A stitch on the back of a garment, turned into a brand

Akash founded Walking Vertical in Dehradun in November 2020: bespoke textile art made with embroidery, eco-printing and patchwork, often with local women and tailors he trains himself. I joined in Summer 2022 as art director and creative contributor, and, as my own slide puts it, friend of the founder.

Three things made it real: Walking Vertical at the Homegrown street festival, a workshop with Veg Non Veg, and the point where money and responsibilities started coming in.

One evening in Summer 2022 I was hand-lettering a friend’s old T-shirt in Dehradun with the famous “No sleep, bus, club, another club” tour line. That is when I met Akash.

We hit it off without much introduction. Our first project was Akash’s introduction in Grazia. The idea was simple: photograph him, rework the picture in post, print it, and let Akash embroider over the print with silver thread. We found golden hour light and a plain white wall in the middle of Dehradun, which is harder than it sounds. I built his vision of a huge alien head with horns on the cheekbones, he stitched it, and we scanned and refined the piece. Next thing I knew, our work was in Grazia and I was modelling his garments.

Those first months were shoots, edits and a lot of trying things. Often that meant me in front of the camera.

We looked at Jaywalking, Bloni and Adidas: marks that work as a symbol on their own, sit quietly on clothing and still feel loud on a poster.

The first round explored letterforms: a W, a diamond of stacked Vs, a bold poster. Feedback moved us away from letters and towards the blue of Japanese woodblock prints, which got the tick and stayed.

Akash had been hand-sewing a small WV stitch into his garments. Turned over, the back of that stitch read as a figure mid-stride: an angular body leaning forward and up. Everything we had listed, movement, direction, quiet and a calligraphic Eastern gesture, was already there in thread.

I traced the stitch and rebuilt it as a vector, then tested it straight away where it would live: on black, on blue, on tags, posters and editorial layouts. Seeing it in use early told us more than any mood board.

Most of the five days went into balance: stroke weight, the angle of the stride and the small gap that makes the figure read as a person. Then the symbol met its wordmark, tested in Klein Blue, black and white.

The first system was deliberately small. Obsidian, Navy and Klein Blue for the calm blues of the Dehradun valley, Cotton and Paper for warmth. GT Eesti Text and PP Neue Machina for type. And a line of Japanese, 垂直に歩くのは楽しい, “walking vertically is fun”.

Around the mark we built a language: the mark as a directional arrow, a grid of marks pointing every way for “New Direction”, a luminous deep blue orb, stacked WALKING VERTICAL type, and photo manipulation as part of the image making.

In 2025 the brand grew up. The blues got deeper with Ultramarine, Blood Orange arrived as a rare accent for emphasis, and the type moved to POLYMATH and Panel Mono. For the first time we wrote it down: a guidelines document for photographers, UI designers, art directors and interns, covering the logo system, usage, colour, type, imagery and brand elements.