Shravan Shetty, Career Coach Interviews Ajay Raghunandan Senior Graphic Designer. A chemical engineer by education . Ajay began his career with a art startup before moving to a web business that focuses on resturants. Ajay decided to plunge into design by honing his natural talent as an artist further taking up courses and freelance projects before joining his current organization full time as a Senior Graphic Designer.

1. Ajay R ,
Senior Graphic Designer
Shravan Shetty
( Career Coach)
The Career Interview 09

2. Lets Explore Careers
As a designer , Ajay has had the opportunity of
designing for the company:
- Packaging for a variety of products of luxury
chocolates(Festive tins, celebration packs, chocolate
pouches, and boxes) and even for clients such as
Starbucks.
- Working in tandem with teams such as the Quality
and Operations for product information, prototypes
and sign-offs
- Ideation, styling, and art direction for photoshoots of
the products to create catalogs. (Diwali and Christmas)
- Creatives for online marketing such as emailers,
social media creatives, website creatives, display ad
creatives
- Creatives for offline purposes - Retail marketing such
as standee, hoardings, and tabletops.

3. Current designation---------0
Senior Graphic Designer

4. What are your main responsibilities as a graphic
designer?
What are your main responsibilities towards your job?
Creating online and offline creatives along with
packaging design and photoshoot assistance

5. What is a typical day (or week) like for you?
A typical day goes with designing many different things
to do with the company and its client along with
brainstorming design idea if new product launches are
in place

6. What do you like most about your work?
I love the aspect of designing and trying new designs ;
Learning

7. What do you like least about your work?
The monotony of some aspects of the job

8. What kinds of problems do you deal with?
We deal with being able to convey messages beautifully
while sticking to the brand guidelines. Innovation in
constraints

9. What kinds of decisions do you make?
The decisions revolve more around the nature of
work and not managerial

10. How does your job affect your general lifestyle?
Some days can be really long while others shorten. Can
be exciting and sleepless too.

11. What current issues and trends in the field should I
know about/be aware of?
A lot of trends affect design itself. Be it visual or
Experience based. Trends in job have become more
demanding while also opening up avenues. Technology,
how brands keep up, cultural changes all affect design.

12. What are some common career paths in this field?
The design path for graphic design can be for marketing
or designing products. brands, offline, collaterals like
brochures, emails and is centered around visual design..

13. What kinds of accomplishments tend to be valued
and rewarded in this field?
In India, its harder I think considering the
understanding of the field by others. Hence things like
work experience really count along with project ( real
or mock up) ; good portfolio and some knowledge in
and around the field i.e say illustration can help show
diversity

14. What related fields do you think I should consider
looking into?
Design is really very vast! You can be general as in
designing visuals to just the typography involved. A
great start from Graphic would be brand design, UI/UX,
illustrations .

15. How did you become interested in this field?
I happened to find my way through a lot of things and
happened to try it out by chance. I had quit my job and
thought I could do something with art and UI/UX.
Without much of an understanding I decided to pick up
soft wares such as Photoshop and ended up doing more
of this than the rest. Few months on I happened to get a
job at a chocolate brand and just been looking to grow
ever since.

16. How did you begin your career?
The year off happened after 2.5 years of experience in
Operations and account management. I also happened
to do chemical engg which you can see are very
different. And now I am currently in design

17. How do most people get into this field? What are
common entry-level jobs?
You can start to pick this up on your own , online
courses or colleges such as art colleges. The entry level
jobs could even be freelancing to starting graphic design
in corporate or agencies. This will help with work
experience a lot! Another reason is develop comfort with
the softwares and growing while connecting.

18. What steps would you recommend I take to
prepare to enter this field?
See what you are interested in as a person. Read up
on what type of fields are and do speak to people.
You can even check out and achieve a great deal or
all your learning online. And grow or pivot from
there.

19. What kind of education, training, or background
does your job require?
A degree in design helps stand out else work experience
and practice counts greatly.

20. What skills, abilities, and personal attributes are
essential to success in your job/this field?
Patience, reading , inclination to artsy things

21. What are the most effective strategies for seeking a
position in this field?
Mock up, freelancing

22. If you could do it all over again, would you choose
the same path for yourself? If not, what would you
change?
I guess I would keep it the same

23. What would be the salary at the entry level in this
career line?
It could be anywhere from 15-30k

24. What advice would you give someone who is
considering this type of job (or field)?
Keep at it

25. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajay-raghunandan-15b91b100

26. Font = Cambria Font Size 24

27. Thank You