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TOSS - The Old Slate Studio | Creative Studio | Branding

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[3/12] Emphasis is not about making everything louder. It is about deciding what deserves to be noticed first.

A strong composition does not give everything equal importance. It creates a hierarchy — one element leads, everything else supports.

Swipe through the contexts where emphasis takes a different form — nature, architecture, photography and interiors. Same principle, but completely different ways of directing attention.

Concept: Emphasis as a tool for directing attention and creating hierarchy
Design: @deevakshii
Tools: @pinterest @chatgpt @googlegemini

#designprinciples #emphasis #visualhierarchy #theoldslatestudio #designthinking by @herewetoss

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20 days ago

Collecting postcards from Bombay.

Some cities are defined by landmarks. Bombay is defined by details.

The typography on an old storefront. The colours of a passing bus. The geometry of Art Deco buildings. Hand-painted signs, weathered walls, crowded streets, sea-facing silhouettes — all existing together without ever feeling perfectly curated.

There’s something fascinating about a city that has built such a strong identity out of contrasts.

Inspiration: @pinterestindia
Credits: Prathmesh Kapse

(Postcard , vintage stamps , maximalism , city stamps , bombay diaries) by @herewetoss

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25 days ago

Bandhani is not dotted. It is tied into existence.

The cloth begins almost blank. Then, point by point, tiny portions are pulled up and bound with thread. Each knot becomes a decision: this is where the colour will not go.

Then comes the dye. And then another tying. Another colour. Another layer of resistance. The finer the Bandhani, the smaller and more numerous the knots — some pieces carrying thousands of them, each one made by hand.

What looks like a pattern at the end is actually a record of everything that was protected along the way.

The dots are not printed onto the cloth. They are what remains when the knots are opened and the colour has done its work. In Gujarat, different ways of tying create different visual languages — from geometric formations to flowers, birds and other traditional forms.

And the cloth carries more than colour. Bandhani has long been tied to occasions, communities and identity — its colours and patterns could signal celebration, marriage, status or belonging.

The irony is what makes Bandhani beautiful:
the pattern is created not by adding colour, but by deciding where colour cannot go.

Concept: Bandhani as a study in resistance — pattern created through what is deliberately protected from colour
Design: @_shrutip05

[ indian textiles, bandhani , bandhani process , creative studio, hand dye ]
#ahmedabadcity #creativedesign #bandhani #indiantextile by @herewetoss

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Not because of its content — because of its scale relative to the surface beneath it. The Matisse book sits on a table three times its size. It reads as precious, considered, placed. Move it to a smaller table and it becomes clutter.

Scale doesn’t change the object. It changes the meaning.

That is what scale and proportion actually does: it determines what something means relative to everything else around it. A size relationship is never neutral. It is always an argument about what matters.

Concept: Scale as a determinant of meaning, not just measurement
Design: @deevakshii
Tools: @pinterestindia @googlegemini @adobe @claudeai

#designprinciples #scaleandproportion #toss #theoldslatesudio #designthinking
[scale, proportion, designeducation, visualdesign, brandstrategy, ahmedabaddesignstudio]

The nautilus grows in a logarithmic spiral — each chamber proportionally larger than the last by a consistent ratio. It’s not decorative. It’s structural. The shell needs to grow as the animal grows, and this is the only proportion that allows it.

What looks like aesthetic perfection is engineering logic. Nature arrived at this proportion not because it is beautiful but because it works. The beauty is a byproduct of the function.

When designers borrow the golden ratio, they’re applying a structural solution to a visual problem. That’s legitimate. But knowing why it works is different from knowing that it works.

Concept: Proportion in nature as structural logic, not aesthetic formula

#fibonaccispiral #proportionindesign #toss #designprinciples #theoldslatesudio
[goldenratio, natureindesign, designeducation, visualdesign, designthinking]

The Great Pyramid’s height relates to its base perimeter in a ratio remarkably close to the golden section. Scholars still debate whether this was intentional or an outcome of the tools used to build it. The answer changes the story of the decision. It doesn’t change what you’re looking at.

That is the uncomfortable truth about proportion in architecture: it works on the eye regardless of whether the maker planned it. The experience doesn’t require the intent.

The Sphinx exists partly to give the pyramid a scale reference. Withou taken in Toss by @herewetoss

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3 months ago

Ajrak is not printed. It is argued with.

The cloth goes through resist, wash, dye, resist, wash, dye — sometimes twelve steps, sometimes more. Each pass committed before you can see what the last one did. The maker is always working on something they cannot fully read yet.

The geometry is not decoration. Every pattern in Ajrak comes from a cosmology — the 8-pointed star is the sun and the cosmos simultaneously, the lattice is the order that holds everything in. Khatri families in Kutch and Sindh carried this not as a design system but as a worldview. The cloth was a way of saying: the universe has structure and we know what it looks like.

Natural indigo for blue. Madder root for red. Harda for mordant. The colours do not sit on the surface. They go in. That’s why a 40-year-old Ajrak looks more resolved than a new one — it hasn’t faded, it has settled.

Most printed textiles are about the image. Ajrak is about the sequence. Remove one step and the whole argument falls apart.

Concept: Ajrak as a cosmological argument built through process, not pattern
Design: @_shrutip05
Tools: @claudeai @canva Secondary Research

#ajrak #indiantextiles #toss #theoldslateStudio #textileresearch taken in Ahmedabad, India by @herewetoss

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3 months ago

Only creative people here look at 40°C pavement and see a brief.

Criss cross, summer edition. The grid was ours. The egg was June’s idea. Nobody vetoed it.

This is what happens when you can’t turn the creative brain off — even the city starts collaborating.

Concept: Summer as the loudest collaborator in the room
Design: @_shrutip05
Tools: @ibispaint_official, 40°C of unsolicited input

#creativeminds #toss #theoldslatestudio #ahmedabaddesign #studiolife taken in Ahmedabad, India by @herewetoss

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4 months ago

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4 months ago

A space is never just four walls. It’s where ideas breathe.
When we imagined the TOSS studio, the brief was simple but stubborn — it had to move the way creativity moves. Open, but never empty. Structured, but never stiff.

Because creative people don’t all work the same way. Some need an open stretch to pace and think out loud. Some need a quiet corner to disappear into. Some find their best ideas in the light, others in the in-between spaces. So we built for all of them — zones that shift with your energy, glass that keeps nothing boxed in, natural light doing half the design work, lighting curated not to fill a room but to set a tempo.

Our founder @shreyaaaaaaaah had a clear vision from day one — a studio with room for every kind of creative mind, where no one has to fit themselves into the space because the space already makes room for them. And @homyns.studio helped bring that vision to life, detail by detail.

This is where TOSS thinks, builds, and begins.
Come see it the way we see it. ✨

Illustrations by @_shrutip05 taken in Toss by @herewetoss

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