My work featured in Creative Gaga Magazine

It happened when I received an email from Creative Gaga Magazine saying ” We are Bi-monthly Creative Design Magazine which cover various verticals of Design and Art like Advertising, Graphic Design, Digital Art, Product Design, Interior Design, Web Design, Jewellery Design, Illustration, Photography, Animation etc. We want to feature your work in our future issues…”

“Creative Gaga is the launch product of Open Bracket Publication, which aims to publish trade-specific, knowledge-rich magazines. We’re a bunch of fiercely creative folks who love great work, irrespective of where it is from. We’re curious about what makes work great. We devour techniques and dream design when we’re not working. And we’re just as eager to share what we gather, with credits where due. Creative Gaga hence aims to be a celebration of good design. And a useful reference for techniques and exposure.”

You can subscribe this magazine from online.

Here are the list of questionnaires from Creative Gaga along with my answers followed by some screenshots. Somehow, not all of them got published in the magazine.

Website: LUMIUM (creative concept)

*Right now the corporate look is up under www.lumium.com which was part of my design as well.

Please tell us about your educational background, professional experience, current occupation and professional ambitions.



My Name is Abinash Mohanty and I have done my bachelors from the National Institute of design, Ahmedabad in Communication Design, Graphic Design. I have been working with overseas clients from Web Design, Graphics, Wire-frames to Mobile Apps projects. Later on I have started working on my blog when I realized there is a need of design awareness for such clients to understand what all goes inside a design process.

Recently, I have moved down from Ahmedabad to Mumbai and joined Quikr as Design Lead after having a conversation with the CEO that they really want to do something about their website & products. 

Mumbai is a nice city to explore & collaborate with a lot of designers. My ultimate aim is to create a start-up firm in the near future (not because it’s a dream for most of the designers) as well as take out sometime to teach. At the moment I am after my blog posting, project compilation on Behance Network and some photography on Mumbai streets.

Q: Considering the primary objective of UI design is functionality, how do you perceive the role of design in web communication?

According to me, the role of design process never changes whether you are on print media or web/interaction media. Inputs are always the same starting from client brief, brainstorming, ideas, concept stages on paper but the only difference would be the change; constrains and specifications as per the selected platform. i.e. I use web standards specification such as following the 960px grid since they are optimized for both desktop to most of the mobile screen sizes.

Designing for the web is much more challenging (though I have worked upon print graphics before) because my role is to get the design approval from client, make sure the designs are well compatible as per both the client’s requirement as well as with the developer’s specifications (programming languages such as Magento, WordPress, Joomla and so on), have to check & test the final design (implemented on test server) with multiple browsers whether they are running fine without any issue before publishing them.

Q: How do you find interface design different from the other forms like graphic or illustration?

Well! If I say from a layman’s point of view, “Experiencing a printed Wired Magazine ?with the same eMagazine on iPad”. Both the fields of Graphic Design and Illustration evolved from the hard core “Print to Paper” which were transformed into digital formats from time to time just like Photography. Wherein, Interface design was aimed and focused at Screen based products (Pager, Phone, GPS, Touchscreens etc). 

Accordingly to me, there is no such comparison from Interface design to Graphic or Illustration Design but I would say the moment we have a piece of beautiful graphics or illustration artwork, the next phase would be Interface Medium if we would like to take them into the next level when it comes to branding and promotions with millions of users around the world via products like facebook fan page, twitter, an unique website, Landing page, Mobile apps or epub or a simple email newsletter design and yes! Save tree & save paper.

Q: Medium or the message – which comes first? How do you make the two compliment each other?

Message always comes fast to me and then it is up to me to decide which medium to chose. I never get carried away with medium whether they are easy to develop or I am familiar with either.

Q: How do you define your distinctive style? What is the unique flavor that you consistently maintain in your designs?

“Wow Factor”, an inspiration I took during my print ad design course. Whether a print work or an electronic artwork, a person does not have much time to look into a piece of design (illustration, website, ad, identity) and interpret “what is the concept behind ?”, either he would say Wow! Nice work or else looks for something else. Couple of more examples you must have experienced: when you look for a formal shirt, choosing a wedding card for your friend, buying a shoe or even when you look for a Laptop (out of 800 pieces) to buy in a store, you stand by looking at the Wow factor (The entire product that grabbed your attention) first rather than the configuration.

As a designer, we need to think what are the best ways to express an unique style to the project that should solve both the client’s brief as well as the design problems via studying the trends; Modern, Corporate, Creative or even Retro within the constrains.

Q: What is the common philosophy that runs across your works?

I would say the philosophy that goes behind all of my work:

 Universal Design: I look at design from a flexibility point of view as how a print design can be transformed into motion, web and mobile platforms or vice-versa.

Design in Layers:?I give myself a complete freedom during the conceptual stage or even the design mock-ups round to explore what is the best way to resolve the design issues. Here, “design in layers” means I try to match 99% to my end product from what I visualized before which takes a lot of time for iterations, compare designs ?& so on.

Follow the Trends:?Since the beginning, I never restricted myself to work on a particular kind of work than something more challenging, exciting. For any such web-design work, I never use any existing template to save time on delivery rather go online to checkout the latest design trends, color trends, styles and so on and then try to merge them into my design to give them a fresh and trendy look.

Recall Value:?Every 2nd person in India is capable of creating a website but are they really working for Designing to add value in it or for Money? Very few designers are available in India those are putting Value into the website to make their client richer. Create something for which client would come back to you and say ‘wonderful job’ or when heard from someone (you don’t know) regarding the website you have designed, you feel thats a complement of success.

Multi Disciplinary Approach:?I use this as a principle when creating web design or interface related projects since I am dependent upon various other factors that fall during development. Even though the designs are good enough from client side but it is always better to check with the end developers regarding the feasibility issues during the design phase or wire-framing stage.

No Shortcut:?Achieving the most would take time whether you are a Print, Web or Interface Designer. I never take any project after looking at the price factor or scalability of the project, rather than ask myself “what is so exciting about this project?” and take up the project by saying “Yes! I think I can do this” without even thinking whether this project would give me a good image or not.

Never Forget the Basics:?Classroom projects are quite different as compared to Client projects we have experienced this while working in the industries with various clients. I know most of the clients don’t like to see sketches, doodles than the end results just to save time or they cant visualize how the end product would look by looking at the sketches. However, I never skipped such rounds even though the deadline is really short because this is how we reach into the final designs via sketches, discussion, mood-boards, research and so on. I never forget to use the “fundamental of design” such as space, form, color interaction, contrast, type face and so on because they are the foundation.

Q: What was the brief for this project? How does this pre-loader complement the central communication?

Description:?The brief was to come up with a design mock that says the following attributes.
• Independent Design Firm
• Initially we have few clients, project but in future we will be grown up
• The concept should focus on highly creative approach to show LUMIUM
• The website would have our client profile, product pictures as well as small description.
• The look & feel should be something different and unique
• The tagline of the LUMIUM should be “illuminating creativity”
Behind the Concept: I wanted to give something different and unique touch to LUMIUM which has no meaning as such. As per my visualization, the website opens up a preloader screen showing the valley of LUMIUM as a independent tree from top view angle with floating clouds. The tree grows up in sync with the loader percentage.

Q: What was the communication objective of this design? What is the role played by the different elements vis-a-vis the central communication?

Description:?Here, the home page has been loaded just after the Preloader page as explained earlier. The tagline “illuminating creative” concept is shown over here, from the valley, floating clouds to the imaginary rays from the top. Here, the smaller plant represents for LUMIUM by default and which is independent. All the navigation links are very much transparent and overlaid the backgrounds and should have some motion that blends well with the floating clouds.

Description:?The image concept shows how the links would appear after click over the links. The center plant has grown up and became a LUMIUM tree (as per my initial concept line) that shows the information via it’s branch. The bottom (footer) area is given for only the copyright information as well as social networking links.

Thank you for reading this post, you can also Subscribe to my blog and get all future posts delivered to your inbox. All you have to do is scroll to the bottom, put down your email address and click on the Subscribe button under the section that says “SUBSCRIBE TO BLOG VIA EMAIL”