Images & Words: Visual Strategies for Anti-Caste Narratives

Date : Friday, 5th April

Time : 6 PM onwards

Free Entry, Registration Mandatory

Since 2020, the collaboration between the anti-caste book house Panther’s Paw Pubications and design studio November has created waves in the publishing and design worlds for their bold and often experimental output. Being that PPP is an independent publisher with radical leanings, Yogesh was able to take risks with design and production that larger houses would balk at. This provided a springboard for November to engage with design, typography and design narratives that challenge the rigid rules often present in publishing. They published a book with no typography on the cover at all, for example — and the gamble seems to have worked: audiences have responded with enthusiasm with PPP becoming a household name within the Ambedkarite circles and Yogesh breaking out into the mainstream with his memoir “Water in a Broken Pot” with Penguin Random House (also designed by November).

Yogesh will speak with Shiva Nallaperumal (co-founder of November) about the concepts, processes and stories behind their collaboration touching on graphic design, typography, visual experimentation and visual culture of the anti-caste movement at large.

Yogesh Maitreya is a writer, poet, translator and publisher. He is the founder and editor of Panther’s Paw Publication that is dedicated to publishing literature by Dalit-Bahujan writers (in English and as translations from other Indian languages). He is the author of Flowers on the Grave of Caste (2019), a collection of short stories, Singing/Thinking Anti Caste (2021), a book of essays on music and memories, and Ambedkar 2021 (2021), a book of prose poetry.

Shiva Nallaperumal is a Graphic Designer, Typeface Designer and co-founder (with Juhi Vishnani) of the plural design practice November. November has worked with a wide range of clients on Identity Systems, Printed matter, Interactive media, Installations and custom typefaces. As a typeface designer he has published with Commercial Type, Typotheque, Grilli Type, Bold Monday, Lost Type and Public Type. In 2017 he became the first graphic designer to be included in Forbes India’s 30 Under 30 and in 2019 was inducted into the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI).