Design in General by Samriddho Das — Who am I?
Well I’m a product designer who makes the users happy by solving their problems via designing. In my case I love designing iOS apps specifically but I also design for Android, web, smartwatches etc.
Let me reel back
Well, back in my school days I was a very intellectual and creative student who loves to make stuff… just random stuff with paper, cardboard and scissors. My friends used to call me “ROB from MAD”. I literally used my materials for carving them into some kind of toys — maybe Ben’s Omnitrix, Power Ranger’s mofer, anything.
The decision
Well, as and when I reached my secondary stage, like a typical Indian family, my parents also wanted me to choose between engineering or medicine as my profession. Well now I was totally in love with technology from the very beginning, that’s why I opted for engineering and understood that this is something that I am going to stick to for the rest of my life. Things were getting serious now and I started working hard in order to get admission to one of my dream engineering colleges (SRM University). Yes, that’s true, back then SRM used to be my dream university (spoiler alert — but now it isn’t), so I started working day in and day out to get good grades in all the forthcoming challenges. Meanwhile, my handicrafts-making hobby was kinda getting faded away as I was focussing more on my studies. Also, the prices of all the materials were steeply increasing and I could see my father struggling to buy me mount boards and thermocols every other day as he was also paying for our house loan side-by-side.
The hobbyist designer
When I was in class 9 my father saved up and gifted my mom an iPad. But as you can already imagine, me being the naughtiest kid in the house, managed to get my hands on it. It was the first Apple product in our very middle-class family. Back then, everyone including me used to consider the iPad and every other Apple product to be just a status symbol of wealth and just the cool rich kids deserved it but in some way or another that iPad changed my life. Instead of considering my iPad as a media consumption device, I started to consider it as a big digital canvas through which I can visually communicate with others.
The iPad story
All of this started with that iPad.
Coincidentally, when we bought the iPad, that same year Apple announced iOS 8, which introduced skeuomorphism — a modern design system introduced by Apple for its mobile touch-first devices. Skeuomorphism was the latest trend in those days and it brought app designs to a whole new level of aesthetics. I still remember that each time I opened up App Store, it just welcomed me with updated apps with Skeuomorphic designs. Back then I didn’t know anything about Skeuomorphism, user interface and all these fancy terminologies; but whatever it was, I simply loved downloading these updated apps and playing with them. Eventually, I fell in love with how different apps look and feel; and I, for the first time (in 2015), started embracing apps for their design.
I immediately downloaded “PicsArt”, which one of my sisters recommended downloading, and started playing with it. I just drew random stuff on my iPad. Sometimes a tree, sometimes a house, but eventually I started drawing mobile apps on my iPad. I simply used my fingers to doodle because back then, Apple Pencil was not a thing. I developed a pretty strange hobby of downloading different apps on my iPad and then replicating those app screens on PicsArt. Eventually, PicsArt and my iPad became my “bestest” friends.
Fast forward to 2019, I used the iPad to do everything. I used to annotate PDFs for my school work; I used to design logos on my iPad for various in-house projects; I also used to game and watch YouTube on my iPad etc. After passing class XII, I decided to start my own YouTube channel, so I started learning to make thumbnails and edit videos on my iPad. That being said, my iPad was slowly becoming old and slow for handling such kinds of heavy tasks; after all, it was a 4 years old machine. So I somehow convinced my father to buy me an updated model for all my college work as well as YouTube-related work.
The upgrade
I somehow managed to get my hands on the latest iPad Air (with an A12 Bionic chip) in 2019 and that became a turning point in my life. I also got an iPhone, gifted to me by my parents, grandmother and myself 🤪. And this was a life-changing gift. I started doing YouTube (though the channel was not a great success) but I learned many basic & beginner softwares. Some of these were iMovie and Photoshop Sketch. I used all of these apps on my iPad on a daily basis in order to run my YouTube channel. And as a side hobby, I used to practice making screens on my iPad. Because now with the upgraded iPad, I also got an Apple Pencil which made my designs even more precise.
Now, on the other hand, the “college hunting” phase came when I gave admission exams for many colleges. Well, that’s a completely different story, more on that in some other blog. I somehow (still unbelievably), got an AIR of 3K range in SRMJEEE. So I easily got admission to B.Tech. Computer Science Engineering as my major.
The hurdles of coding
For a student, who never coded a single line in school, coming to campus and securing good marks in every coding exam is a big challenge. Faculties on the other hand weren’t supportive either. Though I somehow managed to get good marks in my technical subjects, I never liked coding as such. Day by day I was becoming frustrated as I could see that all the students who opted for CS in their Higher Secondary school were able to perform very well with utmost ease whereas I had to struggle too much in order to do the same thing. Things were getting a little bit terrifying for me, but I kept on fighting alone. Every day I used to call up my mom and cried for hours but my mom was helpless. My mom told me only one sentence -
“You chose SRM and you took CSE; so you only have to fight your way!!”
At this point in time, I was a 20-year lone boy fighting my way through my career. And then a sudden opportunity came.
The opportunity
Aarush arrived; it is the biggest techno-management fest in Asia, which was organised by SRM. There were posters everywhere around the campus, and high-production commercials were appearing on my feed regarding Aarush. When I saw all this cool stuff, I thought “If I can learn all these skills about movie making and poster making, I could promote my YouTube channel very well.” That being said, one fine day, a message was forwarded to our class group stating that “AARUSH IS HIRING!!” and along with that the venue of the hiring process and time were given. I showed up there and filled out a form stating that I want to join the Creatives team of Aarush. The next day I was called for a casual interview by Aarush Creatives and the day after, I came to know that I was hired. That was an auspicious moment for me and I truly think that even if my college doesn’t have many contributions to my skills, these co-curricular activities that were going on around the campus were much more required and can change someone’s life if taken seriously.
Life at Aarush was super chill and interesting. Every day after class, I went to the creatives room where I could meet other like-minded people and everyone was new in the field so everything was taught from scratch. Things were going very well.
The learning process
In this workshop, for the first time, I started learning Photoshop and softwares like Premiere Pro for video editing. It was going great. For the entire day, I watched various tutorials on YouTube and learned something new about the software every day. The day after, I used to show whatever I made on the previous day to my seniors. Deep inside I was very happy that even though much less in quantity but still my works were getting recognition and getting published on the college's social media handles. I also learned about using a DSLR camera and photo shooting. I also learned about graphic design and video editing at the same time. After these experiences, I started to consider myself a real artist. Everyone in my family told me that my old habit of making handicrafts is now getting channelized by computers in the form of digital art.
That one friend
Meeting new people and exchanging thoughts with everyone is one of my old habits. So apart from making friends just with the creative people around me, I also started looking toward the technical developers around me. Then suddenly I came to know that the app development intern of Aarush was actually one guy from my class itself. His name was Ankit (ex-Myntra SDE intern and currently SDE intern at ABInBev). Ankit and I became very good friends and we used to sit together in class.
We always used to talk about various things like how can we involve and incorporate graphic designing into website/app development and what not. I can still remember his enthusiastic face whenever I said about learning new things and opening up to new ideas. The guy was a pro in the first year itself.
“Normal people play games in their free time; he used to develop games in Android Studio and play them in his free time.”
One day we were sitting together in the class with our laptops, where he was working on the app development side of Aarush and I was working on some kind of poster. I was always enthusiastic about app development so once peeked towards his laptop and saw an icon stated as “XD”. He was opening that particular software (XD) and designing mobile screens on it. This immediately caught my attention and I interrupted his work and asked him — “Bro! What is this?”. He told — “Bhai! This is UI/UX, you can also try it”. I asked him to teach me the same but he told me that it’s not particularly his domain so he also just knows the basics of it. Not on a professional level.
Unfortunately, amidst all the other conversations this topic just got faded away. 😔
The lockdown
In the March of 2020, Covid broke in and it was lockdown everywhere. I came back to my home and started learning all this stuff in a much more detailed way. Now I had very much time left over for my personal development because online classes were non-existent. I learned all of these throughout the day and tried my best to build up a website during the night hours. On this website, I put up all the different technical skills I knew and can perform at a professional level. Initially, I designed this complete website for free using the 2-month free offer by Adobe Portfolio, but the caveat is, that after these 2 months, the website will become un-hosted unless paid. So I had only 2 months to find an internship using this website. I started randomly applying to various websites like LinkedIn, Internshala and Angel.co. Many companies responded back to me. Most of them have a very specific way of hiring — the first step is a telephonic interview with the HR of the company, the second step is to create an assignment to the problem statement delivered by the company and the third step is to have a video conference with the creatives team. This is how, I as well, landed an internship, but in my case, the company was at a very premature stage so there was no technical interview as such. Once I submitted the assignment, the next day I got a call from HR where he said that I was hired!!
The internship
Lol, this sounds like the movie “The Internship”, but honestly it was nothing like that. I was appointed as the graphic designer of the company along with another great designer named Subipra (currently a product designer at Pocketly). Now when both of us got hired we exchanged each other’s numbers and started talking about what can we bring to the table. He immediately told me that I know UI/UX very well but not much about graphic designing. I remembered Ankit’s face and asked him if he can teach me UI/UX and I can teach him Photoshop in exchange. He agreed to the deal and we started learning from each other.
Now our task in the internship was to make creative posters for various social media and also to improve the mobile application of the company while onboarding new features. We both used to do all the tasks on a rotation basis while learning from each other. And that was my first hands-on professional experience with UI/UX designing, also known as product designing. I may not know the term “UI/UX”, but I always enjoyed drawing mobile app screens on my iPad. That’s why when I came to know that the hobby that I enjoyed from the very beginning since my childhood, actually is a monetizable hustle — I became very happy. But to be honest, making screens was a very little part of UX, there are many other things to learn.
Apart from that, there were many other internships and freelance gigs regarding graphic and product designing but this first internship was the most notable one. My parents were proud of me because they can see that their son is happily doing something which no one else in their family ever did. At this point in time, I was kinda famous in my locality (Baguiati, which is a very small locality in Kolkata) and people used to refer to me by telling me “the boy who makes money from the internet”, because to them, finding internships from websites like Internshala and LinkedIn and earning money from it were not very common in those days.
Closing thoughts
Things were getting better and I was gaining more and more knowledge about the field. I started working with various other startups and many startups themselves approached me after seeing my work. Working with co-founders and design teams was something I absolutely started loving. Meanwhile, I also started teaching juniors in my college about graphic design and UI/UX designing. And I opened up my YouTube channel “Nyro Film and Design” (this time with proper gear haha🤣 because I got money💰, just kidding 😁) where I talk about the creative fields in general (https://www.youtube.com/c/NyroFilmandDesign).
One fine day, Ratik Gupta (CEO of TechAnalogy), also invited me as the chief keynote speaker for an all-India webinar named WebPro to teach people across the country about UI/UX. I was also invited by Inception Wave to organize a 3-day All-India graphic design workshop. And this year (2022) I was again invited by TechAnalogy along with various other designers across the country, to co-organise an all-India product designing workshop along with Nyro Media, which turns out to be the first workshop co-organized by Nyro Media.
All these are going great till now, but before closing off the chapter I would like to thank my mom and dad, my grandmother, and my mentors in the journey especially Anoushka (product designer at Kotak Mahindra bank) and Subipra (product designer at Pocketly), Ratik Gupta (Founder of Tech-Analogy) and of course my “PYAARI” girlfriend Shiuli Guchait 👧🏼 for supporting me all the way throughout my journey.
Well, I narrated such a big story but I forgot to tell my name -
I am your host Samriddho Das and this is my story.
