A brand new viral research lab in Colorado needed a website to announce its commencement. And though they didn’t know it, they also needed a name and a logo too.
I designed and implemented this project for them in approx. 11 days’ time. This involved providing creative direction, copywriting and graphic design skills all at once to bring out the best this lad has to offer.
You can check out the website here.
When the head of the research lab reached out, we realized we had an interesting challenge ahead of us. In a way, his reaching out to me was his way of rebelling against all the boring, badly-designed lab websites out there that he had seen. Additionally, he was also not enamored by the stock-photo approach that a lot of laboratory websites had resorted to using.
To counter this, my suggestion was to use words as our image for each page. The copy, used as the header image, would be an opportunity for him to express more insights about his lab and stand out.
There were three main target audiences:
The first group would be students at the university where his lab would be based, who would apply to join the lab to do research work.
The second group would be collaborators– people who worked in research labs or fields of work adjacent to his, who might be interesting in working with his lap on various projects.
The third group would be potential investors who found his research interesting and engaging enough to want to possibly fund further research projects.
The conclusion was that the website and lab’s digital persona needed to be professional in tone, well designed and had enough personality to make people want to get in touch.
Each page on the site needed to have a bold statement as the page header. This statement was meant to set the tone as well as provide insight into the information that was to follow.
I worked with the client to understand the different aspects of what he wanted the lab to achieve, not just in terms of scientific research but beyond that. One of the challenges was the task of injecting some personality into highly technical, yet necessary, information on the site. The information had to be conveyed accurately, but still be friendly and solicit more interest from the reader.
The goal of the header copy here was to make the connection between the core reason behind why technical research papers are published in the scientific community– which is to take a position on a particular topic, through research, and then to share it publicly, inviting dialogue and debate.
This is how science makes progress– by being brave enough to be proven wrong. In publishing multiple papers, a principal of a lab proves their mettle and earns the right to lead.
For the header copy of the values section of the website, I wanted to convey a sense of community and a shared north star that everyone associated with the lab could connect with.
For the individual values themselves (shown below), I worked with the client to communicate each of the four pillars with clarity and aplomb. I concepted and designed a visualization for each lab value to better impress upon the reader how the lab intended to achieve its goals.
The body copy under each of the values was also another opportunity for the lab to communicate personality and wit.
For the people page, the header copy was meant to highlight the two most important factors that all who are thinking of joining must embody– grit and being open to be proven wrong.
This page would ultimately be populated by all the members of the lab, so the header copy at the bottom of the page was meant to drive people to get in touch. Since the viral research was specifically with regards to the human intestines, this line seemed to be the perfect pun.
Since this was a brand new lab, part of what the client needed was a name and logo. Normally, a scientific research lab such as this is named after the principal lab researcher, i.e. the person who starts the lab.
However, since the goal here was to stand out, I was able to convince the client to buck tradition. Through discussions and many brainstorming sessions, the lab was named ‘Viralogue’ which was a portmanteau of the words ‘Virus’ and ‘Dialogue’. The research done in this lab would be regarding how the virus and the host communicate, whether that be a symbiotic relationship or not. Luckily for us, the domain name was also available.
For the logo, I wanted to create a simple shape that communicated this interaction between two different organisms. In the biological scientific community, a virus is represented by a hexagon. This became the perfect starting point.
By incorporating host organism (shown by a portion of two circles, one being a ‘protective sheath’ for the host), into the hexagon, I was able to show the point in time of the virus’ penetration into the host– a critical aspect of this field of research.
While working for Walmart eCommerce, I had the opportunity to design and compose assets for their content center known as 'Tips & Ideas'.
I worked with the content team as well as design leadership to conceptualize and execute creative assets that would lead to articles, recipes and inspirational content for Walmart customers online.
The creative was composed to convey a sense of dynamism and excitement, both as individual pieces and as part of a composition of similar tiles that were grouped by a common theme. These are some examples of the pages I worked on for the few months that this format was in use on the site.
The holiday season is the biggest sales quarter of the year for an eCommerce company like Walmart.com. It’s also when people want to surprise their loved ones with the ‘best gift ever’ and redeem themselves for the year of mischief they’ve caused (as they should).
To get potential customers excited and to give them ideas about what they could buy, I was tasked with conceptualizing and executing the new holiday gift guide for Walmart.com.
The idea was to create a theme-based shopping experience that featured the best Walmart.com had to offer, under themes like ‘Tech’, ‘Home’ and ‘Kids’ etc. The goal was to delight shoppers with gifting options as they explored different avenues within each theme.
I was in-charge of the responsive UX/UI as well as the art direction of this project and worked with cross-functional teams across creative, web-development and business to make this a reality.
The effort was a big success bringing in a manifold increase in revenue over the previous year.
I was tasked with creating a PC buying guide for the Walmart eCommerce website to help customers choose the right PC for their needs. The buying guide needed to accommodate two types of customers - those looking to purchase a ‘premium’ PC for personal, business and professional use; and a ‘gaming’ PC for users needing high-powered machines to run games with demanding requirements like high refresh rates and high GPU usage.
As the dot com site was responsive, this digital buying guide need to be responsive as well and keep all the functionality you would expect when browsing on a desktop across tablet and mobile devices. I worked with the business owner of this request directly as well as the web developer who would implement this buying guide on Walmart.com to build the experience from UX to final deliverable and QA.
The PC buying guide would have two main sections on top, with the ‘Premium’ computing section selected by default when the page first loads. The user could choose to switch to the ‘Gaming’ section if it better suits their needs.
Each section shows the specs corresponding to the offerings in that category and allows users to compare selected machines to arrive at the best available option on the site.
Building a responsive experience was a bit tricky as functionality, legibility and ease of use had be balanced. The wide usage of touch-screen laptops also meant that the experience needed to work whether the viewer used a mouse or a finger to navigate, and still be a seamless experience.
The holiday season is the the busiest for retail, especially a company like Walmart. Every year, a holiday gift guide is created for the website which features the best that Walmart.com has to offer.
For the year 2017, I was tasked with creating a more robust and engaging experience than previous years. The lifestyle-themed gift guide was meant to showcase a wide range of products that would help shoppers with gifts for their loved ones.
I created the responsive UX as well as the wireframes for the project while still maintaining a spirit of excitement across all screen sizes. More details about the project can be found here.
I was tasked with figuring out a way Walmart’s eCommerce customers could ‘cross the aisle’ digitally on the site. As the site itself was massive with many departments, this was a challenge that required an uncomplicated solution.
With big data rapidly becoming a key factor influencing how eCommerce has changed, I re-imagined the Walmart.com homepage to solve this challenge. The new homepage design for Walmart would become a personal concierge for each of its eCommerce customers by showcasing products and services that are in line with that particular customer’s lifestyle.
Using the customer’s purchase history, shopping and browsing habits, preferred brand knowledge, life-event milestones and other information, this module would change to reflect the customer’s needs every time they visit the Walmart eCommerce site.
I did the art direction as well as the UX design for this project whilst keeping the elements consistent with the Walmart eCommerce brand guides. While this wasn’t officially implemented on the site, it gained a lot of popularity among internal business teams and helped set the tone for future projects of a similar nature for dot com.
For customers who’re into staying fit and healthy, the homepage would offer them a variety of products and services ranging from home-gym equipment, music to keep the heart-rate up to recipes for a healthy diet.
For customers who love their cars more then their wives, the homepage would offer a range of items that would make spending time in their vehicles a dream.
Based on when customers would sign-up on Walmart.com’s registry page for baby gifts, the homepage would offer up items essential to expecting parents. The page would also switch to the ‘Baby’ category approximately 9 months later to show items all new parents need and more.
These are a series of book covers I conceptualized, designed and implemented for a well-known Indian author. I worked with the author as well as the publishing house to bring my ideas to life.
This book is a compilation as well as an explanation of various ancient maxims, sayings and proverbs in the Sanskrit language. The book contains the original maxims in Sanskrit, an english transliteration of the text as well as a translation of the meaning of each maxim.
I was tasked with coming up with the name of the book as well as the cover design. An ascending staircase going from darkness to light seemed to be a fitting image for this book that would make the reader ‘wiser’ by the time they were through with it.
This book is a thorough explanation of the Bhagvad Gita, the holy book of the Hindus, by the author who is a learned scholar in the ancient vedic Hindu texts.
The Bhagvad Gita is an extract from the Hindu epic- the Mahabharatha (known as the ‘great war’). The wisdom of the Gita is imparted to the central character of the epic by Krishna (who is said to be god in human form).
The concept for this cover was to show ‘echoing’ lines spreading in all directions emanating from the title ‘Thus Spake Krishna’. Since Krishna’s words are seen as one of the ultimate truths of life, it seemed appropriate to have His words visually reverberating outward endlessly as the cover design for this book.
The details are shown more clearly in the image below. This was created in Adobe Illustrator.
This book is the autobiography of Prof. V. Krishnamurthy. He is an ex-Deputy Director of BITS Pilani, india and ex-head of the Mathematics department at BITS. He is also a well known author and scholar with regards to ancient Hindu vedic texts. The book talks about his life & times and all the events that shaped him.
I was tasked with coming up with the title of the book, writing the book summary for the back and the cover design. Seeing as this book was the culmination of more than 90 years of the author’s life, I wanted to make the book look iconic.
I used a profile-shot of the author and altered it in photoshop to give it a pleasant greyscale tone. I also decided that ‘Looking Back’ would be an appropriate title. The author’s image facing left would tie in nicely with the idea.
Here’s the text I wrote for the back of the book:
Precious few have lived so complete a life as to encompass so many integral parts of our identity as Indians. Fewer still have had the foresight and generosity to document this journey for future generations to learn from.
V. Krishnamurthy is such a unique soul. Hailing from South India, he absorbed the vital essences of the Vedas, Upanishads and sacred Hindu texts from his father at a very young age. This faith and spirituality was foundational in later life as he navigated raising a family, pursuing a PhD with limited means, traveling to– and working in America in the 1960’s and playing a pivotal role in the herculean task of creating a world-class educational institution for a burgeoning India as the nation started to come into its own.
For those who find this world fascinating, Krishnamurthy’s narrative will give form and color to what life was like over the last century. A veteran author, his latest work will give the reader a snapshot of his life, trials and time well spent on this earth.
AJ+, the mobile and social arm of the Al Jazeera Media Network, tasked me with creating informational graphics for news stories with data that would fit that format.
I created several info-graphics covering various news stories, some of which have been featured below. All these info-graphics have been created in a narrow, vertical format to suit the AJ+ mobile app, on which they were primarily featured at the time.
The objective with this set of info-graphics was to give the viewer a feel for what it was like to be diagnosed with Ebola and go through the treatment stages. This was a four-part series created as a set and featured on the AJ+ app and social sites.
The elections in Indonesia was an interesting topic to cover using the info-graphic medium as there was a wealth of information to communicate, mostly with visuals.
There were also a few single-frame graphics I produced for topics like the worldwide breakdown of different religious groups as well as climate change that was effecting global sea levels, swallowing up whole islands.
Walmart.com wanted to raise awareness among its associates about the Walmart mobile app and its many features during the 2017 shareholder’s meeting in Bentonville, AR.
To help with this, I was asked to design a couple of pins that could be handed out as rewards to associates who attended the event and get people to engage with the app. The goal was to get our associates to know the app first so they could help our customers in the store, if and when the need arose.
Working with the marketing team, I decided to create a set of six pins, each highlighting a different aspect of the app from pharmacy to online grocery. I also wanted to base each design around the Walmart app icon and get the pins to be printed at that size.
Considering that this project had a turn-around timeline of just a few days, the internal marketing team loved the concept and were quite pleased with the final result. Two out of the six designs made it to production and distribution (due to budget constraints). The ‘Walmart Pay’ and ‘Online Grocery’ pins were the lucky winners.
Every June, Walmart holds its annual shareholder’s meeting in its home town of Bentonville, AR. And its not at all what you might imagine. It’s an event that brings together associates from across the globe and every facet of the Walmart empire to celebrate the the year’s achievements and honor every associate for being part of the company.
To break the ice at this event while meeting associates from other areas of the business, people exchange pins that have been designed and issued by their respective divisions. Its a huge part of the shareholder’s experience and there are some beautiful examples of pins across the board.
For the 2016 shareholder’s event, I was tasked with designing the pins that would represent the division I was a part of – Global eCommerce (GeC). This division spanned four major countries: U.S.A., China, India and Brazil.
To have a common theme across the pins, I came up with the idea of using birds each of the countries were best known for, to represent them. It allowed the pins to be vibrant as well as potentially be something other associates would want to collect, as people at these events do tend to have quite a collection of Walmart pins over the years.
The pins were well received and sought after by the attendees at large and were also added to the permanent collection at the Sam Walton Museum in Bentonville.
Al Jazeera, the news network from Qatar was launching its mobile and social arm called 'AJ+' in San Francisco. I was tasked with conceptualizing and designing the invite for the launch event that would introduce a new mobile app designed to share news with a global millennial audience.
The invite was to be sent out digitally and had to be mobile friendly. I built the invite completely in Adobe Illustrator creating everything from scratch.
The ‘Chase sponsored corporate run’ is a fundraiser that invites well known companies in the area to participate and raise funds for deserving causes.
For Walmart’s participation in the Chase run of 2017, I was tasked with conceptualizing and executing t-shirt designs that would represent the Walmart culture and personality in the run. It would potentially also have the added bonus value of inspiring fellow associates to participate in the event.
I came up with the concept, wrote the copy and designed the t-shirts shown here. The internal team that requested these designs were very excited with the creative and the event was well attended by Walmart associates.
Ultimately, due to time and budget constraints, only one of the several designs I created was printed and used for the event: ‘Goals are made to be run over”.
These are print ads created to showcase my ideation and production skills. They were conceptualized and executed using a variety of hands-on and digital techniques to achieve the final result.
I made the 'sushi-boxes' by hand and then photographed the bento-sushi ensemble in the studio. Final re-touching and refinement was done in Adobe Photoshop.
I'm afraid many cookies were harmed in the production of the Chips Ahoy! print ad. Collateral damage has never been so tasty.
Taking quite a departure from the usual American Apparel ads you're used to seeing, I decided to create origami letters out of colored paper to help emphasize the vibrance and variety that the brand brought to the consumer.
I conceptualized, art directed and wrote copy for this print campaign. These were meant to be center-page spreads featured in magazines.
