Kiran Khalap’s Cover As Art For Rolling Stone India

Cover art designed by Kiran Khalap. Artwork by Sunil Kanawaje

Kiran Khalap

Kiran Khalap

Kiran Khalap started his career in advertising in 1983 as a copywriter in Lintas (now Lowe) and soon became the youngest Creative Director at the agency. Later, he worked at Clarion Advertising as the CEO and CCO. An award-winning short story writer, Khalap has also published two books in the past. In 1999, he co-founded chlorophyll, India’s first end-to-end brand consultancy, which created the concept of ideantitiesâ„¢ that challenges the outdated concept of a logo. The Government of India chose him to be an advisor to the UIDAI project to help undertake the task of creating the world’s biggest brand, Aadhaar, the unique identity for each of India’s 1.2 billion people.

The Idea

The drawing is based on the all-encompassing idea of AUM, rooted deep in ancient Hindu philosophy. The sound AUM, a combination of the triad of A, U and M sounds, is also a metaphor for 10 other triads, shown on the cover. Each triad is either a denotation [like length, breadth, height as three dimensions of space] or a connotation [as tat tvam asi, which means the macrocosm and the microcosm are one]. Note: the triad desire, fear, anger must be read as ‘absence of’ the three negative emotions.