Children's Book Illustration for Bangalore Airport
Industry
Creative
Client
KIAF
Service
Illustration
Agency
Design Answers
The Palash — flame of the forest — blooms bright orange across India and goes almost entirely unnoticed. KIAF, the foundation behind Bangalore Airport, wanted a series of children's storybooks built around it: part awareness,part fundraiser. Proceeds would go toward education for underprivileged children.
Because the cause is funded by sales, beauty wasn't enough — the books had to compete on a shelf and earn a place in someone's home. That set the real design problem: make a child connect with both the flower and the feeling, fast, so a parent reaches for it without thinking twice. Design the desire, and the cause funds itself.
01
Studied how illustration carries story, emotion and meaning for early readers.
02
Looked at how the best modern Indian children's books earn attention and affection.
03
Turned the Palash flower into a recurring character and wrote three stories around it.
Palash orange leads; cream, leaf-green and warm sand support it. Warm tones do the emotional work comfort before the first word.
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The character ideation process focused on creating warm, expressive, and relatable personalities that children could instantly connect with. Multiple sketches were explored to refine facial expressions,body language, clothing, and proportions while ensuring consistency across the story.
This started as a storybook task and became a lesson in designing for a cause — that the most caring thing a designer can do is make the good option also the desirable one. I learned to hold story, craft and purpose in the same hand, and to trust that warmth is a strategy, not a soft skill.
A flower, three stories, one cause.
