A Mom of three; two handsome boys and the third one the oldest of all Epistle communications, Tanya Khanna is inspiring us to do what our heart desires. She, who also loves baking, is shaping the face of the design industry through communication and marketing and is an enthusiastic curator and writer who believes in communicating stories to humankind through her words.
Being always driven towards architecture, Khanna realized her love for architectural writing rather than building making after she graduated from Sushant school of architecture in 2004. She began her career as an architectural journalist and after working for around a year pursued her post-graduation from University College of London.
An architect, communication and strategy consultant, and the founder of the first and largest design communication firm in South Asia, she is working towards showcasing native architecture and design on the global platform. With over 15 years of global experience in marketing and strategy within AEC, real estate, and media she is rooting for architecture and design stories to be narrated.
Tanya Khanna has written for ample national and international media houses and co-authored and editorially directed many books and monographs. From being a lecturer to a guest speaker at several events, her latest achievement is being amongst the jury for the Dezeen Awards 2021. She helped secure her Alma Mater the university status through management initiatives and promoted the incorporation of activities to the curriculum that ensures the holistic development of a student. She also played a role as an editor for the Fensterbau Frontale India tabloid in advocating facade and fenestration design in the country.
How did it Start?
A dream that took shape from a living room dining table 10 years ago in November 2011 is now painting the lives of many designers. The intent to build this agency was to formalize communication in the field of design and to make it accessible to a global audience.
Tanya Khanna does not believe in the ideology that every building will speak for itself, she preaches that marketing and strategizing about it is an important factor in today’s scenario as everyone needs to hear your side of the story. No person sitting across the other continent can analyze the thought process of an architect merely by just looking at a building, the designers and architects need to put their work out there to garner maximum projects.
Khanna thinks that communicating about a design puts on board several factors for the clientele to select you from the herd and as designers and architects tend to maintain a distance from that, Epistle can come into play. The originality lost in the data pouring in everyday needs to be addressed, embraced, and displayed through communication design strategies.
How’s it Going?
No plan comes in with success dates and formulas, but the first achievement always brings you closer to it; for Tanya Khanna, it happened after six months of her venture into entrepreneurship. With multiple sleepless nights, heartaches, and no day off, she now works along with a team of about 30 people and has introduced the notion of design communications and strategy for more than 100 companies. Epistle has helped its clients get featured in more than 1800 online media platforms and 1500 print publications, along with several accolades and projects over time.
The team at Epistle Communications is dictated towards particular tasks enabling the efficient overall showcase of work and enabling better discourse. Assimilating the client’s requirements, it caters them with suitable strategy and marketing schemes for art, architecture, design, built environment, or allied industries reaching a wider audience globally.
Epistle has received more than 50 global awards and recognition on more than 500 online platforms. The team of architects, journalists, graphic designers, management specialists, and web designers is striving here to bridge the gap between design and practice.
To keep the clients happy and satisfied should be the priority but that process is led by some young minds working tirelessly to make an idea happen, but Epistle is taking care of everything. The weekly movie nights, GIF battles, pictionaries or random brainstorming sessions over varied topics catalyzes the productivity of the team and ensures a better outcome. A social media hour is a regular activity to stay updated about the events and upcoming discoveries in the design field and also caters to being more creative, which Tanya Khanna roots for.
Ideologies and strategies of Epistle
As the slogan BE KNOWN speaks for itself, it is believed at Epistle Communications that something somewhere amazing is waiting to be known and they work towards discovering and marketing that ‘Something’. The founder considers that their biggest role models are their clients who drive the smooth running of Epistle as it is their content that inspires. The continuous efforts have resulted in the enhancement of client interests in content curation and reaching. This increment in communicable design inspires students and youngsters towards the profession and provides Indian designers recognition from a global audience.
Also, Tanya is spreading awareness about their beliefs of Talking Architecture and Reading Architecture through several talk shows and guest lectures. She believes that it is important for us as a community to pen down our history rather than someone else does it for us. She promotes the concept of architectural writing by the architects themselves to amplify the architectural concepts catering to a wider audience and garnering their interest in architecture. The 10X10X10 event on world photography day or 31 days talks series on international women’s day are ideas that enhance the communicative approach of professionals and make one understand the importance of narrating our own set of ideologies.
The interactive sessions by Tanya Khanna and the team and sharing the ideas and strategies which they believe in encourages the non-architectural community on board and talk about architecture. Architecture is instilled in us, from the kitchen we cook into the office we work at, it is all architecture and it is all unique and should be known.
This Entrepreneur aspires to be the most reachable brand for communication and strategy design in Southeast Asia and inspires to follow a passion and be creative. She often explains in interviews that it can be difficult at the beginning but one needs to understand the Why behind it and keep going. The belief that money is a by-product, the focus should be earning the client’s faith drives success for her. She does what gives her joy and motivates us to do so.
As Khanna says it, Do whatever rocks your boat!
References
epistlecomm-1. (n.d.). Communication Consultancy | Epistle Communications | New Delhi. [online] Available at: https://www.epistle.co/ [Accessed 8 Aug. 2021]
Anon, (2018). Architects Who Do More: Meet Tanya Khanna from Epistle, who is responsible for putting India’s architectural talent on the global map – ArchitectureLive! [online] Available at: https://architecturelive.in/tanya-khanna-from-epistle-architectural-jornalism/ [Accessed 8 Aug. 2021]
The Story Exchange. (2013). Tanya Khanna: Epistle Communications– Bridging The Gap Between Design & Practice. [online] Available at: https://thestoryexchange.org/tanya-khanna-epistle-communications/ [Accessed 8 Aug. 2021]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanya-khanna-9642215/
www.youtube.com. (n.d.). How to build & brand architectural practice | Tanya Khanna. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_LF2JVe5Ys [Accessed 8 Aug. 2021]
www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Talk by Tanya Khanna on “Reading Architecture”, part of the Architecture and Society Series (GREHA). [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBHkSvoxDt4 [Accessed 8 Aug. 2021]
https://www.linkedin.com/company/epistle-communications/
