When we first received a phone call from Surya Sir, he shared that there was a new small-scale research project we could participate in. He mentioned that unlike Kheldai Sikdai, where we were deeply involved in building and running a full-fledged making space, this one would be simpler in scope.
In Kheldai Sikdai, three of us teachers from Saraswati Niketan—myself (Rabina Ma’am), Anita Ma’am, and Mallika Ma’am—had been part of the core team. But I recall that Mallika Ma’am, who comes from an English teaching background, found it quite challenging to conduct the STEAM sessions. She openly shared that navigating the hands-on aspects was difficult for her.
So, when this new opportunity came up, I found myself a little confused. I was quite busy at the time and wondered—should I invite both Mallika Ma’am and Anita Ma’am to join, or should Anita Ma’am and I take this forward ourselves?
Since Mallika Ma’am had felt quite pressured during the previous project, we discussed it and decided that Anita Ma’am and I (Rabina) would be the ones to join this time.
Even then, when the first session started and I saw the word design, I felt like, “Oh no, maybe I won’t be able to do this either.” I’ve always loved art—I used to draw occasionally and thought of myself as a kind of self-taught artist—but I had no idea how to create things digitally. As the sessions progressed, I began to learn so much.
There were things I used to overlook before, but this project helped me start noticing them. I remember a session where we were shown a dot placed somewhere in a layout, and we had to design everything else so that all the attention would go to that dot. That exercise helped me understand how design and artwork guide people's focus. We also explored how to show movement in still images—which opened up a whole new world of visual storytelling.
Like Rabina Ma’am, in the first session, I (Anita) also felt a bit lost. When I saw the activities about motion, design, and balance, I thought—this is not for me. These topics were completely new to me. For the first couple of worksheets, I just filled them out as best as I could because I didn’t know what I was doing. Only after the first two sessions did I start to feel a little more comfortable.
In earlier projects with Karkhana Samuha, we often received goodies—stickers, icons, or printed materials—prepared by the Karkhana team. But this time, it was different. We were told that we would create those materials ourselves—starting with designing the logo for the Value to Vision project.
For me (Rabina), I started exploring logo ideas online. Almost everywhere I looked, bulbs were used to symbolize ideas. Since the word value was in our name, I sketched a hand holding a bulb—an idea of nurturing values. I also played around with the acronym V2V and created another version of the logo.
Rabina Ma’ams Design of Value to Vision
In the meantime, I (Anita) also had the opportunity to design a logo, and fortunately, my version was selected as the official one for the project.
Anita ma’ams Designof Value to Vision
We were introduced to digital design tools during the sessions. One of them was Inkscape, where we learned to create shapes, experiment with tools, and eventually develop complete designs and logos. After playing around with Inkscape, I realized how much effort goes into design. It gave me a glimpse into what designers experience. I now feel more confident—if someone asked me to design something today, I’d at least know where to begin.
