SVASA LIFE: THE SEARCH
Editorial Design, Illustration
For the first issue of Svasa Life's 6th Volume, titled The Search, Praxis continued its ongoing role as the magazine's editorial design partner, whilst also taking on three sets of illustrations developed for individual stories within the issue, working closely with the Svasa Life editorial team and photographer Rahul Manral (whose work anchors the cover and the section dividers), to translate each narrative into image.
Illustrations for 'The Patient Vertical' are built around muted greys and beige that echo the starkness of the terrain, with cutout mountains moving across the spreads to trace the verticality of the climb and highlight each profiled climber's particular expertise, keeping the reader's eye in a state of constant, deliberate ascent.
A story on music festivals across India layers crowd imagery, flashing light and motion blur in bright blues and reds set against deep black, conjuring the disorientation and pull of being inside a festival crowd, where colour and blur do the work of sound.
Goa is illustrated through a mix of graphic forms and collage, bringing out the objects that hold the place together, from oyster shell windows to the round, fluffy softness of poee bread, letting the city emerge through its textures rather than its more familiar sights.
Across the issue, the design held its usual clarity whilst making room for each story to find its own visual register. It is this range, held together within one system, that the issue was ultimately built to carry.
