Voyazio - a typography project

Voyazio is a typography poster project on Instagram, where I did a daily poster challenge for around 2 years. The experience was amazing and it taught way more than I could ever imagine. It even led to few other interesting collaboration projects, one of them being 46pgs graphic magazine.

Project Type

Personal Side Project

My Role

Graphic Design, Typograhy, Design Direction

Duration

2 Years

Overview

It started in 2018, when I used to do a lot of visual design experimentation in the form of illustrations, calligraphy, layouts, compositions etc. That was the time when I also got inspired by a lot of artists & designers on instagram who were doing daily design challenges, and I thought of starting one as well.

With a lot of courage, I started the project with one typography poster every day, and I didn’t even realise how 2 years passed by. In the beginning, I just started it without thinking much. It was just so exciting & cool, to create these pieces everyday and I was totally in love with the process. Although I knew I would learn a lot about typography & composition on the way, but could never imagine to what extent it could grow.

The journey

Here is a glimpse of the overall journey with the posters, through some key milestones

The beginning phase

This is where I just started and had no idea what I was doing. But every shape created or every word placed, was filled with so much enthusiasm & excitement. I was mostly doing a lot of experiments with the help of a bunch of references & inspirations from other great Artists & Designers.

The exploration phase

This is where I was kind of getting the hang of the process and slightly more comfortable with adding more layers of complexity & exploring new layouts, compositions, balance etc. even though I was still quite unsure of what I was doing. It was fun though.

The go-rogue phase

This is where I was getting better with speed, detailing & overall visual composition of the layouts. This was the time when I was starting to learn how to see rhythms, balance & harmony in real life objects, places & scenaries. I was taking a lot of pictures around, of almost anything that had an interesting sense of aesthetics. Film titles were a big inspiration at this point (Notably Kyle Cooper's work among others), and a whole array of expressive typography & graphic design works, notably from David Carson, Raygun Magazine, Tomy Lee (AGI) and so many others.

This was also the time when I met David Carson in person as well, at a conference in Goa & they talked about graphic design, typography & human emotions. It was quite an unreal experience.

A distinct style phase

This is where I was kind of drifting towards a specific style and was doing more & more radical experiments with it. I wanted to find balance in the middle of an extremely chaotic composition, and it somehow seemed very soothing to me. This is also the time, when I stopped using the go-to safe fonts like helvetica, haas grotesk, garamond etc. and began exploring more & more into lesser known fonts. I started realising that there are no good fonts or bad fonts; every font has a personality & character and its a designer’s job to find the right font for the right kind of subject, similar to a film director casting the right actor for a specific role.

What was learnt?

There is so much that I learnt, that its very hard to point out specific things. But if it has to be summarised in few pointers, then here are top 5 important takeaways.

1. How to be disciplined

Its a no-brainer, when we are doing any challenge which compels us to sit down everyday and do something, over time we’ll learn the art of discipline. And of course its not easy, some days I didn’t feel like, some days I didn’t have time, but still I tried to sit & create something, even if its for 10 mins. And obviously, certain days I defaulted, but not long in a row.

2. How to be confident with imperfection

This one is interesting. It might look great in the hindsight, but initially its very difficult to put out something, that we’re not sure of, and we think what people would say or think, when they see this work (which is far from perfect) and that sort of paralyzes. But the spirit & courage to push against it and publish something even when we know its bad, is something which is remarkable, and certainly this project taught a lot of that stuff.

3. Time management

Well it used to take around 1.5 hrs avg. everyday to create each poster, so obviously time had to be managed very smartly. It was very difficult in the beginning but with time, I understood how to manage and work more efficiently to save a whole bunch of time & effort, especially by creating saved templates, effects, brushes, repositories, which could be tweaked on every poster but didnt have to be created from scratch.

4. Tools & techniques

The technical part is obviously equally important. There are so many things which I didnt know very well in the beginning, like how to create custom brushes in photoshop, crop images efficiently, play with different filters, blending modes, even some basic stuff like keyboard shortcuts etc. So a whole bunch of it had to be learnt during the process, and it made the workflow easier, faster & surely made him a better designer.

5. Finding a distinct voice & style

This happens when we spend a lot of time doing something, like months and years. After that we kind of develop a particular sense & style. Of course its inspired by a thousand other things, but also mixed with our personal elements, which when combined forms an individual style. This is perhaps one of things that came to me towards the end, where it seemed like I had developed my own style.

46pgs magazine

Around mid 2020, the posters got a lot of attention & recognition on Instagram from a lot of people around the world. A lot of projects & collaborations with other artists/designers happened, the most notable being 46pgs graphic magazine.

It started with this super cool guy named Nevio from Croatia who liked my work and style, and we started talking on Instagram DMs.

It began with conversations on graphic design, Vietnam war, Apocalypse Now (the film), heavy metal music etc. and then Nevio said he had an idea for a magazine where it would be all hardcore graphic design from artists across the world. I got hooked instantly.

Shortly after, I decided to do 4 spreads for the magazine for 2 subjects. The first subject was Apocalypse Now (one of my favourite war films of all time, and interestingly it was Nevio’s fav too). The second one was again my favourite heavy metal band of all time - Rammstein. It was more of a tribute to those subjects that I have been in love for a long time. The design & copy was all conceptualized, designed & directed by me. The first issue of the magazine got sold out within months :)

It was one of the most exciting projects I had worked on. I was in total liberty to explore & experiment and go all the way into my own style & visual direction. And the results were quite satisfactory from his point. In the hindsight, it taught me a lot as well.

Along with the 4 spreads, I also created few promotional posters for 46pgs mag, which were again based on the core ideas for the magazine - ‘hardcore format of self expression’, which was again something that I had come up with. In a way it was the same style that I was doing for my posters as well. So, it seemed like fun and never felt like work.

Afterthoughts

This was a very special project for me as it’s quite close to my heart. Probably because I didn’t do it for any financial gains or other motives, but only for the love of it. It grew on me with time & I definitely grew a lot through it. It taught me courage, determination, discipline and most importantly keeping an open mind & to always keep doing the things we love, at least as a side project.

Although this project is still live on instagram, under the account of Voyazio, but it is kept on hold since the covid, as I got busy with other aspects of life & it got difficult to dedicate a few hours everyday. However, some interesting ideas around this project are cooking up, and I might be taking it up pretty soon.

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