Exploring Progressive Politics Through Writing and Graphic Design

This talk is the story of how a philosophy graduate student at Columbia, who is frustrated with insular academic departments, and an engineering drop-out who very recently decided to switch careers into graphic design, have come together to establish an independent political publication in India. This talk will center around our endeavour: Akademi Mag, and how we’ve gotten 18k followers on Instagram over 6 months by making issues that matter — especially political — more accessible to people, packaged in appealing (and sometimes wild) graphics. We will walk the audience not only through our editorial and design decisions such as the use of typography but also the challenges we’ve faced — time-zone differences, working together while being in a relationship, and bridging the gap between our individual varied thought processes, a highly visual one along with a very analytical one. The illustration and typography serve the purpose of piquing the curiosity of the viewer, and the writing to keep them engrossed throughout. The audience will be given an insight into how we approach each post, right from research to the final piece, and how we tackle the visual design of our articles. The plan is to keep the audience captivated by having not just slides, but also animations, BTS and a peek into all the variations we do for the editorial illustrations, ending with an introspection of personal reflections and learnings as we’ve failed and succeeded over these few months.