An illustrated poster and an interactive field guide website for Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary, Wayanad.
Role: Illustration, visual design, interaction design, front-end development
Text: GBS team
Year: 2026
Live: melkkadu.in
Context
Melkkadu studies "the canopy and the forest under the canopy: the world that is dependent on the canopy, on the shade."
Most plant conservation in the Western Ghats has focused on trees. The orchids, ferns, mosses and other plants that grow on and under them get much less attention. The sanctuary wanted a way to help visitors, students and local communities start noticing them.
The brief
The project plan calls this skill "the epiphytic eye": looking at a tree and seeing what lives on it. That idea shaped both pieces of work, a poster and a website.
The poster
A single black-and-white drawing of the forest, packed with mushrooms, people, ferns, flowers, a marten and a tiger, with almost no space between them. At first it reads as a tangle of leaves. With a longer look it separates into hundreds of individual lives.
The poster is printed at Super A2. The sanctuary gives copies to students, naturalists and other guests who visit, and to anyone in the community who asks for one through its social channels.
From the process: notes on a reference photo, the pencil drawing, notes placing species on the sketch, and the inked line art.
From poster to website
The poster is the home page of melkkadu.in. In the Photoshop file, each plant and animal sits on its own layer. A script exports those layers to the site, so every one can be found and opened on its own. The page starts with a question, "Can you see the tiger?", and lets people search the drawing the same way they would search a real canopy.
The field guide
The guide has eight parts, from Seeing the forest to Attitude, and covers 100 plants. Readers can group them by life form, light or habitat. The sanctuary team writes the text on their own wiki and the site syncs from it, so they can update content without touching code. A printable PDF is built from the same source.
Response
The poster has been well received by the sanctuary team and its visitors, who describe it as engaging and evocative. Printed copies are still being requested and given away.
