Finally someone came out and said it.
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/art-culture/kabhi-here-kabhi-there

And now for some beautiful-but-gratuitous bike porn.

The brand new Classic 350/500. Order yours today (because it takes 6 weeks to deliver).

W+K Exp curator-at-large Alice Ciccolini with Peter Nagy of Nature Morte.

India’s top fashionistas graced the occasion…

There were some unwanted side-effects.

Beers were courtesy of Stella Artois – now available at your local Theka.

Yes, it’s that time of the year again and W+K Racing’s five rally cars and five bikes will take on 3,500 kms of rugged terrain – sandy dunes, mud, rocks – in the 2010 Desert Storm. It’s an off-road endurance race with equally tough-sounding competitive section names like Bad Max, Nuclear Zone, Ground Zero and Quake Zone. So, best of luck to the team. Follow the team on twitter and Facebook as they roll out of Camp Tropic of Cancer at 0430 hrs and drive their way into Leg 4 of the race.

Here’s also the video of W+K Racing in action at the Raid de Himalaya 2009.

For those who missed the late eighties in South Delhi, here’s a quick recap of life in GK-1 (Greater Kailash, part one), a neighbourhood that was once the stronghold of prosperous punjabi society. Dinner parties happened in big, plush drawing rooms. The food was inevitably heavy, but outstanding. It was considered good form to shout ‘Verry Good Yaar‘ if you liked the tikkas, and it was considered crap form to eat dinner before guzzling six large whisky-sodas and puffing your way through half a pack of marlboro lights  (thankfully, nobody went ‘gymming’ in those days). The conversation centred around property/business/cars/the opposite sex, in that order. After dinner, the younger crowd would abandon the uncles and aunties and head to one of the few ‘discs’ to work off some testosterone. Ghungroo was the most famous ‘disc’ of all (people called it Ghungroo’s, just as they call Olive Olive’s today), and a good night out usually ended in a drunken brawl. Today, G.K.1’s residents have deserted their drawing rooms for wood-and-chrome lounges and Mediterranean resto-bars. But, if you’re lucky, a favourite aunt or old college friend might still invite you for a winter barbeque in GK-1, or GK-2 even. Make damn sure you go – but don’t forget the Alka Seltzer.

Sevain (vermicelli milk pudding to our foreign friends), served cold – fantastic.

The common or garden GK-1 ‘Pomarian’. Slowly being replaced by Pugs and Apsos.

Mandatory Johnny Black – with lots of soda and ice, chief!

The lads step out for a smoke and show each other their novelty lighters (but not in front of the elders).

Tikkas on the fire. Very good, yaar.

28°33_18_n, 77°14_14_e on an Ovi map.

Typographica is the first exhibition of the design journal of the same name. Groundbreaking when first published in 1949 and now considered legendary, Typographica showcased the very best in worldwide visual arts. The journal was founded by a 25 year-old Herbert Spencer, who went on to become one of the most influential British communication designers and typographers. The exhibition is curated by Rick Poynor, founder of Eye magazine and author of the book Typographica, published in 2002 by Princeton University Press. The exhibition launched at London’s Kemistry Gallery as part of September’s London Design Festival and has been brought to India by W+K Exp.

Alongside Typographica, W+K Exp celebrates India’s own groundbreaking testament to the power of the word, Seminar magazine. Celebrated over its 50 years for bringing “opposing viewpoints within the covers of a single magazine”, this exhibition focuses on the magazine’s unequivocal support of typography. Unheard of in the publishing world, Seminar has appeared every month since its inception with a purely typographic cover. Curated by its current designer, Akila Seshasayee, and owner editor Malvika Singh, the exhibition will present the best covers from 50 years of the magazine.

Prints from both exhibitions will be on sale.

An exhibition of installation art by contemporary Pakistani artists at the excellent Devi Art Foundation in Gurgaon www.deviartfoundation.org. When it comes to Pakistan, people’s reactions vary from scotch-fuelled, armchair aggression to weepy, smoked-salmon liberalism. This exhibition should help sort that out. These beautiful installations make you feel what the folks across the border feel, and it hurts. There’s a particularly cool piece of work on the first floor – dismantled machine gun parts, suspended alongside surgical instruments. You don’t need to be an intellectual to get the point.

Great design is one of the interesting side-effects of massive social change. When people start rediscovering their identities or defining new ones, they need symbols. That is exactly what’s happening in India, and we are happy to be contributing our One Rupee’s worth to the effort. Here are some of the symbols we’ve designed recently for various projects. Some of them are available in sticker form at our gallery www.wkexp.com. If you have any new Indian symbols of your own, mail us some and we’ll display them here (only if they’re nice, of course).

New take on the Azad Hind Fauj’s ‘Jai Hind’ symbol.

Leopards still roam the hill state of Uttarakhand. Grrr.

Badging that we created for the A1 Team India Grand Prix car.

‘Thambi’, designed by us for HCL technologies. The ancient Indian symbol of enlightenment, combined with the symbol for everyman. Represents the transformation of Indian IT from commodity trader to enlightened enterprise (apologies for the pretentious rationale, couldn’t help it).

When we set up our office in a run-down shopping complex, we had to choose between using the scary public toilets, or building a private loo. We decided to rebuild the toxic public toilet, and hoped that outsiders would appreciate the effort rather than abuse the premises (as is the norm). Interestingly, the general public are treating the toilets with respect – which means it is possible to have a nice community toilet in Delhi. Now we’re rebuilding the one on the floor above us, because it’s not expensive or difficult to do (it takes approx. Rs 2.75L/US$6,000 and 21 days to completely renovate two toilets). The prosperous-looking companies on that floor don’t seem to share our enthusiasm for toilet-building.

Before.

‘Drinking alcohol is strictly forbidden in this area – by order, S.H.O. (police).’

After.