Arnav Mathur

Um, sure. Hi. I'm Arnav. Uh, so 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 Berlin School of Technology. Uh, that was a 4 year degree program. Uh, it was on till 2018. Since then, I've been, uh, working as a freelance designer and, you know, taking projects, uh, related to branding and identity, logos, flyers, all sorts of communication design. My recent stint was at Sellable Technologies where it was a data and data and AI driven company. Um, there, I we had multiple dashboards, including Microsoft Power BI, uh, main clients for Microsoft SAP, Databricks, uh, Adobe. So all the events and communications regarding that were bypassed to me. I was handling a team of 25 people, And, yeah, it was basically, uh, from the start to the end, the delivery of graphics, collection of content, collaborating with the teammates, getting all approvals, all things were done via me. So I am a passionate visual designer turning, uh, ideas into real scroll stopping visuals. And, yeah, my main focus is branding and identity. I am comfortable with social media, uh, and all sorts of communication design, print, banners, web, UI, UX, everything, basically.

It's open up a print design into a match. We have social media. Sure. Suppose, uh, we are doing a a 4 flyer for print, and we have to and suppose that's for event, so some conference, and it's a 4 sized. So the pinned document, firstly, would be converted to curve, and, you know, all the layers would be converted to shape. As per the guidelines, it would be in a CMYK document. Uh, if, uh, we convert that for into social media, we would, uh, be converting into RGB, and we would be changing the dimensions to we have 3 options, which will be 1 would be square, 10 80 by 10 80 pixels. 2nd can be 10 80 by 13 50, which would be portrait, and the third would be landscape, uh, 10 80 by 1920. Yeah. So we have 3 options to convert the print creatives. Uh, we'll change the color mode, 1, and we have 3 sizes to convert the a four design to with a little less information. You know? So so it's pretty obvious that a 4 size document has more information. And on social media, we are restricted to, you know, text guidelines as per meta in case we are boosting the graphic, in case we are promoting it. And, you know, so, yeah, we have to follow the guidelines in terms of text, so we need to reduce the text also.

Um, the two key differences between Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, when it comes to graphic design is, uh, Adobe Photoshop does not, uh, you know, create vector images. Uh, Illustrator does. And, uh, you know, you can you can create illustrations from scratch on Illustrator, whereas Photoshop, it's a composition, more like a composition. And, I I mean, there are many, many differences. Uh, Photoshop is mostly using mostly used for, you know, photo manipulation. Um, I would say, you know, creating something funky or maybe which requires manipulation. Yeah. And illustrator is is mainly used for lower design, branding, and identity guidelines, you know, more professional documents, uh, vector based designs, like I said.

Um, best practices for designing social media posts that engage the audience would be keeping up with the trends and tropicals, uh, which is happening in the industry, um, following the brand guidelines so that our brand's, uh, look and feel is consistent everywhere. And, you know, so that people relate with the brands and resonate with the brand whenever they see the same color scheme. So trying to keep a unique identity all over the, you know, social media platform. 4th can be a key trending thing, which is influencer marketing. I mean, depending upon your product, you can, you know, uh, think about various, uh, campaigns, uh, around influencer marketing. People who are influencers, you know, getting the word out there and promoting your product in a unique way. So I think that is also a major game changer these days.

Um, my approach to handling tight deadlines for delivering multiple designs projects would be I would, uh, accumulate the daily tasks, uh, you know, beforehand, before starting the day, and I would set it priority wise, you know, divide my hours, like, my time into the different tasks and, you know, like, proceed accordingly. Suppose, uh, I mean, I strictly adhere to guidelines. Uh, I avoid, you know, what do you say, you know, skipping the deadlines by creating multiple variations for creatives, which gives users the options to choose from many creatives. And as I said, consistency is key, and I follow the law less is more. I mean, the less information, it's better. It's visible to the eye better.

Okay. I would ensure that my social media design I would I ensure I mean, how would I know that it reflects the latest trends by, you know, doing my research, identifying what the other competitor brands are doing, but not exactly copying them and copying them, but instead coming with a better strategy, innovative one, which is out of the box. And, yeah, I will look for the major stakeholders in that particular domain around the world for inspiration. Yeah. 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 maybe I'll I can ensure that my social media campaign reflect latest trends. I mean, after all, it's it's the traction what matters. I mean, the reach we are getting, the product we are selling. As long as we ensure that I mean, this is and this is ensured by, you know, following. Also I mean, one way is also to do this is, like, follow the latest trends by doing appropriate research.

Advanced techniques I use in Photoshop for enhancing image quality for marketing materials would be, um, I mean, it clearly depends upon creative to creative, I would say. Clip masking would be 1, you know, uh, giving a texture using the brush stroke is is a thing. It's like a good technique to put gradient in particular areas that you wanna highlight, and not effectively, you have to use a particular square gradient. You can, like, brush stroke it and, you know, do it as per your customization. Clone stamp tool is also a great alternate, I would say. But, uh, to be honest, like, since AI has been integrated into Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, as you know, so it's been a game changer ever since. Like, I could just use selection tool and, you know, think of a vector or icon or maybe some asset, and I would generate it, like, on, uh, by typing it. So that is also a key game changer in the advanced techniques in Photoshop. Also, um, I've I feel, uh, yeah, it can pretty much do everything if, you know, used in the right way.

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

How would I generate a social media strategy and that leverages both visual graphics and AI generated content. I mean, I mean, I would create Okay. So firstly, uh, suppose I would think about the topic that we are creating for. I would generate visuals through AI. You know, I would, like, type in the prompt, raise to what I need to create. I'll research and, you know, put my brains into that for, like, 20 minutes, gather some best options, choose the best 5 ones, um, then I'll pull them on, like, Photoshop. I'll enhance them, you know, fix those silly mistakes which AI does. Of course, it's not perfect. It can't replace designers. It needs human touch. So I'll have to, you know, like, brush it up, increase the contrast, and, you know, fix those silly mistakes which AI does and ensure that it is as per the standards of, you know, social media or maybe. And tools which can be used for this is Midjourney, DALL E AI, and many others.

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

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