Quest for the Chest: A Pop-Up Storybook, By Vinit Shimpi (B.Des 2023-27), December 2024
Storytelling and book design go hand in hand, which engages the audience with multiple sensory elements, allowing visualisation, character formations, and building imaginative mindsets. “Quest for the Chest is an interactive pop-up storybook created as part of an illustration design course project keeping the principles of traditional bookmaking formats and adding the paper engineering methods. The book talks about a young boy, the main protagonist, ‘Aarav,’ who embarks on an adventurous journey through caves, magical islands, villages, portals, and snowy mountains. In his path, he discovers numerous engaging instances, like mysterious treasure maps, treasure hunting objects, and supernatural powers. Blending techniques of narrative design, colour theory, colour interaction, art & illustration, and paper engineering methods to create engaging reading experiences were some of the main objectives of this project. This illustrated project explores narrative design and technical processes involved in bringing the storybook to life, from ideation to final production and assembly. Read More
ROOTS and ROOMS: Migration and Memory, By Ananya Thakur (B.Des 2022-26), December 2024
Roots and Rooms is a pop-up book that explores the complex journey of migration and the emotional aspects attached to displacement. Centering around the journey of three women who have all migrated— whether voluntary, involuntary, or mixed—the book is rooted in understanding home, memory, and belonging. It explores this through the objects that they carry with them. These objects hold immense
emotional value, acting as symbols of continuity of their culture, self, and identity amidst the migration. The book features the stories of three women and their houses before migration and their new homes after. The objects of familiarity and connection were different for different women—some found comfort from their bedsheets, while some had a deep connection to their plants. Read More
Play Paradigms is an open elective offered by the National Institute of Design. The Open Elective is a set of two-week-long multidisciplinary workshops offered to the second-year students of the Bachelor of Design (B.Des.) and the first-year students of the Master of Design (M.Des.) programmes across the three NID campuses in Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, and Bengaluru. I offered an elective on Paper Engineering and Pop-Ups (Fun With Pop-Ups | OE2203) from February 14–25, 2022, for Play Paradigms.
Really delighted to showcase some of the works done by my students. It was presented at the concluding session.
Pop-Up Workshop experience
I feel lucky to have selected this particular elective subject. I have been excited even before the module started, as the idea of being able to recreate something similar to my childhood pop-up book sounds incredibly fun.
However, the sessions turned out even better, to my surprise. We were shown a lot of beautiful books throughout the process. We were inspired to create one ourselves. This was especially effective for me. Also, learning by doing was the key mantra throughout the module. We tried a lot of techniques, which eventually helped us pick just the right ones for our story. Giving a lot of time towards the end to work on our own project was also very understanding.
All in all, it was a very enriching and refreshing experience at the same time.
Thanking you,
Sincerely,
Shruti Roy, MDes
AFD, NID Ahmedabad
Thank you for the amazing workshop. I enjoyed it and learned so many things. I still have a lot to practice and learn about pop-ups. You made the entire two weeks seem very fun, and your way of teaching was easy for me to follow up on too. I could create something very interesting with the limited resources available to me, and that was very satisfying in the end. I hope to see you and work with you soon.
Regards,
SAIPREETHI DURAIRAMAN
Workshop for Gesture Club – ‘Fun with Paper Pop-Ups’
Had a great time in the Pop-Up Workshop with students of different departments of IIT Hyderabad on 12th of November 2021 | Time: 6 pm – 7 pm. Some of the images from the Workshop.
SARAL MASTERCLASS: Wonder World of Pop-ups & Paper Engineering
Conducted a workshop for Dr. Reddy’s Lab on 22nd July 2024, It was fantastic to speak infront of so many enthusiastic and talented bunch both in online and physical mode. The session had lots of engaging discussions and small exercises to understand the core fundamentals of Pop-Up and hands on session to validate the learning process by creating actual working prototypes and models on their own. Thanks to the entire team of Dr. Reddy’s and to all the participants who experimented and explored the medium.
