CHENNAI : For anyone who grew up in a Tamilian household, the days leading to the New Year meant cleaning their house, decorating it with kolams, and hunting for the perfect naat kaati (Tamil annual calendar) to mount on the entrance wall. While the rasipalan (daily horoscope) column used to be the only ‘fun section’ in the almanac, the rest of the calendar was nothing but a tasteless canvas of text-heavy sheets. In an attempt to reinvent the Tamil calendar into an elegant, aesthetically pleasing product, The BS Labz, one-year-old design agency has introduced their very own almanac.
“When we started the design agency, we began working with few clients in the financial sector and tried designing campaigns around it. This is when we started looking for products that can be reinvented,” shares Santhosh Subramanian, founder of the venture.
He tells CE that the idea to give a spin to the calendar came from personal experience. “My mother insisted on hanging a not-so-elegant looking wall calendar in the hall. If you look at it, the conventional calendar usually has too much information and text on it. People don’t even read most of the features. That’s when I thought — Well, our walls deserve a better calendar. Why not redesign it and make it minimalistic?”
The Naatkaati Project was born, and the initial research and development began earlier this year. “The initial research of understanding what homemakers, people in traditional households, paatis and thathas wanted to see in such calendars was done,” he explains. Details about auspicious days, muhurtham times, Tamil months and Tamil days were primarily what people rooted for. “So we decided to do away with the rest, and focused on making the design easy on the eyes and text eligible even to elderly people,” he shares.
The calendar has been meticulously designed by Aishwarya Soni, an architect and founder of Jots And Tittles, a graphic design studio that primarily seeks to support NGOs and community organisations with design content.
The Naat Kaati features a proverb for every day in a pleasing font, muhurtham time of the day — nalla neram, kuligai neram, rahu kalam, yamagandam — marked in the form of pie charts, Tamil years and nakshatrams (stars) illustrated in warm-retro tones on a postcard-like background with a miniature pulli kolam logo.
Earlier this year, the agency had also created a calendar for Tamil New Year. Soon, a calendar based on Thirukkural will also be launched. The 2020 Naat Kaati can be purchased online. For details, visit: thebslabz.com