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Divya Thakur
Creative Director, Design Temple |
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Design Temple, is the creation, joy and all-consuming passion of Divya Thakur.
Divya graduated in 1992 from Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai. Her career in design began as a junior designer and exclusive dogsbody to one of India’s leading designers, Preeti Vyas Giannetti. It was here that Divya learnt the joys of communication, design and obsessively-detailed typesetting.
Manually executed of course.
During her five years at Trikaya Grey, including a short stint at Grey’s office in London, Divya worked on advertising design, adfilms, packaging and publishing design. Next came what she now calls her finishing school- Ambience – now, Publicis Worldwide – gave her an opportunity to develop her flair in fashion and lifestyle design with some memorable campaigns for leading brands across India.
All along, however, her sensibilities were divided between advertising and design, between working in India and abroad, and between balancing artistic integrity and commercial compromise.
So seven years, two agencies, and several campaigns later she set up Design Temple - with an objective of creating design beyond the boundaries of medium, origin or time. From October 1999 she concentrated on creating a multi-disciplinary portfolio, a good team, and a suite of clients that shared this vision.
Soon, India’s oldest luxury brand to be promoted to a discerning global clientele, Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces became one of her favoured clients. That equation has resulted in a great partnership over the last seven years. Divya has worked on the Taj Calendar, the International Taj pavilion designs for London and Germany, various collaterals for several properties including the Taj Spas, and their prestigious palaces across Rajasthan.
Over the last few years, several multi-disciplinary projects have allowed Divya to don several hats. Among them, Title designer for Mira Nair’s new film The Namesake, publication designer for Lights Camera Masala, a book on contemporary Bollywood, and web designer for Laurent Badessi, a French photographer
living in New York.
Her unending penchant for an egalitarian world with no boundaries keeps her on her toes and travelling to both
exotic
and pedestrian locales to imbibe influences and
mix
design languages.
A short sabbatical in 2000 took her to the Pratt School of Design in New York ,where she did a course in Information Design. Icograda's design conference took her to Nagoya in the heart of Japan . In 2002 the Indo-Italian Chamber of Commerce commissioned Design Temple to work on Namaste India , an annual event held in Rome and Milan , for three consecutive years. This was the beginning of her love affair with European design. She took this opportunity to begin her efforts of vibrant but contemporary representations of timeless India to the West.
Of special note, during this time, was her work for
Le Vie Dell'Oriente – an event held in Milan . To showcase four countries from Asia to the discerning connoisseurs of the fashion capital of the world, Divya chose a Caucasian model and a colour palate of blacks and greys. She then infused this with re-interpreted shots of cultural clichés from each country, through a mix of graphics and fashion elements.
Another endeavour at celebrating modern India manifested itself in an exhibition entitled India Indigenous , which she conceived and curated in 2004 for Design Temple . Objects d'art from the world of fashion, product and graphic design were showcased here. These everyday objects had been created, developed and modified, by the people who used or made them, with no real designers playing any role. India Indigenous – Works of Accidental Artists! was held at the historic Loggia dei Mercanti, a stone's throw from the popular Duomo in Milan.
Divya's quest, to develop a contemporary Indian graphic
language coupled with the desire to integrate design into everyday life, now brings her into retail design. She hopes to leverage Design Temple 's strengths into cool collectibles for denizens
across the globe.
Design Temple : Edition One , is her newest and amongst her most captivating creations. Here each product is inspired by the wit and idiom of India . So you find matchboxes with Gandhiji's three monkeys next to a range of Cheerharan toilet paper alongside some nifty organizers entitled The Parrot diaries . The enchanting designs, like the subject matter, are a vibrant mix of influences that present a new Indian sensibility.
Her work has been featured in leading design and lifestyle publications like Wallpaper, Graphis, The Times ( London ), The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Indian Express, DNA, and Elle, amongst many others.
Divya lives in and works out of her studio in Colaba, Mumbai. She heads a team of eight people and takes enormous pride and satisfaction in all the work Design Temple puts out.
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