A Punekar living in Australia, Prutha Kulkarni, Co-Founder of Design Quarry Studio LLP, has a very interesting aura. She’s the kind of person you can easily vibe with when you accidentally bump into her. Prutha is a Graphic Designer, graduated from MIT Institute of Design, Pune.
She has a plethora of interests ranging from travelling, painting, reading and origami to swimming and playing badminton. Her current interest is to try out new recipes, thanks to COVID-19. I have, very fortunately, had the chance to get to know her personally and she has been an absolute delight to talk to. There’s a lot to learn from her and how she manages her work with absolute precision. Here’s Prutha in her element.
How’s being the Co-Founder of Design Quarry?
As a Co-founder of Design Quarry (DQ), I have a mixed bag of responsibilities. Managing the entire life cycle of a communication design project beginning from undertaking client meetings and client co-ordination, preparation of creative briefs, timeline and commercial proposals, managing project finances, heading and supervising the creative team, performing in-depth brainstorming sessions with the team, conceptualisation, ideation, concept presentations, taking final design decisions, timely delivery of projects in required file format to print & digital production.
What is a typical day for you?
This is quite a tough question for me to answer as I don’t really have a set routine for my working days. As I work remotely for my Design Studio in Pune from Australia, most of time goes in having online meetings with my team. I usually prioritise my personal and professional tasks for the day.
My day normally starts with Yoga and some meditation, then I have my breakfast along with reading and replying to my work emails. If there are any tight deadlines for a project I work on those, or if I have some free time then I like to work on some organisational development ideas and plans for DQ or I take up some online design and entrepreneurship courses. I also like to keep myself updated with the latest design trends and news. After cooking and eating my lunch, that’s when my day gets busy as business hours begin in India. Afternoons are mostly discussions, brainstorming ideas and providing feedback to the team. I close my working hours by sending out a few emails and agenda for the next day. I believe that health is important and it is now more than ever, so my partner and I either play badminton or go for a run to refresh and relax ourselves. My day ends with a nice dinner and Netflix. 🙂
What kicked off your career as a graphic designer?
My career began with an internship at Innishari, which was a sister company to Onio Design in Pune. I worked on a few wall narratives which were heavy on illustrations. That was my first experience in the design industry and it was a wonderful start to my career. I believe that internships are quite important as you want to work purely with the intent to learn and gain knowledge.
How has your academic journey been?
I did a few design entrance exams preparation classes locally and gave entrance tests for most of the design institutes in India. I got admission in MIT Institute of Design, Pune where I completed my Undergraduate Diploma in Graphic Design. I also did a few short courses in branding, typography, packaging design and experimental printmaking from University of the Arts, London. Along with work I also aim to do a few online courses.
As a design studio, what are the main issues you deal with?
The most common problems we as a design studio deal with is making a customer understand what is branding and how important it is to their business/product/service.
As design is an evolving industry in India, I believe as a designer it is our job to educate the client about the importance of design services and the steps, process and cost involved to achieve a good and desired result.
How is your lifestyle as a designer?
As a designer your profession makes you more observant and look for inspiration wherever you go and that’s what I do! But the biggest change in my career was to move to a new country. It took me a while to settle in but have now managed to achieve a good work and life balance. An entrepreneur needs to be available any time of the day and due to the time difference I have to work after my working hours as well when necessary.
What do you love the most about your job?
The best part about my job is that I am doing what I love. I meet some inspiring people and keep evolving and learning about business and design with every project.
As an entrepreneur, what are the things you went through while building Design Quarry? What inspired you to make the choice of being an entrepreneur?
After finishing my internship and job experience, I took a bold step along with two of my design friends to start a company called Entwine which provided creative gift packaging ideas to customers. Entwine was my design school project for a branding course which my friends and I thought had a good potential to be implemented as a business. And so we dived into it! Customers were loving the concept and the business was going fine, but soon we realised that the market is not quite ready to spend on gift packaging, and so we had to come up with a different business model in which we decided to provide design services to our existing clientele and the response for those services was getting better and better.
Entwine created a lot of client base and network which gave us a gateway to start Design Quarry which aims to provide process driven design solutions to our customers using effective communication techniques. We started out with small projects mainly working for start-ups but now we complete five years in the industry and have expanded our business in terms of services and client segments. I am very grateful for Entwine as that was an important stepping stone in my career, I have learned a lot in those years.
What advice would you give to someone who wishes to follow this path?
I believe all humans and every work can be creative, it is just a matter of channeling the creativity from within. You could be coming from a technical educational background but want to be a designer, you surely can if you have a passion for designing. So one advice would be to just be yourself, and if you want to start a design studio of your own then you should be ready to fail, learn, always work with a team, yes you will have difference of opinions at times with your co-founders or team mates but you have to keep communicating and discussing and find a midway to achieve your goals.
Prutha’s LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pruthakulkarni12/
Nidhi is a 20 year old ambivert who completed her schooling from Nath Valley School, Aurangabad. In 2018, she joined the MIT School of Fine Arts and Applied Arts in Pune to pursue her BFA in Applied Arts and Visual Communication. She has a soft spot for reading, writing, and travel. Helping others find their true passion, is one of her interests. As a writer on Careerfox, she intends to interview professionals from diverse career backgrounds and blog about them. She believes that this would not only nurture her love for writing, but also would help youngsters make more informed career choices.