PSDFan Extra

Hi Narendra, great to have you here at PSDFAN. Could you please tell us a little about yourself and how you first got into the design field?

Hi Tom, and thank you for asking! I’m a 26 year young graphic designer from Indore India. I started drawing since my childhood, but never thought that I would choose it as my profession and my pencil would turn into a mouse. In 2003 was just a content developer and later got interested in design and took a basic design course for that. This was the turning point of my career and I started designing for my clients. Initially I also had created some horrible designs, but later improved my design sense with time. Now I’m good at my work and due to this, I have many satisfied clients across India & Europe. Fortunately this list is not going to end here.

Your portfolio really helps show your versatility as a designer, as it combines examples of web design, typography, logo design, illustrations and photo-manipulations. How important do you think it is to have a varied skill set?

I’m always being interested in the things which are new, interesting and never done by me before. The one reason for this is because I easily get bored by doing monotonous work and hence I always seek variety, uniqueness and freshness in my work. I work on various projects to learn something new, to enhance my skills and it’s very important for me to have different skills to make projects unique and amazing which require some extra skillsets. Another specific reason is the design problems that I encounter while designing which encourage me to learn new things to solve that problem and to shape my ideas in better ways. I usually spend a lot of time to learn new things, new techniques hunt for new ideas that make an art beautiful and all this gives a lot of experience for future projects and give more freedom to express your ideas in more creative and innovative way.

You’ve become quite well known in the design community for your great Photoshop tutorials. What do you feel is the best way for new designers to learn?

Yes of course tutorial are the best way to learn not only for new designers, but for experienced professionals too. I’ve learned a lot from tutorials and still I used to read tutorials to learn new techniques. I write tutorials because I love to share new ideas and new technique with others as well as it increases my communication with others. Sometime you can get some brilliant ideas for your projects during communication which boosts your creativity as well as enhance your skills.

I’ve noticed that you’re expanding your freelancing business. What advice would you give to aspiring/established freelancers?

Yes I’m working hard to expand my business and have many plans for future. I created my brand identity along with my personal website where I share my ideas with others, also I have already entered in the field of web design including development and learned HTML/CSS to get more control in coding as well as more freedom in the design process so that more brilliant ideas can see day light.

My only advice to aspiring and established freelancers is that; don’t get afraid of any idea’s stupidity, absurdness or simplicity because sometime it proves itself as a brilliant idea. Design is not a process, but an evolution in which an idea gets matured by time and efforts hence any idea which initially sounds stupid may become brilliant later when it gets matured. Several times I observe that one professional reject an idea by assuming that idea won’t work and then the same idea works perfectly and gets enormous success when someone else works on it.

I noticed that you started with 200 original concepts for your current logo, and put a lot of thought into your final design. Could you describe your meticulous workflow in a little more detail for us?

Yes that was the longest very challenging project for me. It always been very challenging when you want to develop your own logo because of a lot of expectations from our logo. I started to research for my logo in August 2010 and it took around one month to complete my research. During researching I studied about many established designer/professionals personal logos, their message, simplicity etc., after that I concluded that I want a logo, which is simple, unique, creative, modern and should have a fresh look. I wanted an identity which reflects my essence and which can deliver my message clearly to viewers.

After that, I started sketching and sketched all ideas which came in my mind without worrying about their absurdness. I sketched ideas and then evaluated them and then I left them for few days to find more ideas and to let them mature. This process I repeated several times and after that I decided to go beyond that two dimensional paper & sketch and started experiments with paper folds, cuts, etc., and finally I came to my idea that I liked.

When I got sufficient ideas, I just started designing them in Illustrator for more experiments and testing them in various perspectives. I experimented with shapes, positions, colors and orientations and finally got my brand identity. This whole process took three months roughly and the result was liked by everyone who saw it.

Of course this whole process took too long for developing a logo, but it paid when it won silver in “Mediabistro Logo Awards 2010″ in design category. This logo expresses several messages by its geometry, shape, folds, transparency, symmetry etc., I would recommend that you see a special post (http://www.narendrakeshkar.com/blog/2010/10/15/won-silver-award-in-mediabistro-logo-award-2010-for-my-personal-logo/) for this logo in my blog which express messages my logo want to deliver.

Where do you hope to be as a designer in 5 years time? How are you trying to develop, in terms of work processes, ideologies and styles?

As I have many plans for my business as well I’m working on some of them I hope to see myself as a well established and independent design professional in this design industry. My brand identity and my website is a first step for my plans because now I’m working on some new projects. I have my personal blog yet and based on its blogging experience I will launch my new blog based on creativity, research and design. I am also working on to establish my own design studio intending to provide effective design services to the clients across the world. Besides that I am learning Z-brush to enhance my 3D modeling skills so that I can give life to my ideas by raising a new 3D animation company. So I hope that I would have many golden moments in next five years.

For achieving success in my plans I am refining and modifying my design methodologies, work processes by acquiring new techniques & technology. I am defining an effective research process to go ahead as well as organizing my work schedule to minimize loss of time in unproductive work. In short I am working on my design strategy based on three words “Think, Act, Invent” which is my favorite quote too.

You can visit Narendra’s portfolio at NarendraKeshkar.com

About the Author:

Tom is the founder of PSDFAN. He loves writing tutorials, learning more about design and interacting with the community. On a more interesting note he can also play guitar hero drunk with his teeth.

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