Designing a calendar, making it timeless
Folks say that calendars are time-bound, meant to last only for a year, but I beg to think differently. If you make something good, built with real aesthetic emotions, it may last a lifetime, transcending time; even if its very function was to keep time.
Back in 2016, we set out to create an offline calendar and ended up creating an emotionally charged narrative that spanned all mediums — print, digital and film.
It took a thousand coincidences to make it happen. We shot hundreds of photographs, climbed thousands of feet and flew drones to places where eagles dare. This 5000-word photo-essay is written straight from the heart. And in plain and simple language — it strives to document the process of story-boarding, photography, designing, printing and finally summarising all of the above into a virtual oneness — of an online digital experience.
In the undercurrents also lies a fascinating story, a visual treat, of places hidden away in the folds of nature. I hope you enjoy this timeless tribute to the land where magic is still alive.
The Brief
In October of 2016, I was having a chat with my CEO Rohith Bhat at Robosoft’s Head-Office, strategically located in a place called Udupi, in the south of India.
Udupi incidentally is a beautiful temple town, sandwiched between the Arabian sea to the west and the Western Ghats to the east, (a rugged hill range shrouded in clouds and dense jungles). Numerous rivers cut this landscape creating some of the most stunning backwater estuarian systems that I have ever seen. Out at sea, are the islands that have divided from the mainland some 60 million years ago. Remote and rugged these rocks endure on — like beacons that withstood the trials of time.
It is this enchanting land, that is the chief catalyst in spurring us on, to create all the digital-tech magic we call work. If you live a beautiful life, it will reflect in the products you create, and that’s a reality.
Rohith’s brief was, “Create a physical calendar that was centred in the realm of handcrafted art, rather than anything digital, which was second nature to us.” The calendar had to celebrate the essence of the land that has kept inspiring us to create and develop more than 2000 apps worldwide, some of them award-winning.
Most importantly, this unique mix of a beautiful location and Digital-Tech opportunities should work as an attractor. Reaching out to talented folks who would be inspired to drop everything, fly across and join us. Hence the name — Change the way you Live, Work & Play. This was a war cry against the festering city life.
I loved the idea of a beautiful, handcrafted calendar. Amidst today’s transcendent digital fashion, you will notice a trend, a fetish for offline things from vinyl records, expensive pens, manual SLR cameras to internetless holidays. Within these organic collectables exist a promise to disconnect from the grid, a timeless existence, giving a sense of perceived quietness.
We were sure that our organic calendar would fly with our audiences. Although we knew it was impossible to achieve this feat within the two short months that lay ahead before the next year dawned. But, here’s the story of how we gave it our best shot.
Step 01 - Start with a storyboard and stick it on the wall!
While making a calendar (a printed one), I prefer thinking of it as somewhere in-between publishing a coffee table book and making a movie. It takes a script, a camera and a lot of hacks to get it right. It is an act of faith, especially when you have to dive into something you haven’t done before — so zero legacy knowledge. Not to forget the impossible deadline at hand.
For me — working with print after all these years of digital madness gave rise to a significant amount of healthy nervousness. Print today has distilled itself into an art form. If you are going to print something, it better be important, as for everything else there’s email.
I started by writing the intent, which has become a habit over the years. This written purpose of a project needs to manifest as a definite statement or condensed into a string of useful points — clearly stating the Why & How. (Image 01)
Look at it as an act of articulation that brings an infinite amount of clarity to you and everyone else working on the project. Spend time on it, sweat a bit, and I promise it will be well worth the effort. Clarity of thought is second to none.
With the intent established, I wrote the script, which was an assortment of notes and images describing each concept.
Travel with me involves off-the-beaten paths, in fact, the more off-beat it becomes, the better it gets. I spent close to 5 years flying in and out of Udupi. Each of those flights was like a Google Earth simulation. Staring out of the aeroplane window, mesmerised by the topography below, I use to create mental maps of islands, beaches and the myriads of little spots that had the promise of adventure.
On weekends, I would go in search of them, and there was no rest until I found them all.
All these escapades had given me a fair sense of the land, and this, in turn, gave a certain degree of confidence to translate a location into a concept — a story that had an emotional pulse.
To further exemplify these stories, I consolidated them into a mock-up and wrote one line descriptions about each shot. (Image 02)
The whole intent & script-making exercise translated into a storyboard, which had the visual tangibility that a 4-year-old would understand. The linear flow made it easy to keep track of the shots, and the little notes acted as quick descriptors (Image 03).
This was going to be the master plan. It has everything in it, thoughts, notes, places, face.
Your storyboard is a strategy and guide for the entire production, so celebrate it.
I printed out the whole storyboard including mock-ups and stuck them on the wall of my hotel room (I was working out of a hotel room. I prefer some measure of isolation and privacy when working on such intensive projects).
As the prints kept falling off the wall, the folks from housekeeping had a hard time negotiating the mess that was steadily building up. Tired of sticking them up I laid them out directly on the floor. And the hotel’s stewardship got an exclusive preview of my story that was now unfolding quickly.
When you print stuff out, you will find a visual connection getting magically established between the beginning and the end. And everything in the middle starts taking shape. With all the disparate pieces now making sense, new visual connections will appear; highlighting the aesthetic emotions of your story.
My storyboard was edited many times over, and it kept evolving right up to the point it went out for print. Later on, when our printing and design teams joined in, these storyboards were the only way they could understand the macro rhythms of the entire production, the interplay between concept, text and images.
Let things evolve; nothing is final, go with the flow.
Step 02 — Call in a professional, a magician
Today, with the advent of phone cameras and its prolific abuse, everyone thinks he/she is a photographer. As a matter of fact, after a few Instagram filters, some of us even claim to be professionals. Don’t get trapped-in with your ego, you could be great at what you do, but understand your limitations in context to the job at hand and the skill of the hour.
Especially on this project, working with one of those clinical left brained photographer, who watched the clock and charged by the hour was a strict NO NO!
We needed someone who could understand MAGIC and the creative nuances that came along with it. I had another unique ask — that the photographer should be local, someone who could empathise with the brief - “Celebrate the essence of the land.”
Call it serendipity, but the perfect person for the job was right in the offings. While discussing the storyboard, someone had mentioned about a local legend, a man who gave everything to photography and then stopped, went into hibernation and never returned. Although I never met him, I knew of a few folks who raved about his work. I was excited.
We called out to him, and Guruduth Kamath came. Casually dressed in jeans and T-shirt, he seemed unassuming. Besides his clean-shaven head what stood out was his individualistic aura. He hardly spoke, but there seemed to be a lot going on, those speechless conversations that keep plucking into your brain made me instinctively perceive that — this is the man for the task at hand.
I showed him the storyboard, which had now transcended from a sequence of beautiful shots into a spiritual journey.
The shoot was not limited to landscape photography, it also had an essential human element to it. To connect back-back to the “Play” aspect of our theme line, we needed stories of people engaging with local sports like surfing, kayaking, fishing. And this hugely increased the complexity of the photoshoot.
It was the end of October, and we required to complete the shoot in 15 days flat, after which the processing, designing, printing and packaging of the calendar would consume the balance of two months at hand.
Guru saw the storyboard, and unflinching stated the obvious, “This cannot be completed in 15 days. A project of this scale would need six months, but we can give it a try.” And I breathed a sigh of relief — he meant to say “No”, but there was yet a “Yes” in there!
On his way out he offhandedly mentioned that 4 of the 12 shots were already existing in his archives. Mysteriously, he seemed to have already captured similar, if not better compositions. Without seeing them, I already knew we had four incredible shots done in one day! Magic?
Step 03 — The Shoot, patience, endurance and light
The shoot covered some hard ground. From heavily wooded hills in the western ghats to deserted islands out at sea. To do justice to these beautiful acts of nature, Guru was insistent that a bird’s eye view of the subject was a must. And to accomplish that we needed to shoot with a drone. I agreed, and that doubled our budget.
On hindsight, I think it was the best decision we made. However, the use of drones and drone photography comes with its own set of challenges. From flying one, to the photo resolution to the colours
There are many limitations when compared to digital SLR’s, but there is also tremendous upside. The unique perspectives a drone offers is hard to imagine, sometimes fantastic enough to transform your story — composing views that humans have rarely seen, not even on Google Earth.
We were shooting with the DJI Phantom4; this model had limited control over light — aperture and shutter speed. But what it suffered from its lack of light, it made up with its dexterity and skill, especially when flying around in such precarious terrain.
The perfect light becoming even more fundamental, everything had to be captured in the early hours of the morning or just before sunset. We called them — the golden hours.
Rajesh, a friend of Guru’s, was hired as the Drone Pilot. I swear Rajesh could have flown his drone a couple of times around the moon, and yet looked for more. Another inventive soul discovered by chance or was it just destiny.
An adventure in the hills of Kodachadri
I am going to describe just two experiences we had while shooting the calendar. And this should hopefully provide an insight into challenges faced when working in a rugged environment. It is essential to understand how an act of faith transforms a project, sometimes through innovation, but mostly through happenstance.
“Among the folds of purple and blue, Kodachadri a natural heritage site towers high above the jungles. At its peak stands a temple that enshrines the spot where Adi Shankaracharya meditated. The trek up through the jungle is exhilarating and the aura envelopes all in a mysterious bliss.” — The script that ran alongside the photograph on the calendar
Kodachadri is a peak that stands at an elevation of 4,406 ft. It is declared a natural heritage site. In the early 19th Century Lewin Bentham Bowring, who served as Commissioner of Mysore between 1862 and 1870, records that Kodachadri is “clothed with splendid forests, and the ascent is very steep indeed in one place near foot….The view from the top of the hill, which has a bluff appearance from a distance, though it is as sharp as a knife, in reality, is very fine, commanding a long stretch of great Ghat range, a considerable portion of Canara (Kanara), and a wide view over Malnad.” — Wikipedia
Our mission was to capture - this epicentre of nature and spirituality.
We drove off one early morning in a car stuffed with camera equipment, including the drone in an aluminium “tough box”. As we cut off the highway and drove up towards the hills, the scenery quickly transformed from farmlands cut by rivers to a thick tropical rainforest.
After an hour or so we had reached the base of foothills and quickly swapped our car for an antiquated Willy’s Jeep that Guru had pre-arranged. The road ahead was extremely treacherous, a place where only 4-wheel drives and nerves of steel can go! The vehicle in front of me was not just a 2-wheel drive, but it also looked like it had already lived-out a 100 years, with its other two wheels ready to fall off.
I noticed the tyres were worn out smooth, with a few traces of any threads. And as if to distract my growing anxiety, Guru excitedly pointed out the hazy hilltop in the distance — our end destination.
We all jumped into this contraption, trusting our lives to a rather enthusiastic driver — a rough dark local youth who sported even darker Raybands.
In life, some experiences cannot be illustrated in words, and one shouldn’t attempt. (In this case, watch the video below). The ride up was nerve-racking and precarious at the very least. After an hour of negotiating the treacherous mud track that sported some ridiculous inclines, we reached the top.
Throughout this mud splattered journey our driver kept up a steady conversation with Guru, who was sitting at the back. Turning around multiple times, this fellow seemed to show little care to track ahead.
He claimed that among the hundreds of daily trips that shuffled pilgrims up, there was never a single accident! The Goddess of the hills protected them. Amen to that! And there’s always a first.
Once on top, I had a newfound sense of admiration for this battered old vehicle. Relentlessly chugging its way over all obstacles, with an air of casualness, it had outperformed itself beyond expectations.
I am sure now, that fancy 4-wheel SUV’s were meant only for skill-lacking city dwellers. And if they ever decide to hit a mud track in a silly bout of machoism, would require constant forgiveness (both mental and physical) from the Goddess.
We made base camp in an old Dak Bungalow and scampered up the rest of the 1000 feet to the top on foot. Crossing the last clump of the stunted high altitude Shola forest, we emerged on a barren plateau. Perched on the west corner was Sarvajna Peeth, the small rock temple.
In my excitement I ran past the rest and was suddenly faced with a breathtaking view — miles of jungle-clad hills, golden plains in the distance and further out a foggy trace of the ocean– it was like a benediction.
The stone temple had a sense of foreboding mystery to it. Seemed like a time machine, giving us a peek into humankind’s early prehistory.
Though eager to explore its small interiors, we approached with a sense of reverence, taking off our shoes we bowed down in the act of worship, pleading for permission to shoot on sacred soil.
With permission granted and sprinkled with magical grace, we set our mechanical bird free. The drone flew up, disappearing into rays of golden light that was fading fast.
We shot late into the evening, and I remember it was a no-moon night. And as the chilled air currents drifted up and on the plateau, the Milky Way cut the night sky like a gleaming river of light, forming the perfect backdrop to the now dark silhouette of the temple.
Climbing back down those ravines in the dark was another story. We bumped into a large deer that initially challenged us. And then we almost lost the drone as it tumbled and fell among the boulders of a dried river bed. Thanks to its strong-box we were able to retrieve it back in one piece.
Shooting still photographs with drones comes with its own set of intricacies. Drones are primarily meant to shoot video, and it is easy to get carried away with all the motion and scale that it inherently transfers. So consuming is the grandeur of scale and the rapidity of perspective shifts, that hitting the still-capture button at the right time, calls for an incredible mix of awareness and foresight.
The light of Kapu. Digital reconstruction.
The script reads — Kapu is a beautiful lighthouse that adorns the Arabian coast. Kapu’ in Tulu means to wait. Built-in 1901 this beautiful lighthouse stands 89ft tall, upended on a rather large rock and surrounded by an inky blue ocean. Its light still patiently guides sailors down the south Kanara coast.
I think of photography as a magical rectangular frame, inside which you tell your story. The secret of an excellent composition lies in recognising the relationship between the geometry of this space and the positive limitation of the frame.
If there were no boundaries, it would be impossible to frame. This rectangular space helps you focus your thoughts, furnish a natural stage to place your subject, eventually creating a visual composition you call a photograph.
It takes a certain level of awareness to understand and embrace this philosophy. But once you get it, your ability to create strong emotional pieces of art will drastically improve.
I think of this as a “Natural Crop Tool.”
When Guruduth read the script, he decided to shoot with an SLR rather than the drone. The challenge here was to capture details of the lighthouse and the massive rock on which it stands.
The essence of a lighthouse is in its rotating beam of light, which was possible to capture only after dark. The lack of light and want of detail forever torments a lensman.
We overcame this by doing multiple exposures — Placing the camera at one fixed position, a series of shots were taken between 3:00 pm till 8:00 pm at night. The 3 pm to 6 pm shots gave us enough of light to capture the details of the rock, lighthouse, ocean, etc, while post 7 pm we only focused on the beam from the tower.
In post-production, switching between Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, we overlayed over thirty, carefully selected images (from the hundreds of exposures we made). The next step was digitally painting in the details through a process of superimposing and masking until we composed the master shot as we had envisioned it.
This method of undestructive image editing helped reconstruct the vivid details from multiple long exposures. The result as you can see was magical. (Image 04)
Step 04 — Post-production — selection, colour corrections, designing, paper, packaging, printing.
The two weeks of hardcore shooting left us physically tired but mentally supercharged. Ahead of us laid the task of sifting through thousands of images and then cropping, cleaning and colour correcting.
When filtering through images, it is essential to have a particular amount of discipline. And control that insatiable urge to tinker with individual shots. Your primary focus should be to identify the right composition that aligns itself the entire story, creating an emotional rhythm.
Once we had the necessary 13 shot selection in place (13 shots = 12 shots + 1 cover shot), we spend the week systematising, discussing, shuffling, rearranging, and printing out the entire shot sequence. And for a holistic view, we laid them all out on the floor.
The form slowly started to emerge, each tagline and descriptive text fell into place. (We had a small paragraph of text running with each photograph that explained the history and significance of each shot).
The cover photograph of the calendar was undisputable; its stunning human element challenged the user to take-on the calendar. It naturally embodied the master tagline, amplifying it — Change the way you Live, Work & Play. (Image 05)
When it came to colour correcting large image sequences, Adobe Lightrooms batch processing was a boon. Each sequence we shot had anywhere between 200–800 images. By copying attributes from the colour corrected master and then applying it to the rest of the RAW image sequence, it speeded up the process. Although, the final shots still had to be taken into Photoshop to be composited.
Through this constant interplay between Lightroom and Photoshop, we pushed forward through the stacks of RAW files. I must confess that working with Guru; I gained a whole new insightful perspective on the non-destructive method of image editing.
Today software can transform a photograph radically. In the guise of colour correction, it is easy to get carried away — you may make a harmless start by cranking up some blue skies, and add some fake clouds, then saturate the green fields, so on and so forth. Once you start, it becomes difficult to decide when and where the manipulations should stop. These distortions sever the bond with originality, and consequently with the photograph. You can always tell the difference when you see a manipulated lie.
We had a base rule — colour correct an image to a point wherein it brings out the original natural state of the picture that we saw. By all means, colour-correct, crank it up a bit to compensate for deficiencies that the camera could not capture.
The future of photography has shifted towards software. And software is always hungry; our phone cameras are now shooting incredible pictures, megapixels are on the increase and metadata keeps track of everything. With a tweak of a slider, the entire structure of a photograph transforms, exposures, colour tones, saturation, vibrancy. Its remarkable, imagination can now go everywhere.
This shift could become uncomfortable for folks who stay invested in the old. Transiency is the reality of life, it needs to be acknowledged, if not embraced.
Technology, if used prudently can set your art free.
The design of the calendar layout had begun parallelly and I wanted a simplistic design layout, minimalistic in every nature. We were determined to limit the elements and complexity of the design.
The primary design challenge was shape and form. To have something that would sit well on a table, — it was meant to be a desktop calendar. The ergonomics were an interplay between a size that would do justice to the powerful images and yet subtle enough in form to avoid becoming a distraction. We decided on an A4 size — in horizontal format. It also helped prevent wastage of paper in the final print runs.
The font was predecided from the start, my new favourite — Colfax. Its form (both textual and numeric) are genuinely simple, yet elegant. The dates were laid out in neat rows and columns. Staying away from any additional linework, borders, dividers, we deliberated upon every design component and questioned the function of every pixel.
The only extra design element allowed was a weather icon. The weather in Udupi is reasonably predictable; it ranges from sunny, very sunny to unbearably sunny. The icon added a hint of digitalness to the whole composition. (Image 06 above)
Digital printing was an option, but the limitations of paper, textures and quality were most unappealing. On previewing a few lifeless digital samples, we rejected the idea outright. The final manifestation of print is on paper and any comprise here would be detrimental. We decided to go in for conventional 4colour printing, with a run of 1500 exclusive copies.
With such inspirational photography and iconic stories, the intent of the calendar was not to last just for a year but to transcend into a time stamp, a reference point for prosperity, what folks could show to their grandchildren. Pictured accounts of how immensely beautiful their land was.
I hope this would not be the case and this beauty lasted forever. But like a receding hairline, I see the green disappear to brown and then to the ugliness of modern habitation.
Today, some of the places we had photographed are already threatened with impending destruction.
The decision to print in 4 colour had given rise to multiple choices in paper and texture. There is a thin but definite line between abundances and choices. The latter resulted in many sleepless nights.
It is complicated to judge how a particular type of paper will look and feel when composed into the final quantity — in this case, a calendar.
Volume tends to amplify the minute — certain textures may look great on a single sheet, but when repeated over many instances/pages may become a distraction and sometimes even an irritant.
Eventually, our printer, who had then become an integral part of the team, decided on a pure white sheet of Japanese crafted paper. It sported an extremely delicate texture, which felt great and had a promised to replicate our images beautifully in ink.
To be a 100% sure we would proof on the original paper itself. The final printing to be produced in 6 colour — 4 with an addition of 2 special colours.
A month had passed, and we were now getting extremely close to our final print deadline. Our first set of proofing had given reasonably satisfactory results. The packaging of the calendar was the last design function left, which I believe rests in the realm of craft.
Starting with the iPhone, Apple had defined the unboxing experience, and we all know how effective this was in launching a finely managed expectation. It became a fundamental touch point, a personal connection, a benchmark to strive for, if not to imitate.
Working closely with my design team we crafted various mockups. Drawing inspiration from a humble matchbox we created a final design that elegantly unboxed one fold at a time, providing just enough of cognitive charge to keep the suspense going. (Figure 07)
I must confess that my worst nightmares arose from proofreading. Repetitive and painful blows can be delivered from these hidden quarters. We kept finding spelling and grammar mistakes right until the very end. Finally, desperateness took me beyond our strained copywriters. We had a colleagues mother who was an English teacher proofread it. Pointing out a few mistakes, she sealed it, putting it to rest.
Step 06 — Reaching out to the thousands. Digital Media and the After Glow
At last, the final set of print files were all shipped out to the printers. It gave us all some mixed feelings — a sense of relief along with newfound anxiety. For the first time in the entire flow of things, we had no direct control over the process. We just had to have faith in our printer. An endless wait for the next two weeks.
With the printing underway, the adrenaline rush we had experienced for the past 3 to 4 weeks seemed to subside. And this brought about a certain amount of stillness and a growing sense of awareness. We had reached a point where the intent — “to make this timeless” had become the most critical point of focus.
While the calendar would work as a physical artefact reaching out to a limited 1500 people, we required a wider audience. The need for a digital property would not only satisfy reach but also bring a distinct pragmatic value to the entire experience — wherein our users could explore details, enjoy an enhanced experience through video. We could also provide information that would encourage them to visit these places. And if they genuinely wanted to change the way they Live, Work & Play, we needed to be a practical guide, a call-to-action.
The website would be the horse we send back — a digital, practical, interactive guide taking our story across the finish line.
The loads of shortlisted images and footage that never made it into the calendar had a new online purpose. To make this happen, I needed to weave everything in a logical flow. Using the tagline and our previous storyboard as inspiration, we crafted out the website into three primary sections — Live, Work & Play. (Image 08)
We then curated relevant content for the three segments. For example, the “Live” section was based on amenities, lifestyle, medical facilities and we threw in a PDF relocation guide-book you could download. The “Work” section focused on job opportunities.
For the “Play” section, we decided on starting with a short 60sec film. We had also shot volumes of videos along with the stills. The 4k footage was stunning and using the calendar sequence as the storyboard I cut the movie in Apple iMovie.
A useful editing insight here — For a one-of-use, I found Adobe premiere somewhat clunky. It is probably a great tool if you were using it for a complex production. For a quick edit, including storyboarding, colour correction and sound, iMovies powered the way through. It felt like Apple had taken the heart of Final Cut Pro, trimmed it down to basics and secretly planted it into iMovie. Seamless and easy to use, I cut the film within a week. (Watch the video below)
Some amount of social media marketing was used to give the entire campaign some initial traction. I wanted marketing to be self-driven, organically viral. It’s important to understand the raw potential of “word of mouth”. Ancient civilisations have passed on their entire knowledge through this personal process, and it is still the most relevant to today’s online context.
When personal recommendations come into play, there is no spamming; the right people get to see to the right thing. It may not get you the numbers, but your conversion ratio will be high. Almost working as an implicit filter, weeding out irrelevant traffic.
The Summary
I am going to spare you the euphoric details and summarise the way summaries should be. The calendars printed beautifully, and the packaging unboxed just as envisioned. We had snail-mailed the calendars directly out to all our employees, shipping them directly to their home addresses. This gave their parents and folks at home an opportunity to know and experience the beautiful story of where we work.
Among all the social channels, WhatsApp rocked, the video went super viral in the first week itself. Handwritten letters of prominent personalities kept pouring in. From educationalist to government officials, they all wrote-in expressing the fact that we were the first to document these natural monuments in such visual beauty. Prosperity would benefit. And I hope they do.
In hindsight, a coffee table book could have been a better medium.
Our clients on receiving the calendars were ecstatic. Praise Tweets and Facebook posts found their way home. On the whole, it may have been brief, but seemed like a long journey, covering uncountable miles. And some of them very emotional. It was indeed an Act of Faith, and we tasted the sweet essence of success. Strangely it felt incomplete.
2018- and almost a year and a half have passed, back in Udupi and I walked into a small bank to get my KYC issue sorted out. The office is in a rather ancient building. They had just opened for business, and I was the first and only person around. The 10 o’clock sunlight poured over the clerk’s desk and on it was something I recognised, it was our calendar, still alive and kicking.
After the clerk had finished with my KYC, I casually asked her about the out-dated calendar on the desk. Looking straight back, she said it was her favourite offline screensaver. The calendar cheered her up, a reminder of the 12 places she needed to visit.
For her, it’s a personal travel bucket-list. For me, a glimpse of timelessness.
It felt complete.
Additional Credits.
Photography-
Guruduth Kamath
Rajesh
Creative & Distribution rights of all image are reserved.
Copyright@Live, Work & Play 2018
