audience by playing nakka mukka song at the beginning of her talk. She very simply explained relation of typography with cultural context and history. She also focused on how certain types of the family are being ignored while the creation of the new typeface designers and are slowly being removed from the script family. The best point of her interaction was how we need to be local at heart to grow international which hit the audiences so hard that they couldn’t stop applauding.

Next was Udaya Kumar, the creator of the new Indian Rupee symbol, whose session was one to remember. He gave all the designers in the auditorium a spectrum of his visual representation of the Indian rupee symbol by sharing his journey from the scratch. He was the most interactive speakers in the whole event. There were many questions from the audience and he answered each of them with ease.



A lot of creative understanding about typography as a subject was understood by me and I got a wide spectrum of creative references in field of graphic design and typography. It was an extremely creative tour as I could meet, learn and interact with so many creative masterminds under one roof. 

Friday, March 11, 2011

I'm Just Like You

Have you heard the Karadi Rhyme 'I'm Just Like You'? If you haven't you should!

Here's a selection of videos of children getting together to perform the song for various occasions. These kids are totally adorable!

First, here's a video from the Independence Day celebrations in 2010 as celebrated at LB Shastri Nagar, Bangalore with a series of performances by children. In this performance, the children of Sarovar Apartments dance to the tune of the Kardi Tales Rhyme "My name is Madhavi", highlighting the theme of Unity in Diversity in India.



Here's another lovely video of kids performing the same song at the 2009 Asia Coalition Tallahassee!



Here's a video where the kids from Padmavati Society, IIT Powai have fun with the song during the Ganpati Festival 2010. The song depicts the diversity and culture of India. Children in costumes depicting various regions of India, adds to the celebration.



And here's the original video from the Karadi Rhymes DVD!



You can pick up the Karadi Rhymes audiobooks here or the DVDs here.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Illustrator-Hunting

So the good news is that we have lots of projects lined up for the coming months and they're all very, very exciting indeed. The better news is that we're very actively looking for illustrators for all of these projects.

So here's the quick update on the projects:

(1) A 4-part series of picture books about a little girl with a tendency to get lost. This series follows one little girl as she explores a variety of Indian places, gets lost repeatedly and almost always has an extraordinary adventure with the people she meets along the way. We would like one illustrator for all 4 books in the series so that the books have some level of continuity and consistency.
Target age group: 4+
Size: 16.4’’ x 11’’ (open book size) with 17 full colour double spread illustrations per book 

(2) A picture book revolving around a little girl who steals a temple elephant. This story is very minimalist in terms of text and depends heavily on perspective and artwork.
Target age group: 4+
Size: 16.4’’ x 11’’ (open book size) with 15 full colour double spread illustrations

(3) A slightly more grown up picture book with a lot of abstract imagery. This story is based on a Kannada folktale and its characters are mostly abstract. We're looking for heavily stylised composition with strong, well-developed characters.
Target age group: 8+
Size: 18'' x 8 '' (open book size) with 15 full colour double spread illustrations

(4) A multiple-ended story. This is a story that is spread across 4 endings and is quite heavy on text. We're looking at really simple and appealing artwork for this story (perhaps even single-colour or pen-and-ink). We're looking for an artist to conceptually design and illustrate the book.
Target age-group: 6+
Size: 18'' x 8'' (open book size)

Most importantly, for all these projects, we're looking for artists who paint the old-fashioned way - with their hands and not their computers. 

Karadi Tales works on the basis of royalty-free agreements. We offer a flat one-time payment for all artwork. All agreements are time-bound and contractually binding.

If you’re interested in any of the 3 projects, to begin with, take a look at our Submissions Page and our Catalogue. If you feel that your style would suit our requirements, please write to us on our generic email address.

Also, please help us by spreading the word!

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

March 2011

In 2011, we'll be giving you a calendar for every month with artwork from one of our books. Here's the March 2011 calendar. We hope you like it!