What better place could justify being called a ‘creativity hub’ if not the last page of the notebook? Doodles, caricatures, ideas, and whatnot have that page housed.

And such began the journey of Manav Dhiman into the world of type designing. While trying to mimic numerous typefaces in his notebook, he realized how much he enjoyed doing it and chose to steer towards it. He is a graphic and type designer based out of New Delhi and he has worked as the Art Director at Animal, collaborated with Lokusdesign, worked as a UI/UX designer at Vendorland, as a Managing Director at the FRiEnDz, and also as a freelancer. After dark he is @manvstype, a one-man collective who twists typography as we know it, using deconstruction to find new ways of interpreting the forms we read every day.

This happens by exploring and letting yourself loose. Don’t take your work or yourself too seriously. “Not everything you make will be a masterpiece and that’s okay,” he says. The idea of starting an Instagram page occurred to him due to his Instagram stories. He would play around with the alphabets and just post — the focus over here was not on the aesthetics but explorations. He received a very positive response and decided to have his page. To not let the creativity quotient go down, one can try new things without putting too much thought or logic into it. Manav would pull and stretch letters to make something he had never seen before. It might look quirky and take a few seconds to grasp but the bottom line is that communication design should attract attention. Don’t make everything easy to understand. When a person sees your work, finds it visually interesting but does not comprehend what’s written, he’s sure to spend some time there. People don’t give up easily and this is what can be leveraged to grab attention and hold it longer. Manav’s work for Veg Non-Veg, a footwear brand, is a great example of this point. The design as a whole looks very engaging and holds your gaze for a couple of seconds longer. And this proves very efficient where 3 seconds decide the make or break of a website.

The third most important thing to know is to bring your ideas to life. Countless times we think of a great idea only to realize that someone else has cashed on the opportunity. It’s important to start, just start. Manav had done a couple of random explorations as well. He would look at the rupee symbol and paisa symbol and think what an aana symbol would look like. The design was very simple yet thought-provoking. While watching a video about Air India, he thought about designing the font in the Devanagari script. And IKEA’s store in Navi Mumbai triggered him to think about IKEA’s font in Devanagari. To understand the length and breadth of your work, you need to start posting your work. You never know who’s watching. His work for some of his clients was a result of his presence on social media platforms.

When scrolling past marvelous works of numerous designers on platforms like Behance, there’s always that one you cannot take your eyes off. It makes your day and motivates you to work harder. Talking about his philosophy, Manav says, “Make one person’s day with your work.” One might receive several criticisms of their work but motivating that one person is what keeps him going. So much so that he can now make beautiful designs in just over an hour and impress the viewers. But the underlying point all budding designers must understand is that it takes a lot of hard work to grow and be confident and successful.

Written by,

Esha Mehta