Lafest- A designer’s tale
Well here i am…passed out of Loyola and my identity as a ‘male chauvinistic pig’ is wearing off rapidly (and presently taking part in the promising online alumini movement of Loyola.)Lafest!Ah,the sweet memories of classes we skipped for ‘genuinine’ reasons like “Designing the official website of Lafest”,”Designing the brochure”,”Tshirt designing”.For about an enormous chunk of the time alloted to this so-called “designing work for Lafest”,many of us used to lurk in the most darkest of maps in Counter Strike.
Yeah that’s right!.
Terrorists ..
We used to gun down every single one of them….brutal,barbarous..
(We had to finish the website,brochure,tshirt after that!!!!).
“Guys!2 more maps to go!Lets give them all we have ”
“Ahoy captain!” replied other members of the “Lafest designing team”.
Battle after battle,the war was far from over.(We still had to do the website,brochure,tshirt.!!!!!)
Just when we thought we had wiped off terrorists from the face of the earth,an ominous figure emerges from the server room,smiling devilishily.
“Poyi!LAN connection poyi!!!!Sir..please sir”
Shijo Sunny interrupts a typical start to the ‘Lafest designing works’.
I used to sit in front of the computer with a Photoshop blank document in front of us.Adjacent to my (pentium 4,64 MB RAM,20GB)computer,Arun (fellow counter terrorist) had just finished completing ‘a state of the art’ Tshirt design and was busy polishing with some techniques i still don’t have a clue about.With sounds like “Oooo” ,”Wow!”,”Aaaaa” rising and mixing into a weird tempo,DP comes in.
“You boys have worked hard!”.(Sure we did!).
I stretch myself to look at another computer monitor.Norton scanning for viruses.Please refer the image below because i was speechless back then.I still am.
To my back i find a very optimistic Sidarth Aredath working on a innovative brochure layout.Impressive indeed!.It was an instant hit.
We had a ‘Computer Co-odinator’ for the first time in the history of lafest.We has doing what he knew the best.Typing!I had never seen a guy use MS Word like that before.Typing in all the schedules,Result sheets,Tabulation sheets.He was truly dedicated to his job.Lakshya Sharma!(Sigh!..Wish he had thought about the video coverage of Lafest 2K5).
Lafest is always a good experience for loyolites….School students excercising their talents in things they have done never before….Like hosting a event website,designing what they wear,brochures.
Lafest 2K4 had a unique post Lafest CD compilation.It was so unique that it had seperate activation module for every single CD which included CD copy protection,The video was encrypted in new formats and could not be be hacked into easily.The only possible way to view the events was to buy a copy for 20 rupees.The interface was truly professional.The most amazing fact is it was done by one person. Rahul ‘Asti’ R(our senior).The stress is on ‘one’ in the previous sentence as i find it impossible for a 12th grader to setup just an extensive array of applications for a school event.I don’t think anyone currently studying in Loyola can acheive that singlehandedly.We, a group of 5,tried to do a similar presentation,ended up studying just how to make good buttons in Flash. What it proves is Lafest brings our the best out of the student be it designing,managing or organising.Our unsuccessful but spirited effort was a way of learning new things.It gave us sufficient knowledge into imaging,certain computer softwares and most importantly how to put up a good,decent and a decorous presentation.
Lafest did that for us.
Vishnu Gopal,another senior had prepared a slideshow on the creation of Lafest websites.The guidelines were to keep the site,simple short and sweet.
2004
2005
2007
What actually began as a frantic effort to make ‘any website’ now has become quite a task.The evolutionary process of Lafest websites finally brings out the uniqueness and the singular form of every year’s designing team. Evolutionary in every sense?.May be not.Over the years the lafest websites are seen to have a gradual increase in complexity well disguised under an evasive cover of ‘a good design’.But then Doesn’t it look good?
