PROFILE

Would you like an office journal with a cover made from rich hand-woven Banarasi silk brocade? Or perhaps a scrapbook covered by a striped canvas fabric woven since centuries in Kerala? In this day and age, if you are keen to go creative with your writing materials, there’s a world of possibilities to be explored.

At Designwallas, a bespoke stationery label owned by Roli Books, Kapil Kapoor and Stefan Kamboj, take your pick of batik printed handmade boxes, accordion-shaped folders, suede damask and royal silk journals as well as notebooks with images of revolutionaries like Che, and charismatic leaders like Mao, Mandela and the Dalai Lama splashed on their covers.

The combination of spare design aesthetics and hand-woven fabrics, espoused by Designwallas, has found takers of the likes of Barnes & Noble, Borders and Kate’s Paperie in the US. “We’re also working on a high end line of Designwallas leather products for Harrods in London, which we hope to stock there by spring next year,” says Kamboj.

Style happens to be the mantra of the signature’s new age stationery bouquet, the creative head for which is Kamboj. Born to a Punjabi father and English mother, the 29-year-old designer grew up in London, studying European politics and history. “I never studied design as an academic discipline but was exposed to a lot of design influences while I was growing up,” says Kamboj.

When Kamboj decided to move to India and be part of a start-up, his childhood friend Kapil Kapoor was the person he decided to collaborate with. “Also, since Roli Books is a publishing house with international reach, it was a platform of choice to launch a design initiative,” he says.

So Designwallas started its journey in 2005 from a smart studio in South Delhi and has since then, distributed the brand in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United States and Scandinavia.

Among the foreign outlets from which the brand retails from, are specialty book stores and design outfits including Boutique 1 and Iconic in Dubai and the Middle East as well as PageOne in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. In India, their products are piled high on the racks of stores like Odyssey, Landmark, Om Book Shop, CMYK, Vadehra Gallery Bookstore in Delhi, Dcube in Hyderabad and Taxi in Mumbai.

Trends

Kamboj says that international stationery has a feminine tenor currently, but trends in this domain are transient. The colours of wrapping papers, notebook covers and other assorted writing accoutrements for some time were mostly pastel with flower motifs, bright contrasts and other ornamentation.

But the brand has primarily concentrated on a neutral flavour that will appeal to both men and women alike. So, they have in their stationery repertoire unusual fabric combinations, ethnic textiles and prints along with interesting shapes and colours.

The brand also tries to make boutique stationery accessible rather than confining it to a high end bracket. “Our items use fabrics that are hand-woven while the detailing and ornamentation are handcrafted. However, the binding as well other finishing processes are undertaken in a factory which helps maintain consistent quality and lower prices,” says Kamboj.

PROducts

Kamboj has taken care to price all his products competitively. One interesting range of items is their notebooks titled ‘Gentleman’s Pocket Journal’ that comes embellished with men’s suiting weaves such as worsted, herringbone and so on. You can pick one of these up for Rs 195.

There are also journals in all sizes like A4 to A6 with covers printed with graphic motifs as well as horizontal stripes in a rainbow of colours. Kamboj plans to call this range, delightfully minimal in its design sensibility, ‘noto,’ the Japanese term for notebooks.

Interestingly, in the midst Kamboj’s bare-bones design portfolio there are a couple of startlingly flamboyant pieces. There’s an ‘accordion folder’ for convenient storage of documents, with numerous fluorescent coloured flaps (which open like an accordion). Tagged at Rs 795.