Danish Farhan

"The best reason to create something is to find answers to a problem you’re obsessed with solving."

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 04:34:36 -0400

“The best reason to create something is to find answers to a problem you’re obsessed with solving.”

What is the price of one’s comfort, when others seek refuge like...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 15:30:00 -0400

What is the price of one’s comfort, when others seek refuge like corpses under the blistering Dubai sun.

Music from an incredible videogame I just discovered called...

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 16:27:00 -0400

Music from an incredible videogame I just discovered called Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery. I have spent a long time searching for a gaming experience that evokes the magic of Monkey Island from the 90’s, but with a layer of mystique and music that is very much it’s own genre.

An interesting take on education reform by Alain de Botton...

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 05:17:00 -0500

An interesting take on education reform by Alain de Botton — that schools and universities poorly equip students to face the challenges and dilemmas of daily life, from how to have relationships or raise children, to how to manage one’s anxieties and ambitions. He wants to reform the education system using great novels, plays or paintings as conduits for contemplating some of the large and important questions in life. So, goodbye courses on Narrative Trends in 19th Century French Novel. Instead, perhaps lessons in Surviving the Tensions of Marriage, or Coping with Death. A good start.

View from the stage at Kyoorius Designyatra 2012.

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 12:45:00 -0400

View from the stage at Kyoorius Designyatra 2012.

The gardener at Hyderabad’s historical Chowmahal Palace...

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 -0400

The gardener at Hyderabad’s historical Chowmahal Palace doesn’t hide his disenchantment with life on this blistering Indian summer afternoon.

Her intensely hollow wrinkled stare sparkles as I request to...

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:38:09 -0400

Her intensely hollow wrinkled stare sparkles as I request to take a photograph. Taken in Hyderabad, India.

Part of my series Drawing Blind.

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 08:11:00 -0400

Part of my series Drawing Blind.

Part of my series Drawing Blind.

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 08:10:00 -0400

Part of my series Drawing Blind.

A series I call Drawing Blind where I focus only on the subject,...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 08:09:00 -0400

A series I call Drawing Blind where I focus only on the subject, and do not look at the sketch in progress at all. I water color in areas to add a touch of life. The technique creates a style I would never adopt if I was looking at what I was doing.

Flight of Time: Passage of time while seated at a little cafe at...

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 03:27:00 -0500

Flight of Time: Passage of time while seated at a little cafe at Frankfurt Airport on a cloudy January morning. Shot with an iPhone 4.

People Watching at Frankfurt Airport

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 23:37:01 -0500

Music: The Town OST
Venue: Kuffler & Bucher, Frankfurt Airport Terminal 1

Every face screams a story. Within 10 meters, are sat atleast as many. Drifting closer into their worlds is an extraordinary feat; one requiring a series of controlled and unalterable circumstances to achieve.

An apparent Jack Black clone sits on an opposite table. Long hair, Pastel blue shirt untucked, MacBook Pro ahead, a seemingly new Canan 5D clenched with amateur purpose. He is brooding, but in a way one recognizes he works towards the look. The camera lens is telephoto, and it occasionally points directly at us. Only to discover in the tangent of the lens sits a sugar dispenser; he is refining his macro skills. Ten minutes later, his excitement is heightened; indicated by a constantly shifting foot of large shoes and a pint of beer that has now become his camera’s muse.

Immediately beside Jack Black sits a German woman, blonde, professor-like, interesting but not attractive, in her late thirties. Besides the red pen in hand furiously marking away on sheets of paper, a more noticeable quirk is a vigorous habit that would be a tell in a game of poker. The fingers of her right hand carefully seek out a lock of hair from her fringe, then compulsively twirl it around in a loop. The overhead light shines neatly in a shaft to sharpen her otherwise soft features. She has now started to resemble an elongated, slimmer Meryl Streep. She has an evidently focused personality, is probably a a good listener and a stern work-master. She might have a few friends, but looks like a mother of severely disciplined children that fear her.

A sporty, cropped cut, t-shirted young man no older than 25 peeks at us with guilty abandon. He is riveted by his HP laptop, has no accessories on the table to give any clues to his choices and perhaps deductively, his life. His careless abandon is exemplified by his confidence and boredom. Nothing on that laptop screen glares out with any greater purpose but to kill time. But suddenly, something changes. His face has fallen into a sudden shyness, in a single move he removes the massive headphones resting across his neck and adjusts the collar to make him look effortlessly elegant. A smile emerges, while his hand lifts in a gentle unsure wave into the screen. He is logged into a video chat, but decides to type on to communicate rather than speak into a mic or hear anything his counterpart on the other end of the line might say. An alien environment suddenly transforms into a private world where things are immediately more personal and enlightened.

A young, effervescent blonde woman sits two tables down from Meryl Streep. She started out in the middle of a table of six men and women of the same age group. She has a smile to light up the dullest casual banter. From the engaged reaction of her friends, she is clearly intelligible and funny. But she is not Elizabeth Hurley. She looks kindly into the eyes of her friends, almost looking for reassurance on every installment of conversation. She wears a dull woolen jacket, unaware her blue eyes shine in contrast. She could be anything, professionally; an academic that isn’t a nerd. Yes, looks like a smaller version of Jennifer Morrison from House MD. Her friends include a woman only visible from the back of her head, and a man who looks like the kind of character that gets routinely planted as the guy who gets outsted first in a slasher film; the jock with a beard, nothing wrong with him but not quite the main protagonist.

Faces continue to walk in, sit down, and tell their stories.

"The greatest casualty of Qatar rising has been Abu Dhabi. Roughly, Qatar = Abu Dhabi + World Cup."

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 13:19:00 -0500

“The greatest casualty of Qatar rising has been Abu Dhabi. Roughly, Qatar = Abu Dhabi + World Cup.”

Photo

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 04:26:47 -0500

"Instead of deluding oneself, accept that you will be judged by your cover. Then go fix it to best..."

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 03:36:00 -0400

“Instead of deluding oneself, accept that you will be judged by your cover. Then go fix it to best reflect the book inside.”

Tim Burton’s darkly comic short film from 1982.

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 16:23:00 -0400

Tim Burton’s darkly comic short film from 1982.

The Future of Music Albums

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 11:33:39 -0400

Music album-centrism is like saying the sun revolves around the Earth. We don’t listen to albums; we listen to collections of songs. First, companies need to sort out the ‘one-buy-for-all-devices’ mantra. Second, Pandora-like collections need to be purchasable. Third, make album cover art and videos a buyable commodity. You should be able to just buy music, without paying for art direction.

Gap Bows to Outrage, Recalls New Logo

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 09:37:00 -0400

Gap Bows to Outrage, Recalls New Logo:

Gap launched their new identity with fanfare, then shortly afterwards initiated the largest brand recall in recent history. Online outrage forced the company to rethink what they were trying to achieve in the first place, and whether it was worth alienating a clearly passionate customer/fan base.

Will companies really ever be to launch new brands without tapping into the crowd?

These uber funky illustrations from Stanley Chow include Draper,...

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 16:30:00 -0400

These uber funky illustrations from Stanley Chow include Draper, Dylan and Jolie.

Nestlé Takes On Pharma

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 16:04:00 -0400

Nestlé Takes On Pharma:

What could be a more fruitful combination, no pun intended. To sustainably create a drug market via its food products? Call me cynical, but the meteoric rise of obesity, diabetes and other food-linked disorders in the last decade alone begs the question: what has changed so drastically? Food, ofcourse. Besides the fast-food gang led by McDisgusting and Burger Kringe, Nestle is possible the largest producer of food that doesn’t actually grow somewhere.

With a company like Nestle openly going into pharmaceuticals, one ought to consider the dangerous possibility of creating a market for one product via another largely disconnected but intrinsically linked one.