Add colour to the black-and-yellow taxi at this workshop

Sign up for a two-day workshop that lets you revamp a taxi and get your portfolio reviewed by a panel of renowned artists

Next weekend, if you drop by Soul Patch, a creative space in Lower Parel, you will spot budding designers, from different corners of India, engrossed in sketching seat covers and adding hues to imaginative motifs on computer software; all of this will be routed towards the redesign of kaali-peelis. These are part of a two-day design workshop organised by IndieFolio, an online network for creative professionals, and Taxi Fabric, that uses taxis as a canvas for design.

Sameer Kulavoor

“In today’s digital world, designers have limited options to express themselves and showcase their work. Taxi interiors are great means to share their work with the masses and at the same time, beautify taxis too,” says 22-year-old Shashank Jogani, co-founder and COO of IndieFolio. Sanket Avlani, curator of Taxi Fabric, adds, “The Mumbai taxi is a cultural icon. Over 55,000 kaali-peelis ply daily, each picking up and dropping over 40 people. So, we decided to connect designers with these taxi drivers.”

A taxi redesigned by Taxi Fabric

Call for entries
Open to both students and professionals, the workshop will feature 24 designers, selected from the pool of entries by an in-house team. If you are keen to participate, create a profile with your portfolio on the IndieFolio portal before August 28, the last date for submissions. “The selection will be based on overall creativity, presentation of work and (online) community response. Till now, we have received applications from over 25 cities, including Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Delhi, Cochin, Amritsar and Vadodra,”
says Jogani.

Sanket Avlani. Curator, Taxi Fabric

Meet the experts
On the first day, the selected participants will be divided into three teams for redesigning three black-and-yellows. They will be mentored by artists Mayur Mengle, Pavithra Dikshit and Aniruddh Mehta, all of whom have designed their own taxis through Taxi Fabric. “The participants need to carry a laptop and a software of their choice. The redesign will be based on different themes selected in collaboration with the taxi drivers, depending on the story they want to convey through their vehicle. The designs will be printed overnight and fabricated on the taxis the next day,” informs Jogani.

The organisers have roped in a panel of experts including visual artist Sameer Kulavoor of Bombay Duck Designs, Kunaal Anand from Kulture Shop, Madhuvanthi Senthilkumar of The Postbox and Varsha Patra of Homegrown to host a panel discussion and conduct portfolio reviews for the designers on the second day. They will also be involved in selecting one winning participant, who will get a chance to design his/her own taxi in collaboration with Taxi Fabric.

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