More than a decade has passed since Markings Publishing was formed. A great deal has happened since then.

Pakistani-American artist, Arooj Aftab has won a Grammy and performed at music’s biggest night in the world; Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy has won two Aca-demy Awards at cinema’s biggest (international) night.

Coke Studio has emerged with a different format, with producers changing hands, live music replaced by recordings where each song is released with a music video directed by a variety of original directors. Junoon has reunited for a spree of local and international shows while Strings (ft. Bilal Maqsood and Faisal Kapadia) have broken up and like everything else they’ve done throughout their career, they’ve parted ways in an amicable fashion. The band is done but they remain friends. The Legend of Maula Jutt released and raced to break records as the country’s most successful film on the way to becoming a landmark achievement for South Asian cinema.

Through all of it, Markings Publishing, founded by Kiran Aman, has completed a run that exceeds 10 years in the business. Along with an enthusiastic team, Kiran Aman remains as committed to it as she was when the self-funded publishing house was first launched.

Their core values haven’t changed that include the written word backed by strong concepts, drenched in design and viewed from a different lens than that of a corporate client or a poet.

“When life wraps itself in a leaf with neatly folded, crisp corners and presents you with options of being saada, plain khushbu, fragrant with elements that cause distress or sweetness or bitter. Choose your elements wisely.” – ‘Paan’ by Noor Ali from One Teaspoon of Home (Desi Food Poetry, published by Markings Publishing)

The latest release from Markings, One Teaspoon of Home, a desi food poetry book by Noor Ali, has been published and makes the case for this format that is a combination of intelligent and nuanced writing mixed with equally strong design illustrations.

Taking a poetic book that is One Teaspoon of Home, a desi food poetry book by Noor Ali and mixing it with design illustrations, it is done in a manner that echoes our great love affair with food as well as a mirror to Pakistani culture, heritage, history, glorious design and anthropological ideas.

For Kiran Aman, the idea to publish any book isn’t driven by awards even though Markings has won a few for their food-related books. That they’ve gotten nominated and even won has always been an unexpected surprise because they haven’t gone chasing after any award. Their previous victories meant their work was discovered on its own, reveals Kiran Aman. For her and the team at Markings, that isn’t the objective but when the awards do come, it is a humbling experience.

One Teaspoon of Home by Noor Ali, for instance, is not published with the goal to win another award. The project is driven by the writing and how design and gorgeous illustrations make each poem come alive. It is very much a passion project and one that connects food to a cultural, national and regional passion but not in a binary format. Instead of recipes, it takes the culture of food to and provides context to identity that we might’ve missed otherwise.

Each illustration adds flair to that word of writing. In some ways, this non-linear desi food poetry provides us an opportunity to go back in time and take a refresher course on how a desi poetry book relates to food came into being via Markings Publishing? Is design still among its core values? What take precedence when a project is taken on?

A very accommodating Kiran first answers my questions on a designated day and time. But as more questions come to mind, she is a humbling figure who provides answers during an unscheduled phone call on an early morning hour.

What is among the most important issues Kiran Aman means to clarify are the assumptions about the publishing house and that means understanding the three tiers within.

“We’re not an information-based publishing company. We’re an art-based publishing company. Art is always about construction, creation and a thing of beauty that lasts forever. Even when a brand comes to us, we look at the brand from a different lens.” – Kiran Aman, founder of Markings Publishing

“There are three tiers within Markings. One is Publishing, which means they are the books we publish. When a manuscript is sent to us and when deciding upon it, the question is whether it aligns with our vision and the titles we want to put out.”

Aman notes another tier is Markings Corporate. “It is brand development books so it includes all kinds of books for corporations, which is their own documentation or compilation of what they’ve been doing for the last 50 years or 75 years. Those are used as giveaways by them but they’re not sale.”

“Books that are for sale are published by us. For instance, Coke Studio – Sound of the Nation, is sold by us because we acquired the rights for it. But for me, it doesn’t fall in the brand category but in the music book category, which is why we bought the rights.”

“The third tier is Markings Khudi, which includes smaller books like Choti Choti Khush-iyaan. Khudi means ‘self’ so it includes books for motivation or children development or self-help and even pop-art. They fall under that category of Khudi.”

Some wonderful examples include Hum Nay Suna Hum Nay Dekha, which includes content we’ve come to neglect in the social media, TikTok age. But it is a beautiful ode to cinema, television and works that are seminal to performing arts history. What all these books have in common is how each has a design value as its core, much like the writing and isn’t text-heavy deliberately.

People don’t understand what we do, says Kiran Aman. “Some think we do corporate books only; others assume we only publish. We don’t take a mere manuscript and print it. That’s what general publishers do. You send them a manuscript and they will print it but we develop books from scratch from illustrations to design.”

If you visit enough bookstores, what you will notice is that such a genre is missing. Such books are available but they’re not created from scratch with the vision embedded by a local publishing house.

The founder, who is also known for Kiran Fine Jewelry (KFJ) finds a link between Markings and the jewelry business. It is about aesthetics and all falls under one category, which is design. “The roots of both – conceptual jewelry design or conceptual book design – are the same. In other words, it is about developing an idea into a tangible form. In terms of books, for example, the focus is on easy-to-read, understandable text with visuals – those are the core values we’ve always focused on.”

One of the reasons why Markings hasn’t focused on text-heavy, dense literature novels is because, as Kiran elaborates, they wanted to focus on showcasing Pakistan.

“There is enough knowledge to gauge about Pakistan through google… but showcasing Pakistan in a certain light is what we’ve tried to do. We’ve merged food with architecture, and texture, fabrics of Pakistan, and that is also how Markings was born. My intention at the starting of the publishing house was to highlight the good that exists in the country and it needed to be highlighted.”

Why, I ask her?

“Well, at least people who are living abroad, who see these books, can see Pakistan in a different light in comparison to what is being shown on the media. The news is for the happenings of the day.”

I argue we showcase what is not even worth noting as news like showing Mahira Khan in New York, having a smoke. We turned it into a national crisis to a point that Khan had to apologize. It was prime time news.

“I think you hit the nail on the head. We’re not an information-based publishing company. We’re an art-based publishing company. Art is always about construction, creation and a thing of beauty that lasts forever.”

“Our jobs and minds are occupied with that thought. Even when a brand comes to us, we look at the brand from a different angle. When we did Coke Studio – Sound of the Nation, we were clear that we’re not doing the book on five seasons and Rohail Hyatt. We made the book about the texture, harmony, rhythm, the identity of Pakistan and how Coke Studio was bringing out to the world. It had children, lakes, cricket. It may not be just the music but it was about reflecting harmony, texture and rhythm of Pakistan. So, it was about looking at it from a different lens. Ditto was the case with Velo Sound Station book. It wasn’t about the songs, right? It was about the lens through which we saw the first season.”

The concepts, admits Kiran Aman, are not given to them. They look at the work and client’s brief and offer their own take. The concept of the book always comes from Markings.

In the end, whether you grab the copy of One Teaspoon of Home by Noor Ali or another design-friendly published book from Markings, what will become palpable to most of them is a sense of beauty that hides and emerges, each time making you wonder about it with a different context. If beauty is the glory of God – not the former fair and lovely type products – but genuine beauty in any form from symmetry to architecture to illustrations, it becomes something to treasure. To that end, One Teaspoon of Home by Noor Ali is another Markings book that fits into that narrative and therefore a collector’s item.