Life Meets #Lumia: Kaustubh Adhav
A freelance graphic designer by day and an automobile-design student by night, the life of Kaustubh Adhav revolves around his Lumia 720.
Kaustubh has a mantra for design: “Design should be beautiful and smart in its function.”
The 24-year old is an engineer by profession, a budding designer and a full-time student learning automobile design from the Car Design Academy. An avid Lumia Conversations reader, Kaustubh has also won various prizes from our contests.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7Nj7nkxBSI[/youtube]
The Lumia 720 helps him sketch futuristic car designs, doodle his ramblings, click photos, and do other tasks smoothly. Fascinated by the phone’s design, he also once opened it up to see what was inside!
How do you use your Lumia 720 day to day?
It has been almost two years with my Lumia 720. It is my daily driver and is my first WP device. I wanted to buy a phone with a decent camera and the 720 fit the bill perfectly.
I use my Lumia for almost everything in design exploration, from using InNote and Fresh Paint for jotting down ideas and later, when I document the descriptions in OneNote. There are times when I am required to draw on paper that I am bound to lose, and CamScanner rescues me and keeps my designs safe.
Last but not the least, the sleek design of my Lumia 720 also speaks to me and inspires me!
In what ways has it changed the way you work?
As a graphic design freelancer, I rely heavily on OneDrive for sharing designs with my customers. It stores all my “in progress” design ideas, which I can start working on whenever inspiration strikes.
Moreover, it is always convenient to edit documents and share them through the cloud. There is no need for heavy email attachments and customers never lose these documents.
I have also started to take photos on my mobile because of its great camera and see my Instagram shots here. This phone has been the perfect companion whenever I needed it.
Why did you become a designer?
Since I was a kid, I loved to draw. I loved to draw cars. The wonderful world of industrial and graphic design fascinated me. It gives me immense satisfaction to rack my brains on a problem and solve it with a product.
Why design only cars and futuristic phones?
I personally believe that to be able to design something that delights people is always fulfilling. I find that the two things delight people the most are the cars they drive and the phones they use.
That’s how I decided that I would focus on cars and phones.
What are the top five apps you would recommend budding designers?
Many apps help me in my work and these are are some of my favorites.
Color Scheme uses the phone’s camera to pick any color that lies in the crosshairs. It is very easy to extract the color values from a flower that you might see on your way to work. It gives them in all possible formats – RGB, CMYK and HEX. This is quite a handy tool for graphic designers and digital artists.
CamScanner is my portable scanner before Office Lens came out. It offers full control over post scanning editing.
Fresh Paint Inspiration can strike us anywhere and I like to be ready. Recently, the on-stage lights at a musical concert inspired me to a possible automobile headlight design. I just doodled the idea on my Lumia 720, thanks to Fresh Paint.
NextGen Reader helps me keep abreast of the latest developments in design. NextGen reader is a clean, minimal and ad-free news reader that does justice to the content. It is smooth and works well even with poor Internet speed. I get daily updates from my favorite design and technology blogs, including Lumia Conversations.
OneNote Sometimes design ideas need more than sketches and require a description. I always save these notes in various notebooks so it is convenient to retrieve them when required.
What other things have you designed?
I have designed different things, from cars, a bus stop, a smartphone. It is all on my Behance profile here. I also designed a cover and an attachment for the Microsoft Surface Pro for a contest few years ago.
As you see, it is a special cover and a magnetically attaching storage compartment. It also has a special kind of stylus and an eEraser. Additionally, the storage unit can communicate with the tablet and will alert the user if he leaves it behind.
What is the next design you are working on?
For now, most of my attention is concentrated on my course. However, I do have a ton of incomplete ideas in my notebook and on the cloud (OneDrive). One of them is a concept for a camera. It will be a completely different take on the DSLR.
Any advice for fellow designers?
Forget about the conventions you have been taught and try to do something radical. Always trust your gut, no matter how hard it is for you to explain your concept to people. After all, it is your job to sell your idea.
In an ideal world where you had all the creative and designer liberty, what would your Lumia smartphone look like?
I have a completely different take on a Lumia. Here’s a video that I have done and I call it the “Lumia Atom.”
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXKVTLRvzcI[/youtube]
Thanks for talking to us, Kaustubh!