We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sunanda Vasudevan. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sunanda below.

Sunanda, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

I rarely view my parents as external to my life and career. As their only child, my journey since the day I discovered my love for art as a five-year-old has been that of our little three-person team. My mother, Srimathi Vasudevan is a school teacher-turned-private tutor helping high-schoolers with science and math, while my father, T. A. Vasudevan is a retired clerk from the national telecommunications department in India. They are not creatives but they are dreamers.

My parents showed me that the only thing between someone and their ability to impact the world is hard work born out of a deep love for what they do. I have seen them take on challenges at work with the mindset to push boundaries – be it my mom with a hesitant learner, or my dad with a reluctant customer. Their unwavering work ethic showed me that any work, big or small, was worth the same dedication. I have rarely seen my parents complain about going to work and always wished that for myself growing up.

The only thing that was off the table with my parents, was the option to give less than my best to anything that I signed up for. They always assured me that being the best was not in my control but giving my best sure was. In fact, they would stretch themselves thinner and step in to help me, so I build a healthy, not resentful relationship with school and my art, both things I enjoyed and had an aptitude for. Their support allowed me to have a joyous childhood with family and friends, despite the high expectations I set for myself as a student and an artist.

When the time came, they gave me the strength to take up art as a career, bringing together my passion and work. Through the last few years I have had the privilege of working with some incredible collaborators, mentors and teachers who have greatly influenced me, but my parents continue to have the most profound impact. I still go back to the night we sat up building a hydroponics aquarium for what could have been an essay, the day we dyed a shirt for a birthday gift that could have been a gift card, and all the times they drove me to art supply stores and production facilities way beyond their means and the demands of my run-of-the-mill school project. These memories inform

Sunanda, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am Sunanda Vasudevan, a multidisciplinary designer and maker with a background in architecture and graphic design. What started as making pictures of scenes around me as a child, evolved into an aptitude for art through continued training and practice at school. This informed larger curiosities about design that I explored in architecture school in India, before moving to the United States for my Masters in Fine Arts, Graphic Design and Visual Experience at Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah.



Since graduation in late 2024, I have been working as a multi-disciplinary visual designer, taking up internships and opportunities of freelance work with small businesses, non-profits and boutique agencies. I am currently on the lookout for a full time opportunity in the design of objects and experiences, both physical and digital, that can contribute to the popularity of brands, gamified experiences, and thoughtful information design, all of which are my preliminary strengths.
With the goal to build a career as an art director backed by my strong visual design background, my ideal workplace would give me inspiring mentors, a dependable community, and opportunities of exploration, learning and growth. I am always excited to hear from practices looking for an early career designer to join their creative missions.

In a world where I can be anything, all I forever wish to be is thoughtful – in the things I make, in how I engage with my professional community, and most importantly, in how I use my creativity to make the world a better place. Today, I predominantly make objects, games, campaigns, and digital experiencesfor brands, causes and business opportunities. I work for clients who could use help to make their brands visible, memorable, and engaging.

I believe my biggest strength is my wholistic understanding of the unique demands of both design and business. My experiences as an architect, designer, and briefly as a founder of a product company, enable me to toggle between seeing the big picture and the actionable nuances in a balanced manner. They also more directly correlate to my sound technical skillsets and strong quality of work across visual design execution, research, and design thinking.


Technicality apart, I attach immense value to being personable as a designer and thoroughly enjoy bringing my wacky sense of humor and emotional intelligence to the things I make. I love experiences that engage the senses, touch lives, and give people a reason to ‘play’. My dream is to make objects worthy of spots in people’s Birthday and Holiday wish lists. A handmade gift, an iced blueberry cake, a wild ad on the morning subway ride, or someone’s next family home, it’s all the same – An excuse to make something awesome. That is what I live for!

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Beyond the universal goals of impact, meaning, and success, I believe all creatives could use a mission that’s unique to their journey – to inform how we break paths, set trends and imagine futures. I know I could.

Each time I discover a new medium, technique, or genre, it feels like my search for a mission has ended – until the world shifts again and my mission needs to catch up. Recognizing a pattern across my ever-changing goals would be the only way to identify my mission. Today, it is to make creative thinking as enjoyable and accessible to others as it is for me.



The authors I have read, designers I have seen, and the teachers that have been, have shown me that it takes great thinkers and makers to inspire generations to follow. I wish to be someone that can show future designers that intentionality, effort, and thoughtfulness are never in vain. I would love to show their value through my work, and affirm people’s faith in creative possibilities through my discourse.

I see this large mission manifest in very small ways in my work today. I particularly enjoy discussing design with my peers from school and work, understanding their methods, discovering opportunities of change and growth, and being able to share infectious creative energy with my community.I have a desire to teach at design schools some day, build a practice where people get to make more of their ideas, be a podcast host, and probably even write a book.

At times, this feels like a mission for later in life, maybe even delusional, given how early I am in my career. But I remind myself that it took those who make me want to be a designer today, many years of consistent work to get there. So until it becomes my immediate mission, I am grateful that it drives me to give my best to everything along the way.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

The ‘pivot’ is a very integral topic to my journey as a designer. It is something that gets discussed quite often, given my formal training as an architect, prior to my masters and subsequent career as a creator of visual experiences.

I have always perceived the worlds of architecture and visual design as equal contributors to my values, strengths, and curiosities as a designer and maker. I have never considered them to be mutually exclusive, the way pivots are discussed as a trade off between what was and what will be.

To me, my training in architecture school, my first sustained exposure to diverse thinkers, creatives and problem solvers, was a window in to the world of possibilities unknown to me then. Thanks to the free, inclusive, and highly collaborative environment created by my mentors and peers, I uncovered new worlds, media, disciplines, value systems and inspiration every day.

Designing spaces in which people could live, dine, teach, learn, trade, relax, and thrive, was a great exercise in human-centric, and responsive critical thinking. My experiences at work as an architect, of getting building and interiors with a diverse team, within timelines and resources carried lessons for life.



While the creation of spaces strengthened my creative facilities, I had difficulty being restricted to them as my medium. I often integrated experiences, objects and images into spaces to augment their purpose and meaning. Many times, I felt more stimulated by these facets than the building I was meant to create. I discovered through this process that my ideas and abilities thrived in more visually expressive disciplines like graphic and experience design.

While the conventional path after architecture school led to higher study or work as a junior architect, I decided to formally train in visual design. Thus, the MFA at SCAD and subsequent work as a visual designer and aspiring art director.

At the outset, this is story of a pivot in the conventional sense of the word – the choice of one over another. However, both my experiences have come together to offer a unique point of view into the possibilities of design, making their sum much greater than the parts.

Therefore, I see pivots as being opportunities to ‘carry forward’, and not to ‘leave behind for another’. The last few years as a creative and maker with an architect and graphic designer collaborating inside my head, have perhaps been the most defining thus far. I am very grateful for the strengths, skills and quirks I can leverage from everything I have seen, everywhere I have been, all at once.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sunandavasudevan.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stoporipies.bysunanda/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunandavasudevan/

Image Credits

My photo from graduation at Savannah College of Art and Design: Srusti Shah
The photo from the ‘FORMS’ experience at Brooklyn: Naomi Trusty
Photo of my MFA thesis show at Savannah College of Art and Design: Student photographer, SCAD Photography Department