2025 Design Kids award winner Shekar Menon's career began in the strangest possible conditions: final semester during the peak of the pandemic, landing his first job as a junior designer at Studio Bigfat. With just two juniors and one creative director fielding client feedback late into the night, he cut his teeth fast — including on packaging for Goenchi Feni, an artisanal Indian alcohol brand. Watching that project move from screen to physical object was the moment the work clicked. Menon grew up between Mumbai and Kochi, Kerala, and now works out of New York, carrying all three cities' textures into his practice.

His approach has shifted since those early days of maximalist illustration and burnout: rather than chase a fixed visual language, Menon treats himself as a visual chameleon, moving across typography, motion, 3D and web design as each project demands. Listening comes before making — understanding the brief, the people, the context — and that discipline shapes everything downstream. He's candid about AI's place in the field too: the tool is secondary, the thinking behind it is what matters, and he expects specificity and genuine perspective to matter more, not less, as generated work becomes commonplace.

My career had a really weird start. I was finishing my final semester during the peak months of the pandemic, when I landed my first job as a junior designer at Studio Bigfat. Coming out of a prolonged period of isolation and making half-baked college assignments, I was suddenly thrust into a world where I had to think and act quickly on my feet. In an environment where it was just two junior designers and one creative director battling client feedback late into the night, we worked on projects for significant mainstream brands, as well as boutique and local organizations. It was a crash course in what it actually meant to work as a designer.

One of these projects was for Goenchi Feni, an artisanal Indian alcohol brand for whom we developed the packaging design. Once the project wrapped and I got to see the end result, something clicked. Seeing something that had started as an idea on my screen become a physical object that people could actually encounter was truly gratifying.

Brands have an interesting lifespan, sometimes longer than humans themselves, and to be a part of one is to leave a unique footprint in the world

Can you tell us about winning your 2025 TDK Award and what impact it had on your creative practice?

It’s been wonderful! I think the best part about it was getting to connect with such tasteful designers. All of their work has such a distinct style and personality, and to be included in the same category as them is not only an honor but also an inspiration. Shengxuan, Joana, and Vani are a few of the designers whose work continues to astound me. Their passion is contagious, especially in an internet climate that keeps shifting and morphing.The award also came at a time when I was dealing with burnout and some intense imposter syndrome. It was right in the middle of my graduate thesis project and, honestly, it was such a great feeling. It was good to step out of that rigorous work mindset and enjoy a win for once. The interview also got me talking with a few senior designers and creative directors, and all in all, it was terrific for building up my confidence and reminding me that the work I was making was resonating with people.

In my early months at Bigfat, I used to illustrate a lot, both for work and for myself, and a big part of that process was going hard on a very specific type of maximalist composition. Although it was fun, I eventually burnt myself out and was forced to try other things. It made me realize that having a style doesn’t necessarily mean repeating the same visual language over and over.

As a designer creating for brands, I learned the value of being a visual chameleon, adapting to different strategies and visual requirements. As my practice has developed, I have toyed textures, typography, motion graphics, website design, 3D design, and so much more. Moving between all these different mediums and approaches taught me to be less precious about a particular style and more interested in what the project actually needs.

Today, I see those projects as foundational exercises that have shaped how I approach not only my current projects but also my personal art. I think my approach now is less about having a fixed style and more about staying curious, experimenting, and knowing when to push an idea and when to let it go.

I think trying to be an attentive listener is one of my core values.

I try my best to be open-minded and understand as many perspectives as possible. In fact, I think it’s really hard to be a good designer without this quality. It’s easy to jump straight into making something, but I think it’s much more important to first take a step back and listen to the challenges proposed by the brief, the people involved, and the context around it.

For me, good design starts with understanding before it moves toward making. The more I listen, the more informed and intentional my decisions tend to become.

When I was in graduate school, a lot of us were encouraged to volunteer at design conferences and festivals. Only the selected volunteers could attend for little to no cost, while everyone else could either burn through their savings or simply not go. Design spaces can be remarkably exclusive, and I don’t think a design conference, collective, or award show should warrant a $1,000 ticket to participate.

There’s a sense of passive, systemic elitism that needs to be countered by creating more free and accessible spaces. It’s equally important for essential design resources, like industry-standard software, to be affordable and easy to access. The egregious chokehold some of these companies have over the design industry is, paradoxically, a design challenge in itself. If we want emerging designers to have more opportunities, we need to make the tools, and communities that shape the profession more accessible in the first place!

I believe it’s important to have a voice, but I think it can be developed in all kinds of ways. Initially, I was of the opinion that a style could only be defined by what you’re making visually, but honestly, it can be so much more than that.

In my career so far, I’ve witnessed peers with an incredible command over language, in the ways they present and conduct themselves, which has been one of a kind. I’ve seen designers navigate briefs by eliminating and isolating strategies at a pace that is borderline inhuman. I’ve seen creatives teach classes and give lectures in such oddly specific but wildly successful ways that I’ve never seen before.

There are all kinds of ways to have a definitive style as a creative. It can exist in how you think, communicate, work, teach, or make. I think that’s one of the reasons I deeply value this profession. Your voice doesn’t have to be one fixed thing. It can be one thing today and another tomorrow, and I think that’s part of what makes it interesting.

It’s hard to overlook AI when talking about this topic. To me, it has always felt like a forced injection that I never really wanted. It’s difficult to avoid when the systems we work within continue to develop around it at such a rapid pace.

I’ve always thought of design as something that is decision-led first. There’s a clear difference between work that’s been conceptually thought through and developed, irrespective of whether AI was involved, and work that’s simply prompted, generated, and thrown out. The tool will always be secondary; the thinking behind it is what matters.

AI, at least where it stands today, tends to gravitate towards what’s recognizable rather than what is distinctive. The result can be polished, but often feels homogenized. I think as this becomes more prevalent, specificity and genuine perspective will become increasingly valuable.

I wonder if that creates an interesting feedback loop. AI pushes visual culture toward sameness, and designers and artists respond by finding newer, fresher ways to break out of it. Ultimately, I think the things that make design meaningful will still be much harder to automate.

I’m from Mumbai, with roots in Kochi, Kerala. The cities I live in tend to become a part of me in ways that are difficult to put into words.

Walking through urban spaces has been a huge part of my creative process for years. It’s meditative, helps me clear my head, and gives me an opportunity to simply observe. In Mumbai, I’ve spent countless hours walking through different neighborhoods, each with its own texture, and personality. Those experiences often find their way into my work, consciously or otherwise.

Kochi feels very different. It’s lush, slower, and a place I feel particularly connected to. Interestingly, I tend to gravitate toward more internalized ideas when I’m there, which makes me wonder how much of my surroundings quietly shape the way I think.

Now, working in New York, I’m constantly juxtaposing these experiences. Even small things like the texture of the streets beneath my shoes, how one road quietly opens into another, the architecture and density of the neighborhoods have all changed the way I think. These collective observations have become an important part of how I see and approach creative work.

My culture influences my work quite deeply, although not always in ways that are immediately obvious. Growing up between Mumbai and Kochi, every object, person, and space I’ve interacted with has been a mixture of both cultures. From the Indic typefaces I’ve seen on everyday packaging, to the subtle nuances in bodily expressions, to the movies I watched growing up, I think a lot of that has become part of how I naturally see and process the world.

I’m particularly drawn to things that feel tactile, and lived-in. Growing up in India, I was surrounded by an incredible amount of visual information, from the ornate architecture of religious institutions and mythological paintings to the diverse letterforms found across its many languages. That exposure has contributed to my tendency toward maximalism and world-building, and my interest in creating work that feels like it has a physical life beyond the screen.

At the same time, I don’t think my work is an attempt to explicitly represent Indian culture. It’s more of an underlying influence; something that informs my taste, and the kinds of details I notice. My interest in processes like weaving, screen printing, letterpress, and other forms of making also comes from that broader relationship with material and craft.

As I’ve moved between different places, I’ve become more conscious of what I carry with me. I think that distance has actually made my relationship with my own culture more apparent. It shows up less as a subject in my work and more as a way of looking at things.

Sarah Elawad is a designer and visual artist based in Brooklyn who has such a distinct authorship over her work. There’s a rich sense of maximalism created through her use of texture, typography, color, and gradients that feels incredibly specific to her. It’s always a joy to go through her work.

Sameer Kulavoor is a visual artist from Mumbai who is deeply influenced by architecture and urban spaces. His work is abstract and visually compelling, but also acts as a critique of social inadequacies and capitalism.

As far as places go, I love visiting Secret Riso Club in Brooklyn. They’re a community-run bookstore and creative studio with some of the best collections of publications and editorial resources in the city. They also conduct a bunch of activities and sessions. Most notably, they did a risograph printing workshop that I’m still sad to have missed.

Just keep making! Design and art are a lot more fun when you do them for the joy of making instead of thinking about what you can get in return. Something I’m realizing as I’m getting older is that trying out multiple things becomes a lot easier when you’re consistent. Taking them one step at a time and not overwhelming yourself is an important part of the process.

Additionally, actively seeking out opportunities, whether by reaching out to creatives more senior than you or engaging with communities you’d like to be a part of, is an important step in the right direction. These experiences add up and shape your practice in ways that are unique to you. Designing is a shared experience, and you get better the more you connect!