My design work is deeply influenced by architecture and interior design. As an artist, I always look to other mediums outside my scope to determine my color palette, the shapes I use, and the arrangements of things. Designing for clients is all about evoking a feeling — it's important to know the psychology of your client's audience or customer, and the principles of good graphic design. But beyond that, the most difficult thing to capture is the essence of a product, a service, a person; before I dive into a project I spend a good amount of time trawling through images and following an algorithm's trail of suggested media to land on a picture that breathes life into a client's essence and encapsulates it.
As technology evolves, as it expands and further embeds itself in our lives, I've come to see how entering a digital space embodies the feeling of entering a physical space. Walking into a room with gray-blue walls, a white couch with soft, plush throws draped over it, a vintage armoire — it gives you a certain feeling. The furniture dictates your movement, you either seek out light to bask in or gravitate to a shadowy corner, or you feel inclined to explore. Curating a digital space demands the same attention to detail, and uses the language of code to translate the same presence that existing in a space day in, day out, does. As a frontend developer and designer, my background of code permits me to have that understanding of what goes into to making a space feel lived in, authentic, and faithful to its inhabitants. In the same way a person carefully adjusts the books stacked on their coffee table, we nudge a digital item gently along the coordinates.
Raised primarily in Pakistan, but having lived in Washington, Istanbul, Illinois, Dubai, and London, the common thread that I'm always paying attention to is the architecture. I confess that I don't have a particular penchant with delving deeply into the particular works of people, but that I'm always trying to note patterns in shape, arrangement, texture, light, and sound. A bathroom filled with green mosaic tiles and light glinting off mirrors, a room with paint peeling back to reveal warm concrete, scuffed floors with a plush handwoven rug. More and more, we inhabit digital spaces and determine how cluttered they'll be or how threadbare; how varied they'll be or how singular. My pursuit is one that involves getting a person to pause for a moment and connect. To glimpse out the window from the third floor and see a person walking by, take in their gait, their outfit, the pace they're walking at.