I am Shreya Pranit, a Bangalore based artist and designer. I love to design brands, products, installations, spaces, services and my own clothes.
I am a Masters in Design from NID and a Bachelors in Fashion Technology from NIFT.
After having worked at Target as an Art Director for one year, I decided to take up commission based projects and draw a lot more.
With all of that, I like to cook, travel, stitch and dance like no one’s watching 🙂
After finishing my education from NIFT and NID, I started to work with Target, the big retail chain of USA, as an Art Director. Three months into it and I knew that I wasn’t cut out for the job because my life had started becoming too monotonous and I believe that ‘monotony kills creativity’.
Since I was also newly married to my ever-supporting and ever-loving husband. I thought of taking it slow and steady and I started planning on things I could do if I were to leave the job (I am big on planning, FYI). It was then that I realized that Art and Design are the only two things I possibly could do for my whole life, now I just had to look for ways to be able to pursue them and get paid for it.
One way to do that was to find another job and be in my comfort zone and the other was to get the hell out of it and take a bigger risk of not having a job and still be able to lead my life the same way. I chose the latter after 12 months of being in a corporate and started to freelance. To my luck, I went on finding some of the sweetest and the most helpful people along the way and here I am today doing what my heart wants!
Speaking of Inspiration, happiness is my drug and I believe that true happiness comes from doing what you love and doing so, with a lot of passion. The more I looked around me the more I saw that people who mixed passion in their work were very happy souls, unlike those who worked without passion.
I was lucky to be surrounded by people who share similar passion for arts and design like I did, which in turn proved to be a huge influence and inspiration in my life for my career. The need to to wake up in the morning to design something amazing with passion and just keep going motivated me a great deal. Life has been really kind to me, must say! I am a design consultant for Alicia Souza, the illustrator, I managed to launch my very own calendar within five months of being ‘unemployed’ which got sold out within 25 days of launching, and I have the joy of seeing my own designs (be it brands, stores or print material) in front of my eyes. Also, not to forget the Instagram handle where all the love from my followers keeps pouring in day in and day out.
Nevertheless, no story is ever complete without hurdles, everyone has them, as did I. The biggest hurdle that I had to face (sometimes I still do) was the security of receiving a paycheck at the end of each month. Having worked in a corporate office prepared me to start budgeting and saving my monthly salary, for later use (as investment for my work). The mental strain was another hurdle I needed to face. Being newly unemployed there were many uneventful days in my career. But I decided with make the most of the available time and I started my Instagram handle. I decided to put up each picture, of my art work, everyday. Just watching my worked receive many likes and compliments encouraged me to wake up each day and keep going. This inspired the idea of my newly launched 2018 calendar. I feel wonderful when my work is appreciated by people and those oh-so-sweet messages that drop in my inbox, simply make my day!
In the end I would say, follow your heart no matter what. But also make practical decisions when necessary from time to time. Regardless of what you do and where you work, do not forget to add a little bit of passion and lots of happiness in your work. If you are working independently, please make sure to have financial back up of some sort.
To sum it up, Its like a saying I believe in – “work for the best and be prepared for the worst.”