Kokum — aishwaryachari.com

WORK

PLAY

kokum

An identity and editorial project inspired by Goa’s duality—tradition and modernity, calm and chaos. The design draws on Azulejo tiles, coastal textures, and regional colour palettes to create a grounded yet expressive visual system. Through typography and storytelling, the magazine captures the layered voices and evolving spirit of Goa, offering a thoughtful, place-based reading experience.

Through layered typography, photography, and narrative structure, Kokum becomes a space where recipes, essays, and visual stories sit side by side, capturing the evolving spirit of Goa beyond postcard clichés.

CREDITS

Jeff Glendennings

CATEGORY

Editorial · Magazine Identity · Visual System · Strategy

RESOURCES

Goa Summary↗

LINKS

View Magazine↗

The Colour Palette is inspired by the dual nature itself and the distinct personaility of goa that errupts from its true nature which is often seen as you witness the region has beeen breathing through decades and ages. Its sometimes bright and sometimes matted but quite often even both.

In the Kokum logomark, an upside-down ‘Q’ from Coffo Raffine is reimagined as the kokum fruit, its curved counter and extended tail suggesting the fruit’s body and stem. This simple typographic shift roots the wordmark in Goa’s native ingredient, quietly foregrounding the magazine’s focus on place, flavour, and regional storytelling.

Kokum’s cover system reimagines the delicate patterns of Portuguese-style Goan nameplates as ornamental frames for imagery and type. Paired with a kokum-fruit–inspired logotype, these motifs bring Azulejo heritage into a contemporary editorial grid, echoing the magazine’s focus on Goa’s duality.

Challenge

How do you design for a place that is often flattened into a single tourist image and instead reveal its complexity and contradictions? The identity needed to honor local references without sliding into pastiche, balance quiet, archival moments with loud, energetic ones, and support a reading experience that feels both reflective and alive.

Solution

The visual system pairs grid-driven layouts with intentional breaks—tilted frames, overlapping type, and shifting scales—to echo Goa’s rhythm of order and interruption. Motifs inspired by Azulejo tiles (portuguese architecture influence) and coastal details are reinterpreted as flexible graphic elements, while a warm, editorial typographic palette allows different voices to coexist on the page. The result is a magazine that reads as both document and love letter: a thoughtful, place-based publication where Goa’s many moods can unfold at their own pace.