In the seventh episode of Cross Border Conversations, Mumbai-based Shiva Nallaperumal, and Tim Molloy, who hails from Melbourne, discuss the play of characters and avatars in programmed and fictional realities.

While one conceptualises fonts from asemic writings and lost scripts, the other narrates stories through surrealist comic books. Both the practices are an interplay of invocation, re-imagination and innovation. In the 50-minute conversation, Nallaperumal and Molloy walk through each other's creative journeys and examine why each pursued the path that demanded painstakingly repetitive processes and working round the clock.

A background quest in my life that I am not really forging ahead with, at the moment, is to try and create something that gets me close to that Big Bang kind of feeling. – Tim Molloy

Molloy, who has been drawing since the age of five, attributes his interest in illustration to his early surrealist influences. A big fan of Salvador Dali for as long as he can remember, it was a shocking revelation at the age of 10 and a crisis in faith at 13 that led him on a life-long journey in the search of meaning. His cult work, MR Unpronounceable Adventures that took 10 years to finish, navigates through the comic artist’s own humorous misadventures.

In the episode, Molloy recollects a fond memory from his primary school when a picture he drew of one of his teachers had made him famous. Following this incident, as he says, there was no looking back.

I don’t think typography or graphic design is what I do. What I do through these is what I am interested in. – Shiva Nallaperumal

Nallaperumal, on his part, remembers his childhood fondly as it was filled with books. The Chennai-born designer recalls his father’s extremely pricey (but totally priceless) gifts to him, which include scores of Tintin comics that are still part of his most cherished collection.

Studying in a design school with dreams of wanting to be an animator one day, he shares an interesting story of an assignment that made him choose a different career. The story goes that it was two weeks of endless working on an animation project, which translated into a mere five second video, a result that gave him much frustration and a parallel heartbreak. Typography always fascinated him, no matter how time-consuming it was to turn hundreds of iterations of a single letter into a unique font. Today, at the helm of Studio November with his partner and better half, Juhi Vishnani, he draws contextual inspirations into identity systems, custom typefaces and interactive design.

Nallaperumal's practice has given form to bold and experimental fonts such as Calcula, Rekall, and El Topo. He says that style, in people’s perception, takes precedence over content but for him, the story always comes first and understanding why it needed a certain style, second.

Permeating art, self and everything in between, the conversation between Shiva Nallaperumal and Tim Molloy also visits subjects such as fictional storytelling in illustration and the absence of it in type design, mental health in art making, the fine line separating legibility and innovation and the graphic shape of things to come.

All this and a lot more in the video above!

Cross Border Conversations
Curated by Pramiti Madhavji and Amit Gupta, STIR X LOCO Design present candid video conversations among creative professionals across geographical borders and creative disciplines of architecture, design, art and beyond.

LOCO Design: Shape of things to come
Steered by values of leadership and integrity, LOCO Design strives to create aesthetic innovation with a creative essence enriched by design values, master artisans and technical expertise, contributing to a responsible future.
Know more at www.locodesign.in