A city startup is designing merchandise that tell stories about urban culture, in an offbeat way
When Karthik was working in Malaysia, he was astounded at their collection of memorabilia. Apart from the ubiquitous keychains, magnets and ‘I love KL’ T-shirts, small tin cans on the shelf surprised him. “Tin mining is the oldest in Malaysia; so unless you know a lot about the country tin cans memorabilia didn’t quite make sense to me,” says Karthik.
Karthik Lakshmanan along with Madhusudhan Boga founded K&M city souvenirs to to promote Indian cities and their culture through what he calls their ‘kiraak’ designing. Currently they have over 100 products for five cities — Hyderabad, Amaravati, Chennai, Kerala and Bengaluru.
‘Landmarks, language and lives’ is their design motto.
Karthik explains that each magnet has four elements. For instance, a close observation of a Buddha statue magnet, shows the connect it has to the kings of that era. Other magnets chronicle the city’s evolution with iconic landmarks from different eras.
The concepts aim at ‘standing with an open heart’. “Before opening our mouths to speak, we should first open our hearts. The idea is for people to connect to places, its roots, culture. Some people take some time to do it, some connect instantly. That is where the cultural quotient helps; that’s where the real connection happens. Speaking hastily makes us judgemental; that’s where we begin making boundaries and go back with a very boxed idea of the place and people one visits,” says Karthik.
Their products come in various series. The Indulgence series includes T-shirts, magnets, button badges, name plates, home decor, books, luggage tags, key chains, mugs, and lapel pins. ‘Lite teesko’ (written in Telugu) is one of the messages on a T shirt.
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– K&M city souvenirs have a separate set of collection for Andhra Pradesh, Bangalore, Chennai and Kerala.
– Their aim is to make collectibles for each Indian city. The numeric 29 in their website 29km indicates 29 Indian
states and KM stands for their company.
– Their poster collection of Idioms will be made for the south Indian states.
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They plan to come up with a series with Exuberance (for art and crafts products) and Fantasy (kids products). “Once we build the connect then gaps and the borders between people, language and culture will reduce. This informs our vision: To make an impact in the world by making tools for the heart that celebrate our culture,” adds Karthik.
A lot of research goes into the design to make it fool-proof. Especially when history is involved and details like using the royalty like the Nizams; saying which, did you know the official shade of the Nizam kings was yellow?” points out Karthik.
This involves the partners touring the cities apart from reading up on that city’s history, people and culture. “A lot of information also comes from interacting with people . this way e also get a feel of the pulse, understand what is trending and will never fade. For instance the word ‘Nakko’. late actor Mehmood had popularised it so much that the moment someone from another city meets a Hyderabadi, they flaunt their ‘nakko’.
The K&M collection is available on www.29km.in.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Prabalika M. Borah / November 30th, 2018
