A zine series studies the many sorts of sameness in life while trying to crack that secret to ‘just be’
Art from the zine. PIC COURTESY/SANA JAVERI KADRI
Sometimes chaotic, otherwise tedious — our every day often surfaces as an epithet for comfort. But what propels the daily? Is it a perfunctory wish we wake up to? Is it the creaking of rusty doors and windows, the smell of tempered curry leaves, the shrill gathering at the grocer’s or a kindly smile from a neighbour? Typographer Zeenat Kulavoor says that although everydays can seem tiring, no two everydays are identical. The difference, variety and contradiction of impact in routine actions encouraged the team at Bombay Duck Designs to conceive and create Everyday — a zine series that was first launched in 2020.
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The design agency recently brought out their third volume, which they had been working on throughout the pandemic. Kulavoor explains, “We have worked on zines even earlier. In 2010, we published a zine that witnessed the coming together of 12 artists. But with Everyday, we wanted to take the purpose of the format beyond art and incorporate text, too. The idea was to look at regularity from unalike perspectives. Although the theme for the series remains the same, it’s inspiring to see the varying outcomes.” The designer adds that the zine was born of the combined efforts of herself, her artist brother, Sameer Kulavoor, and writer Phalguni Desai. Every volume has a horizontal leaf running across and around the cover with “everyday” printed in different languages and scripts. The white cover sits ensconced in light green, powder pink and blue covers. And the inside pages take readers around an indulgent walkway of words and images.
Zeenat and Sameer Kulavoor
In their latest volume, the art is meditatively integrated around shapes — circles, ovals, squares and rectangles. But mostly circles. At one point, words prod us to think how the graph followed the balloon, and the balloon followed the circle, which records a moment of action. Kulavoor draws our attention to another unique but strange feature of the book — the words are not related to the images. An uninitiated reader will notice that abstractness but wouldn’t find it confusing. The zine weaves a space for spontaneous conversations and thoughts, where readers happen to spin their own tales.
Phalguni Desai
While the first two volumes were completed in six to eight months, the third edition took two years because of the challenges of the pandemic. The agency is currently focussed on putting out at least two more volumes by the end of this year. Every edition orchestrates a collaboration between an artist and a writer. Everyday part three contains drawings by Vishwa Shroff and Katsushi Goto. The words are by Rose Van Mierlo. Since the zine series is rare and speculative, we wonder if the creation process takes the target audience into account. “That concern comes in much later. Not while working on the zine,” Kulavoor adds.
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