Arnav Mathur

Hi, I'm Arnav. I started my design journey back in 2014. I did my bachelor's of science in animation and multimedia honors, specializing in visual design from the Berlin School of Technology. That was a 4-year degree program, which I completed by 2018. Since then, I've been working as a freelance designer, taking projects related to branding and identity, logos, flyers, and all sorts of communication design. My recent stint was at Sellable Technologies, a data and AI-driven company. There, I handled multiple dashboards, including Microsoft Power BI, and our main clients were Microsoft SAP, Databricks, and Adobe. All events and communications regarding that were bypassed to me. I was in charge of a team of 25 people. From the start to the end, I handled the delivery of graphics, collection of content, collaboration with teammates, and getting all approvals – all of these tasks were done via me. I'm a passionate visual designer who turns ideas into real, scroll-stopping visuals. My main focus is on branding and identity. I'm comfortable with social media and all sorts of communication design, including print, banners, web, UI, UX, and everything in between.

It opens up a print design into a match. We have social media. Suppose, we are doing a 4-flyer for print, and we have to assume that's for an event, so a conference, and it's a 4-sized flyer. So, the pinned document would be converted to curves, and all the layers would be converted to shapes. As per the guidelines, it would be in a CMYK document. If we convert that into social media, we would convert into RGB, and we would change the dimensions to have three options: one would be square, 1080 by 1080 pixels; the second would be 1080 by 1350, which would be portrait; and the third would be landscape, 1080 by 1920. We'll change the color mode, and we have three sizes to convert the 4-design with a little less information. You know? So, it's pretty obvious that a 4-size document has more information. On social media, we are restricted to text guidelines as per Meta in case we're boosting the graphic or promoting it. And, you know, so, we have to follow the guidelines in terms of text, so we need to reduce the text also.

The two key differences between Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, when it comes to graphic design is that Adobe Photoshop does not create vector images. Illustrator does. And you can create illustrations from scratch on Illustrator, whereas Photoshop is a composition. And I mean, there are many differences. Photoshop is mostly used for photo manipulation. I would say creating something funky or requiring manipulation. And Illustrator is mainly used for corporate design, branding, and identity guidelines, more professional documents, like I said.

Best practices for designing social media posts that engage the audience would be keeping up with trends and being aware of what's happening in the industry, following the brand guidelines to ensure our brand's look and feel is consistent everywhere. And, you know, so that people relate to the brand and resonate with it whenever they see the same color scheme. So trying to keep a unique identity across all social media platforms. Fourth, being a key trend, is influencer marketing. I mean, depending on your product, you can think about various campaigns around influencer marketing. People who are influencers get the word out there and promote your product in a unique way. So I think that's also a major game changer these days.

My approach to handling tight deadlines for delivering multiple design projects would be to accumulate the daily tasks beforehand and start the day. I would set priorities and divide my time into different tasks, then proceed accordingly. I strictly adhere to guidelines and avoid skipping deadlines by creating multiple variations for creatives, which gives users options to choose from many creatives. As I said, consistency is key, and I follow the principle of "less is more." The less information, the better, it's visible to the eye.

I would ensure that my social media design reflects the latest trends by doing my research, identifying what the other competitor brands are doing, but not exactly copying them and instead coming up with a better strategy, an innovative one that's out of the box. And I would look for the major stakeholders in that particular domain around the world for inspiration. I would go to Dribbble for some inspiration. I would probably search the product in a magazine. I'd advertise somewhere, and I would do the whole research. And then I'll ensure that my social media campaign reflects the latest trends. I mean, after all, it's the traction that matters, the reach we're getting, the product we're selling. As long as we ensure that this is ensured by following the latest trends by doing appropriate research.

Advanced techniques I use in Photoshop for enhancing image quality for marketing materials clearly depend on the creative approach. Clip masking is one, giving a texture using brush strokes is a thing. It's a good technique to put gradients in particular areas you want to highlight, and you have to use a specific gradient. You can brush stroke it and do it as per your customization. The clone stamp tool is also a great alternative. To be honest, since AI has been integrated into Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, it's been a game changer. I can use the selection tool, think of a vector or icon or asset, and generate it by typing. This is also a key game changer in the advanced techniques in Photoshop. I feel it can pretty much do everything if used in the right way.

Okay. Yes. So in my last role while at Sellable Technologies, like, we had multiple things going on. We had events, such as Databricks, SAP, and Data AI Summit. We also had Microsoft events going on and all sorts of things. And between this, we had this chaos, which is visible to us when we enter the office. So it was like a big TV. It had highlights of the week, highlights, maybe some speaker sessions, and general information, like facts, everything. So earlier, before I joined, these guys used to display static creatives on that, like, maybe for festivities or something. And when I joined, they requested me to take care of the chaos creatives and everything. So I was in charge of the look and feel of the company, like how we look and feel, and how our products look and feel. I also did some lower design projects for them for their main products. Anyways, coming back to this. So for that chaos, I started implementing GIFs, but for GIFs, you need After Effects or Premiere Pro. So it was kind of time-consuming to do that, but it had to be done repeatedly day on day, so it gets updated there and everybody comes and sees that. So in order to fix this, I came up with an idea. I introduced my team to this tool called Adobe Express, wherein you can create basic animation and basic GIFs without doing that extra bit, which you do on Premiere Pro. You're getting it rendered, putting layers by layers, using a timeline. I think by using Adobe Express, we achieved good results efficiently, and we used less time as compared to Premiere Pro or After Effects. This is how we identified and implemented a new technology for creating GIFs. And ever since, we've been using that for creating GIFs.

I would generate a social media strategy by first identifying the topic we are creating content for. I would then use AI to generate visuals, such as typing a prompt to create what I need. Next, I would research and gather the best options, choosing the top 5. I would then enhance them using a tool like Photoshop, fixing any mistakes that the AI made. While AI can't replace designers, it does need human touch to brush it up, increase contrast, and ensure it meets social media standards. Tools that can be used for this include Midjourney, DALL-E AI, and many others.

I can do basic text animations, basic GIFs. I can also do a whole lot of movie reels, but that's really not my forte. But if needed, I can do that.

Actually, I haven't used a buffer in managing social media campaigns.