So drop by and help kickstart things. All contact details & directions to get here have been updated in the contacts section. See you soon!!

A month and a half of browsing their support forums, finding a suitable theme (our website is built around the Unstandard theme designed by 5Thirtyone) and collaborating with Digsam to customise it, resulted in the new website.

Nothing fancy, just dynamically updatable, the new Quicksand website powered by Wordpress, makes sure that:

• content can be uploaded and modified by anyone within the team (hence making web publishing a lot more accessible and our website a lot more dynamic)
• design can be changed by simply choosing a new theme and modifying it suitably
• increased functionality can be added to the website through plugins

So enjoy the new website, leave your comments and expect us to be a lot more regular on the web. As an end note, Wordpress comes highly recommended from Quicksand !

1. Illustrated Books for Children
Under the umbrella of our Basic Love Of Things (aka B.L.O.T.) brand, we are planning several books for young children that use interesting and rich mediums such as screen printing and foster relevant, engaging narratives for children, parents and schools. We have also worked out interesting relationships with some publishers and retailers for these books, in addition to the independent retail avenues we are planning. Since we have a good mix of people who have worked with children (toy design, product design, writing, workshops, teaching) and most of us are pretty childish, this seems like a natural jump and everyone is excited. We are looking for interesting writers, illustrators and /or graphic designers, or anyone with a quirky, personal sense of the world who can be a part of this in more than ways than just conversation. Also planned are some story books for blind children after our experience working on the Digital Talking Book for them. (mail avinash@blot.in)

2. B.L.O.T. Gear
Already a popular Audio-Video ensemble in Delhi, B.L.O.T. (www.blot.in) is the umbrella brand for all the independent work that Quicksand is up to – an alter-ego if you may. Our backgrounds in fashion, accessories and communication, and a studio-life that intensely cross-pollinated has led us to start thinking very seriously about gear. Also, I think we love the idea of having our own gear. So… since our location in Bangalore is great for textile products, t-shirts and apparel at this point are good starting points for the larger vision. We are presently working on the first round of gear, and hope to meet interesting, stylish people in the near future who can help shape this idea and take it further with us. Quicksand plans to work on a curatorship model with artists and designers – so credits and creative sources are shared with end users, in addition to the design fees. Get in touch if you have an authentic sense of expression that is young, stylish and dynamic. (mail avinash@blot.in)

3. Quicksand Not-for-Profit
On our minds for the past 2 years but still not found the exactly right context and paradigm. Almost there now With our backgrounds in education, developmental work, technology, design, media and art, we know that there is a LOT to be done – both internally and externally. Even as a for-profit studio, Quicksand has always encouraged and fostered projects and processes that have a closer relevance to the human condition. The Quicksand NFP will seek to find avenues for design thinking, design skills and innovative thinking in contexts that have either traditionally been insulated from these forces, or do not have access to them for a variety of reasons. We are in the process of preparing a manifesto of sorts from the collective ideas and motivations for doing this within the studio. We are looking at engaging with various levels of the government as one of the paradigms for this adventure – there is a grave need for passionate, young people at one of the primary sources of a country’s development. (mail babitha@quicksand.co.in)

4. Quicksand Designer-in-Residency Programme / Fellowship
Our own fellowship experiences with programmes like the one Sarai has (www.sarai.net) have helped us appreciate the value that these bring to a practitioner’s work. With ample space in the new Bangalore studio, we are beginning a residency programme and/or a fellowship that supports people and their ideas. The programme is fairly open to interpretation and project definition and the support required / possible can only be arrived at after dialogues with interested people. We are putting out a more formal post and collateral soon for this programme. (mail babitha@quicksand.co.in)

5. Fattabox
The last of our immediate big ideas Fattabox began as a daily newspaper for design students at NIFT, Delhi couple of years back. Today we see it as a great platform that can inspire, influence and react to the Indian context. Hopefully a generous mix of mediums – artefacts, visual media, written word, films, moving graphics, art, poetry, research… each issue is packaged in a different box (with its own story) every time, and sent to interested subscribers around the world. We see Fattabox as the right avenue for our independent design thinking and approaches, and an alternative, dynamic form of design education. Besides everything else, we love the idea of someone sending us a box we can unpack and enjoy, so we might as well make the box and its contents ourselves. Of course, for this to make logistical sense, there would be timelines, schedules and the rest of the monsters, but we are pretty sure this can happen. We are looking for a floating contributor population for Fattabox: this could really be from any context – DJs, artists, designers, journalist, social workers, photographers, sculptors, (god forbid) the occassional prima donna, writers, craftspeople, students… – and as in all things Quicksand, someone interesting (mail avi@fattabox.com)

Its possible that all the above seems very random, conflicting and disconnected. Trust us to make sense out of it and have a good time at that!