Tadka Trail · Research

The working out.

The studies, the iterations and the parts that did not survive. The case study is the argument; this is the evidence behind it.

Learning the language

Four folk art forms

Reference sheet on Bhil art showing dots and simple geometric human and animal forms — Bhil: dots, geometric figures

Reference sheet on Mandana art showing white chalk and rice paste motifs painted over red earth — Mandana: walls and floors, white on red earth

Reference sheet on Bhilala art, a mix of Gond and Bhil styles with religious and ritual symbols — Bhilala: Gond and Bhil, ritual symbols

Reference sheet on Pithora painting showing horses, animals and deities in bold colour on tribal home walls — Pithora: horses and deities, bold colour

Drawing it by hand

Grid paper first

Pencil pattern study on grid paper of a tiger surrounded by folk motifs — Tiger

Two pencil pattern studies on grid paper showing a bowl of hot poha and a kettle of chai, each labelled in Hindi among sun, leaf and border motifs — Poha, Indore

Two pencil pattern studies on grid paper showing jalebi spirals with birds and leaves, and a samosa set against a sun and stepped motifs, both labelled in Hindi — Jalebi

Every pattern was drawn on grid paper before it was drawn on a screen. The grid is the same one the motifs are built on, so the digitised version inherits the spacing rather than approximating it.

Sketchbook page of mandala rosettes drawn in red ink, testing radial symmetry — Rosettes, in red

Sketchbook page of circular pattern studies drawn in blue ballpoint — Circles, in ballpoint

Sketchbook page of folk motifs redrawn as flat black line patterns — Motifs flattened to line

Sketchbook page of finished pattern tiles in black and white, ready to digitise — Tiles, ready to digitise

Digitised pattern swatches in black and white, tiled at several scales — Digitised swatches

A full sheet of the digitised pattern tiled as a repeat, with border variants beneath it — Tiled as a repeat

Lino and ink

Cutting it by hand

The mark was cut into lino and printed by hand before it was trusted as a vector. Ink behaves differently to a screen. It fills, it skips, it presses unevenly. Every one of these pulls is a different result from the same block.

Lino blocks of the jharokha inked in orange, green and black, with pulled prints beside them

Hand-pulled block prints of the words TARKA TRAILS in heavy black ink

A sheet of repeated TARKA TRAILS block prints at varying pressure and rotation

Sketchbook page of the jharokha cut into lino, block and pulls side by side

Scroll sideways →

The system

Kept deliberately small

First attempts, by hand

Both scripts, on grid

Stacked and set

Sketchbook page pinning the palette against a printed stamp reference — Palette against a stamp

Wordmark, Devanagari and Latin

Structure

Board, fold, card

Sketchbook page of net sketches with a folded paper model beside them — Nets, on paper

A printed dieline flat with the pattern band positioned across it — The flat, positioned

The maroon pack printed flat before cutting and scoring — Printed before cutting

A white mockup with rope handle and orange band, built to test the grip — Handle tested in white

Flat greyboard packaging prototype cut and scored by hand before printing — Cut and scored by hand

What did not work

Kept on purpose

A rejected green packaging layout, annotated in the sketchbook with the words experiments failed — Experiments failed: the sketchbook page, unedited

Two white card mockups standing on a desk, proportions wrong and unresolved — Proportions, wrong

A peel strip tested on a black pack, the tear line landing in the wrong place — The peel, in the wrong place

A black packaging direction abandoned before the green and maroon were settled — The black direction, dropped

I also found that I trust a mark differently once I have cut it into lino and printed it badly a few times. What survives ink is not the same as what survives a screen. I did that after the illustration was already drawn. Next time I would do it first. The honest gap is that I designed this for international students missing home, and the only student I checked it against was myself. I know what I missed. I do not know what someone from Kerala or Assam would have missed, and I never asked. That is the part I would change. The other risk I could not fully resolve is the line between drawing on a culture and flattening it into decoration. Four folk art forms, one state, one window. The further the work travels from the people it came from, the easier it is for the motifs to become a style. Getting the story cards specific to a region and a dish was the only defence I found against that, and it is the reason they matter more than the illustration does.

Back to the case study

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