How location and culture impacts on the vision and thought processes behind a designer’s work.

Mehek Malhotra is a Mumbai based graphic designer and artist. She is the founder and art director of Giggling Monkey Studio, an incredibly kitschy, colourful and fun brand design design studio.

“We help companies and brands become understandable🍳 and meaningful🍸. We think unforgettable ideas stem from authenticity.🦖”

gigglingmonkey.studio

Mehek claims that her inspiration comes to her by her everyday interactions, fleeting thoughts and sights from everyday life in Mumbai. There’s no better source of inspiration for her than the tea stalls across the country.

India has such a strong cultural connection to the use of vivid colours in almost every possible sense. For example, the ancient Hindu festival of Holi is the festival of colours. It is one of the most widely celebrated festivals in the country and signifies the triumph of good over evil. There are countless other traditions from India’s widely varying regions and religions which use colour and pattern to create symbolism. Even something as mundane as trucks are conventionally decorated top to bottom in colourful patterns and crazy hand painted typography calling out ‘HORN PLEASE’ to passers by. This rich history of colour and pattern are clear to see in Mehek’s work.

Mehek’s work also has a clear influence from the design of one rupee matchboxes which can be found littered almost anywhere on the subcontinent. The imagery on the boxes include anything from religious figures, historical figures, Bollywood stars, foreign brands, cartoon characters, everyday objects and exotic animals.

In this video, Mehek describes India as an interesting mix of culture, language, geography, food and music. She explains how she grew up as an ‘army kid’ travelling all over different parts of India and therefore absorbing different aspects of the country’s incredibly varied identity. She also talks about how she managed to use the local colours of Gujarat for the branding of Fangirl Live festival in order to make it feel familiar to local people but with a modern and fresh twist to it.