As you can see, it’s big. Really big.

Size apart, the new issue also features a striking and well observed cover created by our own Reshi Dev.

Doing an issue on Gurgaon was always going to be tricky but we think it has the makings of a rich, surprising and fun read. Take this mini-comic that chronicles the adventures of Haryana Jones, for instance.

Or this story about Gurgaon’s music scene.

There’s also a story titled Gurgaon Style that features the sartorial choices of Gurgaon’s everyday workforce.

And, well, a story on birds.

There’s much, much more in the magazine of course, so go out there and get it. Or just order it from Flipkart here.

Oh, and you can now also see the less glamorous side of magazine making in this rather inky, behind the scenes video.

An interview with IndiGo CEO Aditya Ghosh appeared on the CNN Business Traveller website today. Titled ‘Is ego the reason for India’s airline woes?’, the interview covers everything from said subject to India’s somewhat flexible attitude towards time, all the while revealing great insights on how the airline is run.

“That we are running an airline is incidental. What we set out to do was build a great business.”

There’s more here.

The new Gurgaon issue of Motherland is shaping up quite nicely. In fact, it should hit newsstands real soon.

With a surprise, no less.

All will be revealed soon.

From over 150 applicants, we shortlisted these guys.

This week they’ve been paired and tasked to come up with solutions for real life brand problems and we’re very excited to see what they come up with.

God speed good people. Watch this space for more.

The book is as an excellent guide to ‘advertising for the global youth market’, an area that is so easy to get wrong and so difficult to get right. And King Adz has kindly travelled the world to collect some shining examples.

Plus, he was nice enough to feature some Royal Enfield work.

Get it now.

This appeared in The Economic Times recently, reporting the marked rise of business travellers flying IndiGo. Which really comes as no surprise given how well the airline is run.

Anyway, you can read the whole thing here.

This is Radhika’s shirt with lots of horses.

And this is Annika’s shirt with lots of tigers.

Together, they look like this. We’re not quite sure what they’re doing there but rest assured, they’re fine.

Here’s the film again, in case you’ve missed it.

She’s currently on her sabbatical travelling across India, so it was especially nice of her to stop by and tell us about Portland’s start-up days, tough clients (yes, portland have them too) and her new blog she’s all excited about! Well worth a visit, given her fantastic pictures, like this one she took of all of us here.

As you can probably tell, she’s a lot of fun.

Suits, ties and great dresses marked our ‘Mad Men: The Party’, giving the evening a proper sense of occasion. Also marking the occasion were presentations by all departments to take stock of everything that took place in 2012. Which, as it turned out, everyone seemed quite into.

During the course of the presentations, we went through the work that defined our year along with a lot of promising work that’s in the pipeline. Highlights of the year included our work for Forest Essentials,

Xylys

Dubai based Landmarkshops.com for whom we created everything from identity to tone of voice as well as a campaign that should be out in the coming weeks.

Plus our idents for cleartrip which got considerable airtime and continue to get a fair bit of attention.

As for the party itself, this picture should help you form your own conclusions.

Office crew meets film crew on a chilly Sunday morning in Gurgaon. Ah, the life.

But this wasn’t the only inauguratory gesture of the event.

That’s right. Mathangi Maya Arulpragasam aka M.I.A was there to kick off proceedings as well with what we hear was a pretty spectacular performance on the opening night.

From then on, it was quite obvious that all everyone was talking about was the biennale, with art everywhere you looked.

Apart from the work of street artists, present were the pick of the artists from both India and abroad, exhibiting their work in specially restored spaces, which inevitably gave way to some site-specific installations.

Such as this clever piece by L N Tallur,

this beauty from Ernesto Nesto

and this compelling takeover by Atul Dodiya at Aspinwall House.

Subodh Gupta took on the issue of migration in this beautiful yet slightly unsettling installation titled, er, Untitled.

While Robert Montgomery’s typically poignant writings found a suitable canvas in the more picturesque side of Aspinwall House.

If you’re not already planning a visit, it’s worth reconsidering. It’s a beautiful city with some fantastic food, inspiring art and as this picture illustrates, incredible style.

The Kochi Biennale is on till 13 March 2012. More information on artists, venues and location here

It’s nice to be loved.

Three nights back-to-back in three cities. Heineken Green Room went on the road again last weekend with Messrs. Tiger & Woods and as these pictures might suggest it was plenty of fun.

We’re still trying to shake off this tune.

The mystery men of disco Tiger & Woods are coming to the second edition of the Heineken Green Room (more on it here) After going through a fair few artists, we invited them because no one seemed to know who they are, what they did or even what they looked like! (Google them)

Unsurprisingly, Tiger & Woods are notoriously secretive about their identity. They don’t have a wikipedia page and give very few interviews. So when the chappies at Dazed & Confused managed to get one with them, even they couldn’t help but get all excited about it.

All of which we thought lent itself quite nicely to the question, ‘Is anonymity the new stardom?’ for the Heineken Green Room Sessions, due to take place on the afternoon before the events. And as they clearly demonstrate in the epic Gin Nation (see below), if the music is good, it really shouldn’t matter.

Bring. it. on.

For all of those who couldn’t be there, here’s the video straight from the flight deck.

You may be familiar with the work we did for Indian Air Force (as seen here) to mark its 80 year anniversary.

And since the season of caring and sharing is upon us, we’re giving away these wallpaper-worthy outdoors as, well, wallpapers.

All you have to do is go to this little page, choose from any of the five executions and voila, you can be the proud owner of a dashing, new Indian Air Force wallpaper.

Do you copy?

The first W+K EXP show from our new office opens tomorrow with the office itself a subject of the show. Outside In is a comment on a new globalized India and what it means, with W+K’s old and new offices as fitting examples. The show examines the two contrasting spaces – through some stunning pictures of our earlier office exhibited in thought-out spaces of our shiny, some would say more grown-up office – as a case in point to Robert’s argument.

We recommend you drop by to have a look for yourself. We’ve seen some of the work and it all looks promising.

Robert E. D’Souza is an artist, designer and academic at Winchester School of Art in the UK. He has an international ‘art + research’ practice that overlaps areas of visual art, cultural study and social science in relation to India.

]]> http://www.wkdelhiblog.com/2012/11/16/out-in-at-wk-exp/feed/ 0 http://www.wkdelhiblog.com/2012/11/12/happy-diwali-2/ http://www.wkdelhiblog.com/2012/11/12/happy-diwali-2/#comments Mon, 12 Nov 2012 13:26:32 +0000 TeamEd http://www.wkdelhiblog.com/?p=3563 The Diwali lights are up at W+K and and the office looks duly festive.

We had the traditional puja of course, followed by the not so traditional but time honoured rituals of card playing, harmless gambling, drinking and stuffing ourselves.

Happy Diwali everyone!

For starters, Pushpmala N noted performance artist, graces the cover doing her usual thing.

More treats lay inside of course. Like this story about Professional Mourners in Chennai. Yes, they exist.

Or this amusing piece about boardroom performances.

And because no conversation about performance is complete without mentioning those brave men circling the Maut ka kuan (or well of death), we’ve gone ahead and commissioned a web-special film by Vikas Maurya.

Motherland is available at local newsstands and flipkart.com

The whole thing happened live on the IndiGo Facebook page with real-time updates and the latest, of course, is that we have a winner.

Take a bow Curried Chicken Sub. We salute you for making it through the harshest of food critics. By a narrow margin of 3.

Expect the Curried Chicken Sub and the outright winner in the Veg category, Veg Junglee Sandwich, next time you fly on the one and only IndiGo.

Here’s the new film we just finished for Forest Essentials.

Directed by Paul Minor who’s also responsible for this little epic, the film follows modern day apsaras as they go about the day-to-day business of making some rather nice ayurvedic beauty products.

If you’re heading to the movies this week, you might want to get there a bit early to catch it on the big screen proper as it’s for cinema release only.

Also, Skyfall releases Friday. Just saying.

This is Momo on her last day in the office doing what she does best.

As you can probably tell, she will be missed.

Bye Momo!

This is the new short we released online last week for Royal Enfield’s much awaited highway cruiser Thunderbird 500.

The film sees Sarah, a motorcycling enthusiast, riding with head of design at Royal Enfield, Siva and talking about the many things that went into its making.

Race-driver turned director Skylar Neilson shot the film over two days on the biker-friendly and quite picturesque East Coast Road, as well as parts of Pondicherry.

Film aside, this is also the first time we managed to get our logo on the bike.

Like they say down south, ‘What a beauty!’

Here are some of the other executions.

There’s another campaign coming, so keep an eye out for more heroics!

Design this, design that. But what exactly is design? Farhan Akhtar explains in our new commercial for Xylys that seems to be enjoying a fair amount of airtime at the moment. Shot by Bharat Sikka, the commercial sees Farhan Akhtar tell us about the importance of design (no wobbly tables) and why there’s more to design than just aesthetics. Over to you, Farhan.

While the newspapers bash out headlines about rapes, murders and witless politicians, this ad from Delhi Police tells us that there are policemen out there visiting neighbourhoods, talking to citizens and quietly going about their business.

All of which is aptly summed up with the quite stellar line, ‘The good news you never hear.’

Well done to all involved.

We’ve moved in to our new office and as you can see it’s far from the shiny, cool office you’ve come to expect.

But not to worry, we’re happy to report that it does seem to be getting there.

Needless to say, when we’re ready to show our new office off, we will.

Until then, we must keep calm and…..

That’s what our Fail Harder installation in the studio used to look like.

This is what it looks like now.

So profound.

So what’s the story? Simply put, The India Tube is now part of the Guardian Travel Network. Which means, you’ll now find travel pieces from the Guardian popping up regularly on The India Tube and of course, vice versa.

Similar arrangements have also been made with Mumbai Boss and Wild City, so expect an even richer mix of insightful travel tips, well-considered recommendations and the latest goings-on right here, at your favourite travel blog/zine/thing.

Even aviation experts say it was always going to happen. Read all about it here.

Swiftly dispelling notions of apocalypse and general worldwide doom, this year’s Kochi-Muziris Biennale and India’s first ever biennale is set to kick off on 12/12/12. Like any well regarded Biennale, Kochi will see the pick of the international art community arrive in numbers to exhibit coveted artworks from contemporary artists in India and around the world exhibited in galleries, heritage buildings, public spaces and disused structures in and around the islands of Kochi and Muziris.

Which should be quite a sight given that some of the venues look like this.

Durbar Hall, one of the oldest buildings in Kochi. Built in 1850.

Aspinwall House, a large heritage property in Fort Kochi

The Cochin Club in Kochi. Known to be an exclusive British Men’s Club. Now also open to women and come December, a fair bit of art.

Along with exhibiting art, the biennale will also feature talks from noted artists, seminars, screenings as well as educational activities for schools. The point of course, is to create as much interest in the arts for people both in the artist community and more crucially, for those outside it.

All of this was revealed back in the heady days of the India Art Fair when the art world arrived one evening in the discreet precincts of our very own office. Present were Bose Krishnamachari (Artistic Director)

Riyas Komu (Director of Programmes)

and participating artists including Subodh Gupta. Seen here chatting away with our very own V Sunil.

So block your dates, book your tickets (on IndiGo, naturally) and make sure you’re there come 12 December. Public art is nothing without its public.

For more information on the event and continuous updates, you can visit the official Kochi-Muziris Biennale website here

Are you lost and looking for a tiny cinema that serves wine and Philly cheesesteak in New Delhi? Is it a restored rice mill in Mumbai that houses cutting-edge design that you seek? Or are you in the mood for a boutique hotel in the Mussoorie hills with the best sticky toffee pudding this side of England?

Yes, you say.

Then welcome to The India Tube.

Our favourite online magazine-meets-directory has undergone an extensive design overhaul, and now combines great navigation with up-to-date leads on exciting and offbeat encounters, from alternative shopping and nuggets of local information to great new cafés and bars that span the country.

Happy exploring.

The India Tube is part of the Guardian Travel Network, a selection of the best travel blogs selected by the Guardian.

We took ten minutes of Vandana Verma’s time, our shiny new editor of The Indiatube and discovered why she’s quite a cool lady to hang out with.

So, ten of your favourite things?

Oh. Is it ok if they’re all about food?

(She’s already popular. We emphatically say ‘yes’!)

Ok. Wow. I feel like this is going to be the most boring list ever. I love…

Sushi.

Holidays, because they sound very cosmopolitan.

My I-pad. I’m the most technologically-retarded person in the world, so the fact that I now know what to do with it is such a revelation that I spend every waking minute with it. That’s four.

No, it’s actually just three.

Hmmm…this is harder than I thought it would be.

Diving. On a recent trip to Bali I went diving and I was absolutely terrified but it ended up being great so that’s new.

I’m a huge fan of any sort of pink, sparkly wine champagne-y drink. A lot of things I like are slightly embarrassing because of all these obvious girly connotations.

Also, I’m a huge fan of gin and tonic. I actually have this entire geeky blog post up about how it should only be this gin and it must be this tonic. Gin is a very big deal in my life. The water bottles in my house are all Bombay Sapphire bottles. It’s quite a daunting thing actually because there’s this army of blue bottles when you walk into the kitchen….that’s ten surely!

(Yeah yeah sure (we say). The gin counts as five.)

Ten things that we should know about you?

What else do you need to know about me? Nothing much really. I’m a writer. I’m a little neurotic about planning so I don’t do anything without an excel spreadsheet to back it up. So even for The Indiatube, I have a colour-coded spreadsheet down to what’s edited and what’s not. That’s everything about me. How sad, I feel such a uni-dimensional character. ‘She plans, she drinks pink drinks and she writes. About food.’

I have a blog that I just started. It’s the only thing I’m excited about, aside from joining W+K (quick save). Go to it – singforyoursupper.in! Because I have Google analytics to keep track and will know if you don’t.

This neurotic-ness is interesting. Tell us more.

I have to make a to-do list on a daily basis. Scratch off stuff on the day before to-do list and if it isn’t done, then transfer it to today’s to-do list. I do it everyday. It’s the anchor around which everything else oscillates.

So what are your plans for The Indiatube? What are the ambitions?

I’ve actually been following Indiatube since it launched. An interesting mainstay for Indiatube I think is food. But I also want it to be slightly more functional from a traveller’s point of view and turn it into this place where you could genuinely fashion an itinerary for yourself. So I think it’ll be cool for it to continue to be, much as it began, a cool bunch of shit for people to do, as recommended by another cool bunch of people. A trusted recommendation.

Do you like music a lot?

I like music as well. So that blog that I was talking about is a way for me to tie in the two things that I do, which is listen to a lot of music. But you just don’t want to be that person sitting down saying ‘but you know, I think this band is shit because’  or whatever…(laughs). The blog is a slightly self-indulgent way for me to do that without being a douche.

So songs on your iPod right now?

Oh…I…

Do you own an iPod?

I do own an iPod but I’m using this guy (her iphone) as my ipod at the moment.

So, what are you listening to?

Right now, I’m listening to a lot of this act called Quedo who I’m a huge fan of. I’m listening to a guy called Jay Paul, who is neither Jay Sean nor Sean Paul. He’s really interesting…and a lot of BLOT just because their debut album drops next month. It’s a good album. Weird, diverse album.

What are the ten ‘spots’ for you in Delhi?

Errrmmm… It’s so hard to answer questions when you’re actually asked them. When nobody asks then I’m brimming over with this stuff…

Anything is fine. No pressure.

Thugs! Thugs is a bar with Mogambo. It’s at the Hotel Broadway near Dilli Gate.

Thugs? Never heard of it.

It’s this really weird space because it looks like an Irish pub but all over the wall are just sketches of thugs. There’s a rogue’s gallery that has every Bollywood bad-ass that’s ever been. So you sit there with your 40 rupee things of beer with all the Bollywood baddies staring down at you. It’s the most ridiculous bizarre place and its super cheap.

Food-wise…Delhi or Mumbai?

I think Delhi is currently the most exciting city in this country for food by a country mile. Mumbai will always be Mumbai with Gajali and Trishna but I think it’s much more exciting in Delhi at the moment.

Why?

It’s the fact that Indian food is so much better treated I think in Delhi. I remember, as a kid growing up in Mumbai and Chennai, the one thing you could never get were kebabs. And when we moved to Delhi it’s like everywhere. You can walk into some chut-phut thela and the kebabs are excellent and you take it completely entirely for granted. It wasn’t until this time when I was in Mumbai that someone said ‘you’ve got to try this place, the kebabs are excellent.’ They were trash!

So ten years from now, where do you see yourself?

That’s a tough one. I was going to say something about running a website because just two weeks ago I didn’t know much about setting up a blog or the backend of how a website works and then met some great people who sat me down and walked me through it. Now my new deal is that I’m just all about online. So who knows. I don’t know what I’ll be doing ten years from now. I barely know what I’ll be doing ten days from now!

W+K founder Dan Wieden collects his Lion of St Mark award for outstanding contribution to creativity in communications at the Cannes festival.

Wieden+Kennedy has been named Cannes Independent Agency of the Year (again) and Agency of the Year! The award goes to the agency that gets the highest score for its entries in the Press, Outdoor, Film, Film Craft and Radio Lions, and also the Cyber, and Titanium and Integrated sections. It’s a special feeling so here are some words from our global chief Dave Luhr!

Welcome to Drinks with W+K, our new series offering interesting insights into the lives and times of W+K Delhi-ers.

To kick things off, we sat down for a candid session with Hemant Sreekumar. Read on.

We heard that you think Facebook is a mathematical equation.

I did not say that. I said it is a mathematical entity. I mean the entire thing is a big engineering phenomenon. There are servers the size of football fields and how fast you get your results is pretty amazing. The amount of data they’re crunching. I mean no server has ever dealt with so many photographs. The more interesting thing is that it keeps track of you. Most of your actions of what you like, your friend group and the way these suggestions advertisements work is just a simple pattern matching thing.

We have never mapped human beings like this. Now you can actually understand what this person’s political belief is and sort of preempt what his future belief will be. Because you have almost a decade of a person’s life and personal views all tabbed into a database.

Is that a scary thing or a good thing?

It depends. If you want to be scared, you’re scared. I’m not scared. It’s a database for everyone.

Isn’t it like a 1984 type scenario?

That’s American mythology. It has to happen anyway. That’s what we human beings do. We cluster things. We put them into boxes and try to understand things. That is what we have always done.

Do you have a Facebook page? How many friends do you have?

Yes, I have a Facebook page. I used to be very popular. I had around 800 friends but I did mostly to hunt for women. That’s how I found my wife.

Seriously? You found your wife on Facebook?

Yeah. I mean I knew her from before but then we reconnected on Facebook. And once this motive was satisfied. I stopped using it. Now I find it really p***ing off.

Did you go on Facebook because it is now the new way of flirting?

This was actually in 2007, so…

Do you follow football?

My wife follows football. I sleep on the side and she tells me if there’s been a goal.

Which football team does she support?

I don’t know. I have never asked her. She knows everyone because she used to play when she was young when we were in college. She was always like a tomboy. She was my senior.

So, did you have a thing for her during college days?

No! I hated her then.

Seriously? So how did you guys reconnect?

Just. We were bored in life. And we have never gone around and we just decided to get married. It was more like a nihilistic joke. And now it is working quite nicely.

What was your parent’s reaction?

Within a day we sorted things out because in a way we are pretty ambitious and self-centered people so our parents had to obey us. (he says matter-of-factly)

How long have you been married?

5 years.

So, it’s good?

Yeah, yeah. We haven’t strangled each other. No, it’s been cool.

Kids?

No.  I still feel like too irresponsible. Like when I see my sister’s kids I feel like teaching them all the wrong colours. Like green is for red. So, it will take some years. We keep a cat so it takes care of our maternal/paternal whatever. You know it’s a small thing and it’s quite foldable.

What were you like as a kid?

I was always bad in education. I could not concentrate for more than five minutes on anything, which made me bad at everything. And growing up in a typical South Indian family you are supposed to be on top and be interested in mathematics. But I didn’t care if the earth circled the sun or went over it. I hated school and was quite happy to finish my 12^th standard in the army school.

We heard that you were quite the punk/rock/goth-like guy in your past?

(Highly sheepish) Yeah, in my younger days.

What was that all about?

Just being self-destructive and trying to shock people and the usual crap.

What was the weirdest thing you have done?

Ummm, I don’t remember cause I was you know…maybe someone else could recollect that. (Laughs)

Do you have pictures of that time?

No, I don’t. I would be too embarrassed to look at all that.

Do you play the guitar?

Used to play the bass guitar but not any longer. Now I have gotten more into pure noise music.

Do you produce any noise music?

Yea, and again it’s mostly software based and so I make my own software and play them live.

You make your own software??

Yeah, it just takes practice more than skill.

Pause while we feel like idiots. (Quickly change topic)

What is that tattoo?

It’s just a temple tattoo. It’s from my last day of under graduation. We were deeply into spiritualism at the time so we came down to a temple and we had spent the night doing weird things and came down and caught this guy and he made it. It’s just a trishul.

Are you religious?

No, no. I am not.

Are you spiritual?

Nothing like that. There are too many unexplored things and till then you can assume that there are supernatural entities that takes care of all these things. So till you discover that you can assume that there is a god. And once you cross that threshold of knowledge then you can think otherwise.

Can you cook?

Well, if you are sick then I can take care of you. But no. I wash plates.

Most elaborate meal ever made?

Maybe lots of Maggi. But I wouldn’t put in more effort. (Sensibly) I’d rather just order food.

Do you like Delhi?

I have always been here. I hate this place but I also love this because it’s so familiar. The city has this weird arrogance about it. Too much of yuppie culture but that is ok. All cities are like that. I like Delhi. It’s good enough for me.

Hemant is a Data Visualiser at W+K Delhi and enjoys embroidering coded computational processes to create sonic situations.