Oddball is a creative practise specialising in play and design for children.

Oddball’s founder, Nalisha Chouraria, is a multidisciplinary designer and illustrator who is infatuated with the absurd. She creates unorthodox play scenarios to stimulate and empower children, and encourage them to step out of their comfort zone through play. Her work includes illustration, play design, graphic design, workshop design, digital & physical toy design and games. She brings the child’s perspective into her design process through research, play tests, observation, interviews and workshops.

Nalisha studied visual communication design and interactive toy design at Srishti School of Design Bangalore, followed by a Masters in Designed Objects at School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a second Masters in Child Culture Design at HDK, Sweden. As well as working with a suite of award-winning studios, Nalisha has had utterly unique life experiences, including being a Bollywood child actor and marrying a tree. She has lived in India, America, Sweden, Italy, Netherlands and currently Australia.

Since it’s inception, Oddball has enabled Nalisha to pursue projects that have been shown at NADA (NY), Growing with Design show (HK & Sweden), Nuremberg Toy Fair in Germany and at the Nordic edition of MoMa’s Century of the Child show (Sweden) to name a few.

During her early education, all her designs were termed as ‘cute’. This led her to question this very attribute and break out of it through experimentation with the unconventional. Whether it was the irregular toys she made for children that are sick of cute, or her designs for which she won several awards – A recurring theme in her work is the uncanny.