Interview – 10 emerging web designers from India (part4) : Aravind Ajith, thedesignsuperhero.com

Posted: November 22nd, 2010 | Author: Ranjith | Filed under: Interviews | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

The fourth part of the interview series is here. Through this series, i aim to create an awareness and community consciousness in the design community of the country. This would also serve as a source of inspiration to the budding designers and help them to move on the right path and achieve their aspirations in career as designers.

Following the passionate designer / entrepreneur from the northern part of India, here comes our second designer soul;  i should rather address him as ‘design super hero’! Yup, while exploring him in depth in the conversation below, we would come across this term more often :)

About the Designer

Aravind Ajith – a designer by choice and an enthusiastic netizen, started making his hands dirty in the field of web designing, at an early age – as early as 16!

Freelance designing was a means of pocket money for him at that point of time in his life, and he has been designing websites for various NGOs, shops, some colleges and small start-ups. It wasn’t until his final days of college, that he came to know about the professional face of web designing, when he got his first offer letter as a web-designer in a design agency in Technopark, Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, a district in India. Aravind was exposed to the world of wordpress, by early 2007, and have been a WP fan since then! He launched thedesignsuperhero.com, initially as a platform to showcase his works and latest designs, but after getting to know the power of blogging and social-media, decided to relaunch it as a full fledged WP powered blog cum portfolio site, and is now rocking with timely updates and informative posts in a consistent fashion. Why the name ‘thedesignsuperhero’ ? He says, it came out of the search for a name that no one forgets easily.And what better name than this!

After spending 3 years working for somebody as a designer, and with steep learning curve, and with some client lists like Apple, SAP, Intel, Aravind decided to move on his own and went on to setup his very own design agency – Fidiz Solutions, which now have 4 talented designers working under his mentor ship, ready to conquer the world of web design :)

Lets get close to Aravind Ajith, via this online interview conversation.

First of all, thanks Aravind for giving a nod to this online Interview. Could you please depict the major change that has taken over the field, since your starting of career 6+ years ago ?

Thanks a lot Ranjith. It’s really an honor to me.
When thinking about the major changes there are three things I can actually point out
1. CSS: The migration from table layouts to table-less CSS layouts. It was all about tables, font tags and html attributes during that time.
2. CMS: The evolution of open source CMS platforms is the second thing. Now 90% of my projects are either in WordPress or in Drupal
3. Friendly UIs: Another major change. Designers really started to think about the users. We started to think how they use it, and how we can make UI more friendlier to use.

Can u elaborate on your skill sets and the type of assignments that you take up?

I would like to treat myself as a front end all-rounder ;) . I work on everything from information architecture to QA and delivery of a project.
My daily tasks include IA and UI designing for Websites, iPhone, iPad and Desktop applications, XHTML/CSS coding, WordPress and Drupal Theming.

Would you like to talk about the phenomenal CMS platform WP here?

It was love at first sight for me with WordPress ;) . Now about 3/4th of my projects are done in WordPress (That’s about 35 sites in numbers so far). It was after the introduction of Magic Fields (follower of Flutter) I had started using WordPress extensively for almost all of my projects. Magic fields really changed the way we used to work with WordPress as a CMS. and Now with WP3 it is even more easier with the built-in custom post type feature.

The fascination to digital graphics can come very easily at a very early stage. But what defines a professional out of those, are consistency and perseverance. How hard have it been for you to transition completely into a professional web designer, after been fascinated by computers and graphics, as a kid. Can u give an instance which clearly defined, the gap between an amateur and a professional ?

As a kid I was always fascinated about graphics and computers. My uncle was a graphic designer of that time and when he was on his work, I used to sit and stare at his monitor for hours without any idea of what is going on there. That’s how it started.
Later when I realized one of my neighbor was a web designer, I have placed him as my guru and started bugging him to teach me what he knows. He laid the first stone of my career. It was when I joined my first company, I started exploring the professional side of my career. There we were put into direct contact with foreign clients that helped me a lot to learn the do’s and don’ts

Web designing as a profession, still needs to get the right seriousness and acceptance in India, compared to Europe, US and other developed countries. How do you think the scenario is changing in the country?

It is changing but really slowly. Indians refuse to adapt to new technologies, unlike the western countries. Website is the last thing they want to do for their business and they often ask me to clone another website they like rather than creating one from scratch!

Can you chose a handful of designers from India whom you believe are all set to make it to the forefront?

I am very glad to see some of the designers in new generation trying to make it big time with a vision. Some of them I would like to mention here are Tuhin, Nikhil, Prathyush, Arjun and Sumit Paul. They are young and very talented. It is only recently people started to take designing  as a serious thing in India and the outcome is incredible!

The adoption of latest technology and trends defines the edge for a freelancer to stay ahead in the race. With lots of activities (conferences, sessions, talks and demos) happening around HTML5, CSS3, Web standards and Front end Engineering, in other developed nations, i still believe Indian community is missing out on that advantage of enjoying the presence of a bigger community. How do you surpass that divide, being in India?

You have made a really valid point. The main thing I have noticed here is people are afraid of change. They do not want to switch from anything they are merely comfortable unless and until you force them to do. But still there are things happening around, but it is not really marketed well to reach all of them who are interested. Some events I recommend – doctypeHTML5, Barcamps and UX fun

But that’s not all. World is much smaller now, I try not to miss any such events if they broadcast them online. If not, the videos will be up in few hours in vimeo or youtube.

What is the project that you are currently working on ?

I am mostly working with some design agencies doing projects under NDA. But at this point of time, I am working on a next gen job site for a UK based agency.

Are you working on any pet projects or planning for any? If yes, please share some thoughts on the same.

Pet projects, yeah many of them are in paper. Only one is done. Designjojo – It was my own way of bookmarking interesting design related articles. It has a good number of subscribers right now and I try to keep it updated as frequent as I can.

Its information bombardment nowadays in the internet, and the key is to smartly organize and get the information that you need from the network. What strategies do you implement to stay afloat, and to be in sync with the trends and updates?

Glad you asked this questions. I was actually planning to blog about this topic. I also have started it by subscribing RSS in my google reader and checking it everyday for updates. Yeah it was as simple as that since we were not having thousands of design blogs as we have now. But later then it started like I have 1000+ unread items whenever I open my reader. I was really even thinking of dropping the idea of RSS subscription. Then Feedly came to the rescue. (Feedly is a nice little FF addon that will make your RSS reader experience awesome!)
Here is my strategy for ‘keeping myself updated’
1. RSS subscrition – Feedly (only the top news, maximum 30 minutes a day)
2. Email Subscription – When I can’t afford to miss any updates (like SmashingMagazine, ThinkVitamin, the99percent)
3. Podcasts – ( <3 Doctype.tv) I have synced with my iphone. I watch them in my non-productive hours, like when I travel, eat, etc)
and ask me about design inspiration! Now it’s all dribble! :)

There is quite a good amount of traffic generated by your design blog / portfolio – thedesignsuperhero.com. How do u manage to deliver unique topics and timely giveaways to maintain the traffic. Can you share some wisdom in maintaining a design blog like urs?

One fine day, you have a problem, you google for a solution. Now you have a bunch of different solutions.  Later you realise you have a better solution than all of them. Then blog it. :)

Finally, do you have any words of wisdom for the budding designers out there, who aspire to make it to the bigger arena?

Keep yourself updated. Have a curious mind. Follow the big players and learn from them.

Get in touch with Aravind Ajith via

Twitter
Facebook
Dribble

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