We were lucky to catch up with Stuti Sukhani recently and have shared our conversation below.
Stuti, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We love asking folks what they would do differently if they were starting today – how they would speed up the process, etc. We’d love to hear how you would set everything up if you were to start from step 1 today.
I would just try to trust myself more and allow myself to take a chance more often. I spent a lot of time early on trying to do things “right” – finding the correct jobs and trying to emulate a career path that I thought I was supposed to go down in order to find success. This often put me in positions where I found myself not fully immersed or enjoying the work I was doing. I’m learning now to leap to opportunities that truly excite me and help me grow my skills.
And so I’d let myself play a bit more. I’d experiment more, fail faster, and ask dumber questions. I’d show work before it felt portfolio perfect. I’d strike up that conversation with the person I was afraid to approach. Because now I know that curiosity and momentum matter more than polish at the beginning.
So yes, more trust, more play, more people.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a brand manager and a creative brand strategist, dedicated to bringing intricacy to complexities with a practice informed by design thinking, continuous cultural curiosity, and a keen desire to understand human idiosyncrasies. I work at The Working Assembly in New York City, where I help brands figure out who they are and how they should show up in the world.
I have a background and experience in both graphic design and strategy, something that allows me to tackle my work as a brand manager holistically, and gives me the tools to approach any problem to be solved from various lenses. This duality is one of the most important parts of my approach as a brand manager. I’m interested discovering what a brand stands for and articulating how it can authentically connects with its audience. I’m interested in building brands in a way where every interaction with the , but what it feels like,
Design thinking helps me consider how word and image work together to relate to an audience. I truly believe that for design to be good, it has to be effective. I was always the designer in the room asking the “why” questions before jumping into any project because I always understood the path forward better when I had taken two steps back first to survey the scene I was going to walk into.
This is what brought me to learning about brand strategy. My strategic approach is equal parts structure and instinct: combining the two to reach for something unexpected, yet true. My ultimate goal is to construct comprehensive brand worlds that tell poignant stories with clarity, and to do this not by simplifying complexity, but by embracing it with intricacy, connecting every dot to create a cohesive and resonant narrative.
In finding inspiration, I have learnt that spending time outside of work enriches by creative brain immensely. And so, I have become a bit of a collector of sensory experiences to build my visual and cultural vocabulary. Some of these experiences include scuba diving, singing, mood-based playlist making, list writing, analog printing, cooking, museum hunting, and collaging.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
In the world of creative client services, what is incredibly rewarding for me is to be able to deliver a solution to a client, where they say, “I never thought of it that way!”
My aim with brand building is to help brands find the truth that is uniquely true to them, and use that to help them cultivate a strong personality that is recognisable from miles afar. To be able to get the client to say that I was able to help them get to the core of their brand in a way that they may not have pieced together yet, but is inherently true and instantly differentiated.
I keep in mind that while I may be doing creative and strategic work every day, for many brands, a “branding” exercise is something that may go through only once or twice in the life of the brand. This motivates me to really put my best foot forward to show the clients the full possibility of what their brand could deliver today, grow into tomorrow, and even expand laterally into when the time comes.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
A collection of books, short stories, essays and video content that continue to shape my thinking and keep me curious:
Ways of Seeing – John Berger (book and episode series)
Toba Tek Singh – Saadat Hasan Manto
https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2003-09/toba-tek-singh/
The chaotic brilliance of artist Jean-Michel Basquia (on TED Ed) by Jordana Moore Saggese https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX02QQXfb_o
Advice for Students – Charles Eames
The Test of Time: How are designers creating long-lasting, impactful work? – Its Nice That
https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/how-are-designers-creating-long-lasting-work-thematic-graphic-design-branding-020523
The Rhombic Triacontahedron
https://www.kjmaclean.com/Geometry/RhombicTria.html
Some website for interesting content:
https://pudding.cool/
https://publishsomethingonline.com/
https://taliacotton.com/read/
http://www.designishistory.com/
Contact Info:
- Website: https://stutisukhani.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stutisukhani/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuti-sukhani/