Not a writer. Not an illustrator. Not a designer. Not a musician. Or maybe all of them at once.
What do you do when your creative career refuses to fit into a neat LinkedIn headline? If you’re Vinayak Varma, you stop trying to choose. You write picture books, art-direct science magazines, build beer brands, teach design students, make strange dystopian synth music, and somehow connect all of it through the same underlying creative process.
In this episode, we trace Vinayak’s wonderfully strange creative arc - from defining himself as a design generalist, to building Brainwave, a science magazine for kids that tried to turn textbooks into time machines, tapeworm zombies, detective stories, flying machines, invisible light, and child versions of Einstein and Aryabhata. We get into the messy business of making science fun without making it wrong, why distribution killed great magazines before Instagram ever had a chance to save them, and why a children’s science magazine was really a startup hiding inside a publishing house.
We also talk about Angry Akku, Vinayak’s deceptively simple picture book about a child dealing with anger, how it found its way into classrooms, reading campaigns, and eventually the Nobel Museum orbit, and why the most “utilitarian” creative work can sometimes travel the furthest. Later, we move into design education, the explosion of design schools in India, the vanishing apprenticeship layer for young designers, and the uncomfortable question of what generative AI does to process, originality, livelihood, and the next generation’s ability to think.
This one is for anyone who has ever struggled to describe what they do, tried to make complex ideas accessible, built creative work for children, worried about AI eating the messy middle of creation, or wondered whether the best work comes from freedom, constraints, or some strange argument between the two.
This is a LONG one, so if you’re jumping in for a specific thread, we broadly move through four big arcs:
Vinayak Varma’s Highlights:
→ Author-illustrator of The Sunshower Song, Angry Akku, Jadav and the Tree-Place, and more
→ Founding editor and art director of Brainwave, a science magazine for young readers
→ Editor of the science fiction anthology Strange Worlds! Strange Times!
→ Recipient of The Hindu Young World-Goodbooks Award and the Publishing Next Digital Book of the Year Award
→ Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the BSFA Award
→ Former Brand Custodian at Geist Brewing Company during its first six years
→ Makes strange, dystopian synth-driven soundscapes as Moral Panic Button