Leaf Year 2016
How would you design a calendar for your hometown?
Exploration began when we were asked this question in our first week of information design and visualization module @ NID, Bangalore.
A calendar which captures the town/city’s true essence, unique attributes, and its background. Further into considering meaningful metaphors, visual semiotics, and narrative of time itself.
My hometown is Shivamogga.
“ Male Nadu ” of the western ghats, filled with green lush of nature, has thousands of years of ancient, rich, unique culture, and blessed with literates, poets and writers. Place of inspiration for all form of art.
In search of my inspiration for the calendar, I went on a walk and stumbled upon a leaf.
As I observed, I found the form and the metaphor of the calendar in it.
Not only the leaf reminded me of Shivamogga’s green nature, It’s cellular structure was a visual element of the calendar itself.
I wrote some of the very initial thoughts about the narrative of time…
What if the gigantic universe was a forest, With infinite trees in it,
What if our planet earth was just another tree in it?
A tree which was born, A tree which will die,
A tree full of leaves, falling, growing.
As the earth revolves the sun, a leaf is fallen.
Count the number of fallen leaves, Does the tree grieves?
Or grows another leaf? In some belief?
What significance of those, Who marks their birthdays and holidays?
And their office leaves on the falling leaves.
Months of the year have been presented similar to the way a leaf grows. symbolising the feeling of not knowing what would happen.
Apart from detailing the dates, I tried to plot the dates of local festivals in certain villages and temples. Since Shivamogga is proud of it’s writers I plotted their birthdays in this calendar as a personal tribute to them.
The colours of the months are inspired by the colours of a leaf, in specific seasons of the year.
It was a splendid week exploring the metaphors and meaning related to leaves and designing a calendar for my favorite place on the planet.
