His designs do the talking

It was going to be just another day for Kochi-based web designer-artist Sabareesh. However, when he doodled one of his favourite actors in Malayalam cinema, just to kill time, it turned out to be a spectacular day in his artistic pursuit. The benchmark role of actor Kuthiravattam Pappu’s life is undoubtedly that of Sulaiman, who claimed to be the ‘can-doer’, be it driving a road roller or dodging his roller over Thamarassery Churam. The much celebrated character and his mount changed everything for Sabareesh that day. (Though he didn’t get any prestigious awards for it from any ‘PWD Engineer’). It would go on to become one of the unique ideas to represent a person or a character or even a letter itself.

“This unique typography or pictorial representation is not new for at least a few. But I could bring a new flavour by drawing faces of people using the letters in their name or ideas that they are famous for,” says Sabareesh. Social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram gave publicity and recognition to his works. But it never stopped there. His works were so popular that it caught the eyes of celebrities like Mammootty, Nadirsha and even people from abroad.

During the much-awaited release of the Tamil film Kabali, came the biggest surprise for Sabareesh. He drew Rajinikanth’s face using the letters from the word Kabali. The supersta+r’s daughter shared his artwork on her Facebook profile and poured praises on him.

One of his famous works was the pictorial representation of a Kochi Metro train. “The work was completed during the time of the inauguration of the Metro’s first phase and the response from everyone was incredible,” he recalled.

This artist claims that his works won’t be successful if they fail to have something that everyone can relate to. “Nobody is making anything new here; these are the sum of 85 percentage of audience’s ability to relate the art with their own intelligence and the rest is artist’s own intelligence.”

Despite the good things happening to him, he is also facing problems like plagiarism and copying of his artworks. Sabareesh has no solutions for this and according to him, the people who are behind these activities should think about the artist’s efforts.

He had also written and directed a short film called Kaalukal. He is currently working on a new short film titled Paper. His dream project would be creating pictorial artworks for children in Malayalam so that they can learn the language easily.

Sabareesh, who completed Masters in Graphic Communication from London, after graduating from RLV College, is working for a British company as UI Architect. He is also a theatre enthusiast and the creative director of Thinkermill. Sabareesh lives in Kadavanthara with his wife, who is a doctor, and two kids.