Dr. Jaymala Diddee, geographer and Reader in the University of Pune has written a book, from a geographical perspective, on the history of the Marathas, starting with the reign of the legendary Shivaji. The book aims to bring history and geography out of a purely scholarly circle and make it interesting, accessible and fun for a lay enthusiast.

My role was to design her book, for Elephant Design, Pune (also its publisher) and it involved a multi-layered approach including learning about geography, history, cartography, typography, publication, grids and more. As the designer, I attempted to make this aspiration of the author become possible through its design, and make geography and history come alive through its story.

I faced many challenges in the making of this book ranging from editing its content, hunting for its visuals, and map making – a task central to creating the character of the book. Maps are a common visual language of space, just as abstract and just as easy to comprehend as language. They are ancient graphic tools for the very fundamental human behaviour of making connections and visualising space in a tangible form that everybody can understand. This science and art had to be approached from a graphic design perspective, for the maps needed to also tell the story carried in the typography and other visuals.

Learning how to design keeping in mind that every element adds up to form one emergent product, was valuable.