Slow is Beautiful

Ahlawat Gunjan (Author, Illustrator)
Multiple award-winning designer, self-taught painter, TEDx speaker, design educator-Ahlawat Gunjan wears many hats. A graduate of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, he has a master's degree in graphic design from The Glasgow School of Art, UK. Ahlawat has also spent a semester at Indiana-Purdue University, USA, focusing on design thinking, innovation and leadership. His overlapping interests in art and literature not only made him pursue a career in publishing but they also inform his keen interest in visual authorial interventions and curatorship. This allows him to shape the visual personality of the book at every step of its creation. He strongly believes in the art and power of making and therefore himself constructs most of the images for his book covers.
Trained at Lars Mullers Switzerland and Faber & Faber, UK, Ahlawat has worked closely with Penguin, Faber and Faber, Hachette, Little Brown, Hodder, Random House, Quercus, Hurst, Scribe AUS, Pantheon and Knopf Doubleday USA. Currently, he is Head of Design at Penguin Random House, India, and spends his free time painting. His paintings have been showcased in solo shows in New Delhi and Dehradun. He has won numerous awards and accolades, including the Oxford Bookstore cover prize for Gun Island (2021) and the Atta Galatta Bangalore Literature Festival for Rising Heat (2020).
Ahlawat lives in New Delhi with his piano and a room full of paints and brushes. He can be reached at ahlawatgunjan@gmail.com.

Like many graphic designers, Ahlwat has a sharp awareness of form, colour and texture. During the worldwide lockdown caused by the Covid pandemic, instead of a damping down of his sensitivity, the opposite happened. He found himself looking at nature and the world around him with a new and heightened awareness. As this book shows, using the written word and his painterly images, he has set out to capture this newfound rapture with the natural world.All of us carry a secret garden inside ourselves perhaps. Somehow, somewhere. Ahlawat has allowed us a glimpse of his - rich and a-blossom as it is - and it gives such delight. Sheer delight.Observing and absorbing small details, will make each day a little more beautiful.Slow is Beautiful consolidates an artistic experience of observing nature with slowness at heart and fluidity at hand. Through gentle mark making, he creates an atmosphere to start a mindful conversation with nature.