[E07] Apurva Anand — Hand-lettering Artist, Illustrator & Digital Artist

[E11] Shaytvan — Freelance Illustrator

Shaytvan is a Freelance Illustrator from Hyderabad who creates super intricate artworks about a diverse range of topics like mental health, mythology, pop culture, social stigmas, and music. He has a super raw and authentic style of art and he never misses to tell a compelling story through his artworks. In this episode, we talked about his journey as an illustrator in all its glorious details from the first time he remembers sketching to where he is as an artist right now. We went on to discuss in detail the impact of the stories he heard growing up, comics, and mythology on his artworks and tone of expression. We also talked about why it's bad to trace/copy other artists' work when starting out, the importance of telling a raw story, how to deliberately practice to get better as an artist, and a lot of other tips for budding illustrators. In the "Make The Logo Bigger" section of this episode, Shaytvan talked about how frustrating it is to work with clients who always act like they know better than the artist and the difference between working with clients who trust you and give you the freedom to do your job vs the clients who don't. He also stressed on how clients need to respect the artist's work and thinking when working with one and why that brings out the best results. Shaytvan is by far one of the most passionate and talented people I've ever had a creative conversation with. He's filled with a ton of knowledge and is super energetic as a person. You can find more of his work on Instagram and Behance @shaytvan

[E10] Mrigya Varma — Graphic Designer & Digital Artist

Mrigya Varma is a graphic designer and a digital artist from Delhi, currently pursuing her final year in Graphic design at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore. Mrigya creates amazing artworks on her Instagram account @mrigyaavarma centered around hip-hop and culture. In this episode — we talked about Mrigya's journey as a designer, was attending a design college worth it?, how Srishti created an environment that promotes creativity, how to stay motivated and focused on your own journey and stop comparing our work to others', how to overcome imposter syndrome, the good and bad of posting your work on social media, how to stay true to yourself as an artist without getting lost in the metrics, how to plan and sell artworks online and we also talked a little bit about our common love for hip-hop. In the 'Make The Logo Bigger' section of this episode, Mrigya talked about how clients need to be considerate of the process and respect the designer for the design choices he/she makes and how design is so much more than visuals slightly also touching upon the never on-time payments. Check out Mrigya's artworks on her Instagram page @mrigyaavarma and DM her to order yourself some of her awesome prints :') Also check out her Behance profile @mrigyavarma to see more of her work.

[E09] Trish Willard — Product Designer, Ex-lead designer @ aids.gov

Trish Willard is a visual designer from Washington, DC — specializing in UI/UX design for interactive web products. She worked with organizations like aids.gov and the national cancer institute of USA to build products that educate and help people. She also occasionally writes about things like imposter syndrome and how to design better products on Medium. In this episode we talked about her journey as a designer, we talked about the details of some of the projects that she's worked on, somethings that she and her team kept in mind while designing an app to help people quit smoking, how to approach a project from the usability and ease of use stand point when redesigning the UI & UX of a product, we spoke in detail about imposter syndrome and why it's so prevalent in the design industry, we spoke about "the UX uncanny valley" which is a blog post Trish wrote about how sometimes in products lack of friction in doing a task can sometimes cause confusion to the users and how to deliberately design products that make the users feel safe and in control. Stick around till the end to hear about her cat, Loki :')
Reach out to Trish on Twitter @mukumushi and check out her work at www.trishwillard.com

[E08] Rahul Chakraborty — Sr. Product Designer, Swiggy

Rahul Chakraborty is a Senior Product Designer at Swiggy who previously worked at companies like Flipkart and Headout. Rahul is also a great photographer who consistently shares his pictures with the world on Unsplash and he's as involved as anyone can ever be in every design related community and conversation. In this episode we talk about his journey as a designer, his early influences, the difference in work between a junior designer, a senior designer and a lead designer, how a junior designer can take up more projects than what he/she is responsible for to build leverage and grow as a designer, what are some things that Rahul and his team are working at Swiggy to decrease the decision paralysis caused by too many available options, his journey of actively participating in design conversations and being active in the community and some tips for people starting out as product designers. In the "Make The Logo Bigger" section of this episode, Rahul spoke about the problem of having too many opinions on your work and how to effectively give and receive feedback and the importance of feedback. Stay tuned till the end to learn why his website is called "dsintheta.com" and definitely check out his design experiments on Instagram @madebyrahul and also follow him @hckmstrrahul to keep yourself updated about the new things in the design community.

Links mentioned and provided by Rahul:

1. Product Design roles and their definitions at Intercom:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qIH-eNkP4rNF0M1eCsHQNwRTWrP9Yg1-XUqWHPTKAkg/edit

2. IC vs Management track:
https://medium.com/facebook-design-business-tools/designing-a-better-career-path-for-designers-872b0aa50b5b

3. Key things to keep in mind at the beginning your design career:
https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/the-beginning-of-your-design-career-549828025494

4. Open source brand design for Simple:
https://medium.com/simple-dot-org/open-source-brand-design-for-simple-474f03a7fc15

5. Daniel's podcast by High Resolution:
https://www.highresolution.design/7-daniel-burka

6. Personal plug:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HckmstrRahul

MadebyRahul: https://www.instagram.com/madebyrahul/

[E07] Apurva Anand — Hand-lettering Artist, Illustrator & Digital Artist

Apurva is a hand-lettering artist from Chandigarh currently pursing her final year in fine arts. Even though her work mainly revolves around hand-lettering, she also creates beautiful collages, surreal paintings and super cute illustrations. She is also a singer and she plays both the Guitar and the Ukulele. In this episode we talk about her journey as an artist and her early influences. We talked about how she manages to excel at so many different facets of art and how she consciously practices all these different forms of art while consistently sharing them online. Then we took a deeper look into her process of creating these beautiful hand-lettering pieces that she creates and where she gets her inspiration from. We also talked about her miniature book hand-lettering pieces, practicing gratitude towards the people who inspire her, her take on how people who're starting out as an illustrator or a digital artist should go about it and what are some things to keep in mind while exploring different styles of art and finding your voice as an artist. We also touched upon how important posting consistently on social media is and talked a little bit about her journey over the past 5 years that she's been sharing her works on Instagram. In the "Make The Logo Bigger" section of this episode, Apurva talked about how clients need to be more trusting of the artist in the process and the kind of design decisions that they make. She went on to talk more about how people need to respect what the artist does and the amount of practice that went into what they do and not just say, "oh, even I could do this" because as simple as the final result may look, that could only be achieved through years of practice and hours/days of trying out different things. Definitely check out her Instagram page @artbyapu for some super positive hand-lettering pieces :')