rathore Editorial Design

Cover Design for The Economic Times

Raghavendra Rathore was invited to design the cover page of The Economic Times newspaper.

et look Economic times

The design layout on the left was the layout design that Raghavendra Rathore provided the ET design team and with a careful negotiations and some compromise the look on the right was printed as the national cover for the 6th october edition of the paper.

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Cut above the rest
RESHMI DASGUPTA

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ FRIDAY, OCTOBER 06, 2006 02:36:10 AM]

The Guest designer was a model guest. Patient, soft-spoken, and ever ready to accommodate suggestions, Raghavendra Rathore was definitely not a devil wearing Prada. He wore Levi’s, one of his own trademark shirts and a Calvin Klein watch as a matter of fact, as he hunkered down to some serious cutting and styling. Ten gruelling hours later, ET had a Rathore-designed front page on the theme of the 2006 ET Awards — 15 Years of Reforms. Re-interpreted, re-jigged and, well, re-formed.

It wasn’t his first foray into “democratic design” as he’d done a work many years ago as a rookie designer for an AIDS benefit that was seen by many more people than a fashion show or store would draw. “I even made $8,000, ” he laughed as he watched Page One take shape on the screen in front of him. “I work with Adobe,” he said apologetically, falling automatically into design lingo “So I’m not familiar with QuarkExpress...You’ll have to help me!” ET obliged but it didn’t take him long to get the hang of it.

Rathore is not exactly a stranger to this idea of synergy between design and news. Years ago, he had made a collection of costumes for an event of the Times of India group which used the prints of the newspaper on material. But this was obviously a different genre; the real thing, so to speak. In the full glare of attention from all the departments that play a role in the final product seen as a newspaper the next day, he got down to the page, panel by panel, story by story. Balancing, guaging, shifting, redoing, like any designer would, he watched as his creation took shape...

“What readers want is a newspaper as a chic accessory”, he said, bringing a “lay reader” perspective to a product that “insiders” often tend to see as just work. Come to think of it, a newspaper is slim, sleek, informed, colourful, contemporary and even naughty in parts.

It makes the ideal fashion statement. Little wonder that the idea came from a designer who has always been his own best brand ambassador, personifying exactly the same adjectives. Initially reticent, soon his Sony Viao laptop was out, and a handy pen-drive transferred some of his ideas onto the ET computer system.

It wasn’t long before Rathore’s concept of post-reform ET had a form: rather like a weblog, incorporating elements of magazines and the internet, but with an elegant visual language all its own. Communicating ideas often scribbling on a pad of page-grids (usually used to make the usual pages), the fashion designer and ET’s seasoned young page designers worked as a well oiled team. An alternative page was also developed before the Jodhpur prince with the penchant for precision finally called it a day.

He had worked a longer “shift” than other designers do for pages, with only a lunch break and the mandatory refuelling coffee pit-stops. And he had the added distraction of a photographer and young ET journos noting his every move. “Hope this is not on record!” he would jokingly interject as the nth probing query ellicited a frank, spontaneous reply. We obliged, and he reciprocated with a single-minded dedication to designing a memorable ET front page.

He came into the office with a few rules of his own to work with — less colour, linear, separation of news and commerce. By the time he left, way past dinner time, he’d learnt a few tricks of the newspaper trade as well. And ET saw a very different designer fashion a newspage. Both emerged reformed!