We recently connected with Moksha Rao and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Moksha, thanks for joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
I consider myself extremely lucky to wake up every day and do two things I absolutely love, plus earn a full-time living doing them both. I have been an artist ever since I was a little girl and could’ve never imagined myself doing anything different (and I’m so grateful I never had to). I work at The Weather Channel as a Product Designer which fuels the geeky, creative, analytical side of my brain and is the culmination of the biggest decision of my life; to move from India to the United States. I am also a professional Indian Fusion Dancer who performs at events and festivals all over the world. I’m grateful for my healthy work-life balance because I could never pick between these two disciplines, I love them both and feel that they compliment each other perfectly. As a Product Designer, I love creating and designing new weather experiences at my “day job” which helps our billion users around the world; truly getting to make a difference in people’s lives. It requires a unique combination of not just design skills, but also collaboration and communication with different departments (development, product, sales, etc) plus an understanding of code. I feel my background as a designer serves as the perfect compliment to dance, which requires not just hours of daily training but also collaboration with vendors/festival managers to execute the perfect event. It’s definitely not easy, and I’m constantly learning new skills, sourcing materials for costumes, or applying / performing at gigs. But I absolutely love it and am grateful to have the added luxury of only choosing gigs that excite me plus possessing the creative skills to create promotional material for my shows. That being said, being a dancer is a lot of fun but takes oodles of hard work, is time-consuming, and expensive. This is where I’ve seen a lot of creatives make the hard choice of either having to give up their day job and pursue performing full time or make ends meet in ways that don’t seem optimal. I’m glad I’ve never had to make that decision because both facets of my personality fuel each other to create something unique, beautiful, and simply me.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I like to introduce myself as a Designer by day and a Dancer by night. I was born into a family of artists; my father was a Graphic Designer and my mother is a dancer, so I always feel like I’m a special blend of them both. I studied Graphic Design and majored in Advertising during my Undergraduate studies and then moved across the world from my hometown Mumbai, India to Atlanta, US to continue my artistic journey. I graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) with an M.F.A. in Graphic Design and Visual Experience. I was awarded the title of Excelsus Laureate during my graduation in 2019, it is the highest honor awarded to a graduate student at SCAD. My projects involve telling a story, identifying pain points, and crafting meaningful user flows to solve problems. I believe in creating design that facilitates, not frustrates. I am now an award-winning Product Designer who works at The Weather Channel. When I’m not busy designing user-friendly experiences for an app with over a million users, geeking out over typefaces, or illustrating on my iPad, I’m usually training for my next dance gig.
Born into a family of dancers, I began my dance training at the age of five. I am formally trained in Bharata Natyam, a South Indian classical dance form, and am a student of the late Guru Rajee Narayan, founder and director of Nritya Geethanjali Dance Academy, Mumbai. I completed my Arangetram (debut solo recital) in 2009. After moving to the US, I started developing a unique style with hip hop elements and contortion-inspired movements, which became very popular with audiences at my shows. I now like to describe myself as an Indian Fusion Dancer, whose unique performance style showcases intricate footwork, spectacular speed, flexibility, and a blend of my classical roots with fusion elements. I have performed in two countries, with companies like Creative Mornings, Outshine Festivals NYC, SAFEhouse Arts, Atlanta Dogwood Festival Inc., Magnolia Fine Arts Festival, and The National Centre for the Performing Arts, to name a few. I also love creative collaborations, like the time I shot a music video with Espuete Productions or performed on Atlanta’s famous Beltline with LiquidSky Events sponsored by Art on the Beltline. I am currently training under renowned performer Ash Rexford of Circus Center, San Francisco in the art of contortion. My goal is to fuse Bharata Natyam with contortion to create something people have never seen before. I am always looking for my next creative collaboration and am available for event bookings. The best way to reach me would be via email or Instagram.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Being able to wake up and do something I love every single day, which brings joy and understanding to so many people, is a dream come true. As a Product Designer, I am responsible for designing user-friendly experiences for an app that not only has over a million users but is centered around a topic that touches everybody’s life: the weather. The fact that I was able to land my dream job straight out of graduate school is something that I still can’t comprehend. I just completed three years at The Weather Channel and I couldn’t be happier. During my time here, I was on the teams that were responsible for the launch of our ground-breaking Covid Informational Hub, User Registration on Web for Premium Subscribers and Radar Improvements launch on the iOS App Store for The Weather Channel app (which has 425 million monthly users). I also love giving back to the design community by being an AIGA mentor for their RiseUp Mentorship Program and a part-time mentor on ADPList.
As a Dancer, I love being able to present my audience with something so eclectic and beautiful, as well as educate them on an ancient Indian dance form. I also love interspersing my classical dance with elements of surprise, like a hip-hop routine, that creates moments of delight and remembrance. I also love finding time to illustrate fun series on my iPad, like my Cocktail Rocker Series or my Inktober Series, where I illustrated minimalist poses and hand gestures (mudras) in Bharata Natyam dance through each of my daily sketches. I love merging my two worlds of design and dance together, and this is the most rewarding aspect of being an artist to me.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Soon after I moved to the US from India for grad school, I got the devastating news of my father’s terminal cancer diagnosis. My father was an award-winning Graphic Designer way ahead of his time. In 1976, two of his hand-drawn posters on women’s equality were showcased at the 6th Warsaw Poster Biennale (Poland). The Biennale has more than 3,100 submissions from 47 countries, making it one of the largest international poster competitions of its time. Visionary designers like Saul Bass and Milton Glasser had their work displayed, along with my immensely talented father. I’m so grateful to have such visionaries as parents, who held their own as artists in the 70s, in India. He is my inspiration. I can call myself a Graphic Designer only because of the innovative and forward-thinking example paved by him and my mother, who co-founded and ran a successful advertising agency in Mumbai for over 40 years. He passed away in 2017 from fourth-stage oesophageal cancer.
It was my parent’s incredible support that allowed me to migrate to the US. My graduate thesis was inspired and dedicated to my father. It was based on my time with him in the hospital during his chemo sessions, specifically around creating those moments of joy during rehab by creating an ecosystem of happiness by making patients, their families, and caregivers smile. Writing this thesis was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I am grateful to my very supportive husband Yohan for helping me throughout this arduous process and to my university for helping me get through such a challenging time with a generous scholarship plus the title of Excelsus Laureate at graduation. I dedicated my accomplishment to my late father and I wish he could see where I am today. We love and miss him every day.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.designsbymoksha.
com - Instagram: https://www.
instagram.com/moksha_rao/ - Linkedin: https://www.
linkedin.com/in/moksharao/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/
moksha_rao - Youtube: https://www.youtube.
com/channel/ UCGoUPi8HteUQmIe3xlBuP_g?view_ as=subscriber - Other: SCAD Atlanta’s Excelsus Laureate 2019: https://youtu.be/L-
XfE4kS22g
Image Credits
Cynthia Warburton, Heidi Paviour Romeo