Collaboration and passion projects are driving this Indian creative agency’s growth
Employees: 40+
HQ: New Delhi, India
Adobe Subscription: Creative Cloud for teams
Most used apps: Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, XD, Lightroom
When the self-taught designer Kunel Gaur was just starting out, he would print copies of his designs and place them on his wall for friends to view and provide feedback.
Such commitment to showing his work has paid off. Now the founder and creator of Animal, a celebrated independent creative agency in New Delhi and New York, Gaur’s portfolio spans advertising, graphic and digital design, illustration and social media.
But even as the various mediums for showcasing work have expanded for Gaur and designers everywhere, his career advice remains the same: learn, create and share the work you want to attract “You might be judged for your work but you shouldn’t mind,” he says. “Just keep sharing because when you see it on your own platform as a viewer, it helps inspire more interesting work than if you just kept it to yourself.”
Beyond developing skills and creating opportunities, self-initiated work also creates fresh viewpoints for individuals and agencies alike.
“For individuals, self-initiated projects can open our minds to new ways of looking at a particular problem, idea or aspect of society,” adds Gaur.
With Gaur’s design career shaped by personal projects, this drive to create what you wish existed is also embedded into the agency.
At the creative helm of Animal agency alongside Sharon Borgoyary and Sayantan Choudhury, the team has applied open and curious minds to growing the full-service agency, working with global clients like Google, Uniqlo, Microsoft, UNICEF, Hyatt, Adidas Originals and more.
Animal has an impressive suite of projects across identity design, strategy, digital marketing, advertising, films, events, websites, social media, content creation, motion graphic design, and virtual reality. “As opposed to just being a design agency that works on branding, there is no one thing that we do, or a project we won’t do.”
Growing an agency with internal passion projects
Within the industry in New Delhi and beyond, Animal is renowned for collaboration, pioneering art direction and a strong visual aesthetic.
Internal passion projects ensure the team continues to grow, explains Gaur. “Self initiated projects are great motivators for the teams involved. Coming from a place of passion and integrity allows for ideas to freely evolve without the layer of a commercial interest behind it.”
A recent example of an internal project championed by the team has been Veu, an online platform connecting agencies, brands, clients and travellers alike with local photographers in any city across India.
“We collaborate with a lot of people across projects – from designers to developers and photographers – and one challenge was finding talent in different locations for clients but also various personal projects. We wanted to expand into making a platform that’s like the Airbnb of photographers,” explains Gaur.
The end-to-end solution was conceptualised and built in house at Animal, brought to life with the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. “Veu required us to do prototyping and to deploy it, so the process was made smoother with Adobe.”
The platform is built on top of a proprietary web framework with built-in capabilities to handle everything from photographer discovery, to booking photoshoot dates and payment. “Because we are working in such a collaborative environment, it is handy to have a universal platform like Adobe,” says Gaur.
“There is so much collaboration and I can’t imagine it would be possible without Adobe Creative Cloud for teams.”
Adobe Creative Cloud was an important part of the creative process, employed across various steps from ideation to launch:
Adobe Photoshop: The art director and graphic designers created concepts and moodboards, marketing collateral and photo editing, from colour correction, grading, web image optimisation and creating image assets for the brand.
Adobe Illustrator: Used by the graphic designer, art director and UI designer to conceptualise and develop iconography for Vue and create vector assets for brand visual identity systems.
After Effects: The UI design and motion graphics designer used AE to create user flow mockups of the product, as well as page transitions and micro Interactions. “It is our go-to tool for creating animated prototypes and animation assets – from design to development”
Adobe XD: Both product designers and UI designers created user journeys, information architecture and responsive wireframes for the product. “We test interactive prototypes on multiple devices, so Adobe XD helps us in handing out the prototype to various users for testing and it’s much more collaborative.”
Adobe Lightroom: Art directors used Lightroom to grade pictures and photoshoots for social media content. “All the assets are produced on the Adobe software so it’s a great deal of help.”
A collaborative approach
Creative Cloud for Teams has helped improve processes on the client work side. Previously, the team sourced individual licenses but encountered challenges with workflow.
“As we are a growing and collaborative agency, new people come and go all the time, and the creative department was often in a frenzy as a result,” explains Gaur.
Productivity has improved since centralising licenses through Creative Clouds for Teams a couple of years ago and there are no longer days spent retrieving forgotten passwords.
“Previously, it was tough to manage so many passwords and it’s much easier right now with the Admin Console – life is easier,” says Gaur.
A mix of designers, art directors, video editors, and designers share ‘seats’, and this approach to managing the licenses has saved both time and money.
Adobe Creative Cloud for teams also ensures a certain aesthetic and attention to detail when the team showcases client projects.
“As a team and as creative directors, we are very visual and we put that into everything that we produce – we package our projects really well – and that is a big plus, it's important that you do good work with a good creative brand but it's also important that you showcase it really well,” adds Gaur.
Passion projects attract passion people
Removing the seemingly small tension points in the workflow has meant that Animal can focus on what’s important – nurturing and attracting talent.
Just as side projects are a way to create the thing you wish existed, they are also a way to attract the clients – and talent – you want to work with. “We want to be in a zone where we keep innovating and looking at new ways to do things – and we attract talent in the way we approach the work.”
Part of the agency’s success has been doing things differently – bringing talent in house to work on a variety of projects that push them in new directions, with the team often attracting the clients.
“We get to grow in so many different directions because we have invested in all kinds of talent rather than specialising, and that’s really interesting to us – to not just get stuck in one area,” says Gaur.
As with any project, when it comes to sustaining your success as an agency – internal or external – it’s about movement.
“Keep innovating,” advises Gaur. “Look at the future – where are you going, the direction, the technology, look at different things you can dabble in.”
You don’t have to simply be one thing – if you do good work, you can morph, change and adapt.
“You might be a branding agency but there is a lot more to do with a brand than just the system design and looking outside that bubble helps you expand the things you can work with or on,” concludes Gaur.
Writing by Madeleine Dore
Photography by Bhavya Ahuja
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