Gaikwad quotes Sagmeister and Ray at Sona meet
Vikram Gaikwad, co-founder, Underdog Communications, mentored students from design institutes as he shed light on the importance of creativity and craftsmanship at a Design Work Out - Breakfast Meet in Mumbai which was organised by Sona Papers on 12 September 2018.
19 Sep 2018 | 3978 Views | By Abhishek Muralidharan
Gaikwad provided insights from the world of advertising and he explained about the merits of creative designing with snippets from his past experiences of more than two decades.
He presented scenarios where creativity took a huge stride in the respective campaign’s success such as the Kerala Eye Bank advertisement, TCI's Mehendi advertisement, Standard Charter's ‘recycle paper’ advertisement and Audi A8’s 3-dimensional advertisement which was developed online space.
He also emphasized the importance of typography, font selection and readability. He quoted Herb Lubalin, "You can do a good advertisement without good typography, but you can’t do a great advertisement without a good typography."
"Even after 28 years, I still emphasize on readability and things beyond what a computer can offer," said Gaikwad.
Gaikwad said that he was an avid reader of the Saturday Times those days, as it used to publish a glossy supplement with a lot of creative matter.
He quoted Stefan Sagmeister: "Craft is a tool for the designer, in a sense. Even the most industrialised process needs a craftsmanship’s intervention, at some stage." Later he quoted Satyajit Ray "If the theme is simple, you can include a hundred details that create the illusion of actually better, "to mark the importance of attention to detail and the vitality of craft in almost every industrialised process."
Once, he concluded his knowledge-sharing session, he solved queries by students about freelancing and the importance of practical working experience.
"After my college hours, I spent time in a stationery shop where I started experiencing paper quality and printability," said Gaikwad.