Designed by the little guy

Azra Jetha was looking to make a few extra bucks when she and brother Zain started Alpha Cube, a business in which they handpaint cartoons on sneakers, for clients. This was four years ago.

Today, they don’t have an office but their Bandra-based home is filled with dozens of pairs of sneakers, all pending orders. Zain, 26, a trained IT engineer sketches while 22-year-old art student Azra paints. Each order takes four days to complete.

“We have done shoes for six-year-olds and 45-year-olds alike. Ironically, it’s the 45-year-old guy who wanted Calvin and Hobbes characters on his shoes,” says Zain.

Soon after they started out, media company Percept Ltd approached them to design the merchandise for Sunburn, one of the largest electronic dance music festivals held in Goa. This was in 2009. “It was a big deal,” says Zain. The siblings were asked to create designs for 110 pairs of shoes and 150 sunglasses for three consecutive years.

Today, they are looking to expand the sneaker business into a full-fledged clothing brand. “I had a lot of people warn me that art wasn’t a profitable career choice in India. It also took us a year to make a profit,” says Zain.

Finding the niche
National Institute of Design graduate Nikheel Aphale worked for a design firm in New Delhi for a year before he decided to quit and pursue his love for calligraphy. He has been learning the art for 10 years and begins all his work with a hand-drawn draft.

“I was told I can’t sustain myself purely as a calligraphy artist. It requires a lot of skill, but if you can amalgamate it to fit commercial needs of a brand, it opens up a niche market,” says Aphale.

Aphale has made illustrations for book covers for publishers like Penguin, Hachette, Aleph and Rupa. He has also contributed artwork for television series Navya and feature film Khargosh.

Taking on Goliath
“A lot of people want to be associated with a brand big brand that brings your firm into the spotlight. But it’s also a pat on the back because Sunburn planners chose us for our style,” says Zain.

“Smaller enterprises tend to give their designers more space to innovate,” says UK-based Kirath Ghundoo, a surface pattern designer, who started a company that designs interiors for residential spaces and offices two years ago. “This not only attracts a good crop of young designers but clients who are looking for something radical as well.”

Ghundoo is reinventing wallpaper, something most designers view as a ‘boring’ wall application.

She encourages clients to create their own patterns using a simple cut-paste application process.

“The re-emergence of wallpaper has happened in the past couple of years. My wallpapers rip up the traditional rule book,” says Ghundoo, whose geometric palette of wallpapers found space at the Milan Design Week a few weeks ago.

Sticking it to the man
Designers prefer to work solo since they are responsible only to themselves.

Illustrator Ayesha Kapadia says she always wanted to do things her way. That’s probably why the 24-year-old quit her job in a multinational advertising agency after working for less than two years.

She was used to working for herself as she freelanced through four years of college. Though she was placed with an agency, as soon as she graduated and admits she learnt a lot initially, she says, “I felt that I was just a pair of hands for someone else’s idea.”

Kapadia has worked on illustrations that adorn the walls of Cafe Jiji, a resto-bar in Gurgaon. She is now keen on setting up her own business and has given herself a year to launch it. “Everyone wants their own business. Of course, you move up in big agencies but it’s a long process. Can you really wait that long?”

Enough work for everyone
But do such low-key, young and independent designers find it difficult to bag work?

Getting work is not a problem if you are good at what you do, says Denver-based Industrial Design Centre graduate Harikrishnan Panicker. “I think people and businesses are becoming more aware and receptive to good design and also willing to take risks which wasn’t the case earlier,” he says.

Kapadia agrees. “If you can make bread and soup looks interesting on walls, then how old you are doesn’t really matter,” she says.

Panicker started his own firm Thumb Demon with wife Deepti Nair in Colorado, US, four years ago. His work includes toy designs, office interiors and music album covers.

“I have my space to experiment with my art in different mediums and exhibit at galleries along with commercial work that pays the bills,” he says.

His recent work includes the album cover of Doppelgänger by artist Sahej Bakshi aka Dualist Inquiry and the Movies Now office.

It’s tough being your own boss, warns Zain. He says, “The most important part is that you motivate yourself — because it’s all on you. But if you love what you do, it won’t feel like work and then there is no stopping you.”