Marking better days

BENGALURU: What  better way to mark a new beginning than turning over a n e w p a g e ? There’s hope in the air as the year of all years slowly crawls to an end. And city-based illustrators are helping people look forward to good days again with their range of planners and calendars for 2021. Made during the thick of the pandemic this year, each of these pieces has been inspired by lessons learned during a tough period or paint a picture of better days ahead.

Take, for instance, Nori Norbhu’s annual calendar, inspired by a different theme each year. “This time, I used a lot of elements from nature because I hope it gives people a sense of calm, which is muchneeded after the year we’ve all had,” says the Bengalurubased illustrator and visual designer, who hails from Darjeeling. The A5-sized table calendar also has short affirmations, like ‘power up’, ‘let go’, ‘bloom and grow’, etc, for each month. Some of the designs have been inspired from Norb h u ’ s own l o c k d own experiences.

“The month of January has a bonfire and a cozy little house, which I made after a trip to a place just outside Bengaluru. It was my first time travelling after the lockdown,” she says. While planners have always been popular, Vidhi Khandelwal felt there would be a bigger need for them next year, given that most plans in 2020 fell through. This led the illustrator to make some changes to the layout of the planners she designs.

“We’ve gone through so much emotionally that I wanted the planners to provide that space for reflection. So before the monthly planning, there are pages dedicated to goals of all sorts – financial, health, personal and professional. Work from home blurred so much and everyone realised the need for balance and a more holistic lifestyle. There’s also a part dedicated to new things one would like to try, just to break the monotony that set in this year,” says Khandelwal, who is also the founder of The Ink Bucket. Her website offers both dated and undated planners, along with calendars.

While floral detailing (for something “calm and positive” to look at) is common with both, one calendar even comes with quirky illustrations of cats and dogs. “Working from home had many of us spending more time with our pets. My own parents adopted their first dog back home and he, in part, inspired this,” says Khandelwal. Both Norbhu and she worked on their designs during the pandemic. Alicia Souza, on the other hand, put pen to paper much before the pandemic began.

“At that time, there were just talks of coronavirus and nothing had hit us yet. I picked celebrations as the theme,” says the illustrator, whose website offers both calendars and planners. “The theme turned out to be quite fitting because 2020 has been trying in so many ways. Here’s hoping that next year we can celebrate being happy, healthy and coming out stronger from this road bump.”