Travellers' Guide to India
Art Direction, Branding & Designing
TGIF is a passion-driven project and the brainchild of Johnson Kanjirathingal, born out of a genuine love for Indian football. I came onto the project at a stage where there were a lot of ideas, but nothing really connecting the dots yet. I was brought in to art direct the project and take care of the overall design and animation direction.
I worked closely with Parinith Ramakrishna, who was the designer for the project. I started by creating the brand guidelines, which then became the foundation for developing all the visual assets with Parinith Ramakrishna. I also created the intro for the series frame by frame. Wayne, our motion designer, worked on most of the animations and also helped bring parts of the intro to life.
What made this project particularly special was how involved I was across the entire process, from defining the visual identity to designing and animating the final pieces. It was one of the most unique projects I’ve ever been a part of, and one that came from a genuine passion for Indian football.
The Creative Process
At some point, all of us as kids had scrapbooks where we would cut out pictures of our favourite players and stick them into our diaries. It’s one of those small things that becomes a core memory.
I came up with the idea of creating a set that would look like Pranaay’s studio. Pranaay was our host, travelling across different states and sharing the stories of Indian football, so I wanted the set to feel like he was reminiscing about the entire journey.
The idea was to have him stitch, cut and collect pictures, notes and little pieces from his experiences along the way, slowly putting everything together in his scrapbook. As the episodes progress, the scrapbook would grow with his journey and eventually become the book — Traveller’s Guide to Indian Football.
This scrapbook became a visual language that we carried throughout the episodes, bringing in a sense of nostalgia and making the whole journey feel personal and lived-in.
“When Arghya joined our documentary series project - Travellers Guide to Indian Football, we had a lot of ideas but no visual language tying them together. He built the brand guidelines that every visual asset has been developed from, and shaped the series intro frame by frame. He gave the project its look and its identity.”