Disaster and Hope | Gunjan Ahlawat | TEDxBITSPilani

Ahlawat Gunjan is the Creative Head at Penguin Random House, India. He has a master’s degree in graphic design from The Glasgow School of Art, UK. Previous to that he spent a semester at Indiana-Purdue University, USA, focusing on design thinking, innovation and leadership. He is a graduate of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Trained at Lars Mullers Switzerland and Faber & Faber, UK, Ahlawat has a varied and interesting work experience. He has worked closely on different design assignments with Penguin, Faber and Faber, Hachette, Little Brown, Hodder, Random House, Quercus, Hurst and Knopf US.

His overlapping interests in art and literature not only made him pursue a career in publishing but also informs his keen interest in visual authorial interventions and curatorship. This allows him to shape the visual personality of the book at every step of its creation. He strongly believes in the art of making and therefore constructs most of the images for his book covers.

Ahlawat heads the design department at Penguin Random House, India, during the day and spends time painting in the evenings and over the weekends. He has been the brain behind some of the most iconic book cover designs including the likes of Amitav Ghosh, Ramchandra Guha, Orhan Pamuk, Ruskin Bond, Sudha Murty, Khushwant Singh, Fatima Bhutto, Pico Iyer, Anjum Hasan among others.

In his talk Disaster and Hope at TEDxBITSPilani 2020, he gave the audience a glimpse into his beliefs in life and design through his courageous imagination and curiosity. He shared his personal vision and passion in creating a vocabulary of design for his book covers and nuances of his job as a book designer and an image maker. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx