About | letterpress

Rukminee Guha Thakurta began to work with art and photobooks in 2005 when the photobook was beginning to find currency in India. Often credited as one of India's first photobook designers she looked at photobooks and art books holistically: working intensively with artists and photographers on their edits and sequences, finding the right form and materials for their books, the words to go with them, and taking meticulous care of their design and production.

Rukminee has been working in editorial design—books and magazines—ever since she graduated from the National Institute of Design in 2002. Initially she worked with news and travel magazines at Outlook; later she joined the publication design studio at Photoink, a photography gallery. It was here that she began to work on books with artists, collectors and museums. Her interest in photography and photobooks led her to the famed publisher, Steidl Verlag, in Germany. She was invited to work there in 2007 and again in 2012. As a guest designer there she worked closely with some of the finest artists of our times and had the privilege of working with Gerhard Steidl, a master printer whose unique set-up in Göttingen honed her understanding and love of book design further.

She set up Letterpress, her solo practice, in 2009 naming her studio after the technique of relief printing. Artist-designer-editor-printer collaborations keep her busy with books, magazines and other publications. She teaches design as visiting faculty at her alma mater, NID, as well as at other institutions in India and abroad. Apart from her B.Des from NID she also holds Postgraduate Diplomas and certificates in Indian Aesthetics and Aesthetics, Criticism and Theory from Jnanapravaha, Mumbai.

In 2016 Rukminee conceived of and curated one of the first exhibitions on contemporary practices around the book in India called Zones of Privacy at Chatterjee and Lal in Mumbai. Her writing on design, art and photography has been published on various platforms—print as well as online—and a selection of these has been collected at medium.com/@rukminee. She regularly writes notes on her book design projects and posts them along with photographs on her Instagram @rukminee_guha_thakurta.