22 Shades of Purple | 2022 Recap
There was never a dull moment in 2022. It was one of The best years for me in my career, Personal Life & even in my Social Life. so many things happened, and that’s why this review took so much time to write and even collected all the things that happened in the year.
But if I have to choose a theme for the year 2022, For me, it will be “Community.”
So let’s jump in
1. Getting my First tattoo
I was born on the 5th of January, So The year always starts with my birthday. This year I wanted to get a gift, but I wanted this gift to be special. So I went for a tattoo, This was going to be my first tattoo, so I wanted it to be special, and that’s why I got #000000 tattooed on my wrist.
This is a hex code for Color Black for people who don’t know. Why I got this, now that’s a long story. You can read more about it here in this other piece I wrote → Read here
Now that I have started on this personal story let me share all the things that happened in my personal life this last year. The list is long but believes me, it’s read-worthy.
2. Becoming a Dad
This year also added a new member to my family. I had my first kid, My son Rudra in February. This year is already at a good start.
We celebrated his 6-month Birthday. I also took him to a castle our clan used to own. , Our Hometown Village, Teaching him about our history will be good. Bringing him back from where I & my father or our grandparents were.
3. Making my First Crypto Dollar
While I enjoyed all these amazing moments with my son, I was also on Twitter. Remember I talked about it in the 2021 review, we will come back to that later, but because of Twitter, I joined two amazing communities.
I joined Makerodck last year to help with a project with Brand Design, But I became more active in 2022. I Made most of the Logos for the product, which came out of the community. This also helped me get more immersed in web3/Blockchain.
I even designed the makerdock’s Branding and became a core contributor. So many game nights and work nights & now we are 80+ strong. But we didn’t only sit and work. We also met in real life and had so many memories
In Makerdock, we did around $60k + in grants in the community.
Here are some products we built and launched. I am not going to include the whole list, but you can check it on Product hunt
Now Superteam is special too. Superteam was the first Community where I learned how to make money in web3. I had the chance to work on a deck for Superteam. After that, I have been helping Many devs in the Community with their design skills, designing many brand identities, and even attending a Hackathon organized by them.
I met so many awesome folks at the event & also met so many crypto natives. If I am mentioning, I can only do it by mentioning our awesome sherpa Kash dhanda. The dude is a legend.
4. Making my own design agency with frens
While participating in various online communities, I had the opportunity to connect with talented designers such as Pratyush, Akshit, and Akhil.
As we collaborated on various projects and shared our design skills, the idea came to us to form an agency and offer our services to the broader web3 community. And thus, Design Frens was born.
Design frens was our way of giving back to the web3 community. We started doing branding and web projects.
We even printed our own Merch & Stickers for the design frens. We shared those with all the frens who supported us & believed in us. We even sponsored an Event in Goa.
5. Going Full time in web3
Now That I had dipped my foot in the web3 waters, I wanted to get in, swim, and do backstrokes.
That Opportunity came when I connected with an old connection from 8 years back on Facebook. I went on a call with Dalpat (Ex-head of Design in Polygon & Current founder of Copper X)
He has been seeing all my work on Twitter & He was looking for a Lead designer who can help him bring more cohesiveness & visibility to Polygon’s branding & also helps with marketing design.
We had our first call in January, but at that time, we couldn’t find a way to work together when Dalpat messaged me in April, I said yes and started my journey in one of the biggest Blockchain companies, this company gave me credibility, so many opportunities of working on the awesome project and also gave me a very big piece of my personal branding but we will come to that later, I wrote about this process in detail in this article → Read here
6. Designing one of the Biggest events of Polygon
After Joining Polygon, One of the Biggest Projects I worked on was Polygon Connect. I had Print design experience with Brand design experience, so this was a perfect project for me.
There are so many things that happened; believe me, this can become its own article if I get into writing it. But for now, Here are some numbers
BTW did I tell you that it took
3 Months
Many Sleepless Nights
100+ Print Designs for Polygon Guild & Connect
Polygon Guild: Made in India Tour
His Event was special cause I started with its logo to be on the site when the Event was getting executed.
This Event was followed by Guild events, which I also had the pleasure of designing. It went into 7 cities in front of thousands of people, Here are some No. from there.
Now that we are done with numbers, here are some pictures from the events
7. More work in Polygon
While Connect was one of the biggest projects I did this year, it was not the only Project, My team had Awesome 3D Designers & Artists, so We also had the chance to design many Launches and Product Videos.
We did one for connect, and we did many for partnerships. Now posting videos won’t be possible here, but I will attach them with the images.
If you know me & my work, you might already know that presentations & decks are a big part of my portfolio, so even in the polygon, I had the opportunity to work on multiple decks for managers to VPs. I even did a deck for the CEO, Here’s a sneak peek of that deck
8. Becoming The Purple Guy
Oh, remember I told you that joining polygon also gave me a big part of my personal branding? We are here now. This will also explain why the title 50 Shades of Purple.
Polygon’s brand Color is Purple, and I took over that for myself as a Brand Designer. I started using it as much as possible, and that’s when I started seeing a change in my personal branding. People started recognizing me with the purple color. I was superseded but embraced it and became “The Purple Guy.”
9. Giving Live Talks & Speaker Sessions
But the Polygon didn’t give me only the purple color. It also gave me the confidence to face my biggest fear, Public Speaking.
UX Now
I got to speak at Ux Now 2022(link to the site), starting my journey as a Publick speaker. The Ux now has more than 400+ attendees and upcoming designers. I talked about Web3 design & trust design. If I say that I was nervous before The talk, it would be an understatement, I was deadly afraid of the stage, but once I went on stage and remembered all the advice I got from my Fellow Design leaders, I made it
Wrote a Thread about it too Read it Here
Polygon Guild Tour
UX Now was my first Biggest Public Speaking gig, But I didn’t stop there. I also gave two Talks on Polygon Guild Tour, One in Ahmedabad & one in Jaipur, Here. Still, one thing was different, I was presenting Polygon & the audience had Devs, Designers, and marketers, all mix of people.
While these two were Big Public speaking events, I also did many Talks for small audiences & also had the opportunity to go and give a talk at IIM Ahmedabad. I won’t go into many details, though, But here are some pictures from them
- Knock Knock 1
2. Web3 Builder Meetup by Echai in IIM Ahmedabad
3. Web3 Meet by Nervos
This public speaking gig helped me with my imposter syndrome, but it also helped me gain confidence and believe in myself when it comes to sharing knowledge.
10. Mentoring New Designers & Devs
I also got the opportunity to mentor Devs & designers in different cohorts & fellowships.I have been part of many communities, and all these opportunities came from those communities only.
1. Polygon Fellowship
I talked to 50 builders in Polygon Fellowship, and I shared my knowledge of design & Branding with them.
2. Build on chain Cohort
I was part of a Cohort by STL, which started my journey in web3, and when they asked me to mentor the next cohort, I said yes.
3. BX Cohort
While all these other cohorts were focused on Devs and helping them with design, or even in design product design, my forte, Brand design, came into play when I joined this cohort as a mentor.
By the way, there’s a funny story behind this, I had a call with Sneha, the Founder of this cohort, at the start of the year, and she told me all about this cohort, and I tweeted about it.
And in September, I learned I would be one of the mentors. I was surprised, but the universe work in unique ways.
11. Giving Online Talks
While I was Facing my Fear of public speaking with these live events & Speaker events, I could do one more thing, not cause of this year but cause of The covid, become more Tech savvy and share what I know in the virtual world.
I Loved the Virtual talks & sessions as they were accessible to people from different places and could get thousands of folks at once.
Sharing a Few of my favorites here
1. Designing for Figma — Friends of Figma
When Ashish asked me to give a talk on design for web3 for FOF, How could I have said no? I got Figma branded T-shirt in return, so win-win.
2. Creative Solace for Pepper Content
This was one of the biggest online events I was part of. I was asked to talk about web3 design. You can watch it here too
3. DSC NJ
This talk was from the start of 2022. I talked with students of DSC NITJ. This was focused on UI/UX. I loved making the deck on this one.
12. Interviews/Podcast
I know you must be getting bored from hearing so much about my talks & sessions, but the last one, While I did so many Talks, I got invited to an interview for Design in werb3. Do watch it here.
13. Journey in Videos
Now that ends all the discussion about talks Now, let’s come to a new skill that I acquired in 2022. It focused on Videos & video editing. The skill helped me so much with marketing and even content creation too.
I made more than 12+ videos this year, so a good average for the year.
14. Twitter Growth
These videos helped me feel confident with a camera and also helped me grow my Twitter account. At the moment of writing this review, I am reaching nearly 8K.
I started twitter last year, intending to start my journey in Product building, but this gave me so much. The job at Polygon, So many talks, So many events, All cause of creating content and posting them on Twitter.
I can post all Data, but here’s a sneak peek, and believe me, if you haven't started using Twitter, What are you waiting for?
15. Experimenting with Content Creation
Twitter Growth pushed me to content creation, which pushed me to experiment and believe that was fun, Creating memes, Creating articles, and even writing Gyan wali Tweets.
But believe me, it was not just fun memes. This also allowed me to go deep into my thoughts and write articles and blogs which I feel.
While Last Year I only wrote 3 Articles, I want to increase the number to at least 12, so a minimum of one a month.
16. Travelling & Attending Events
Ok, I know you are getting bored, but don’t worry; we are in the end game now. I did so many real-life events this year, but this year also brought me so much travel. Unfortunately, I can’t put that list here but believe me, the list is very long.
So instead of that here are some pictures from my travel & also from the events I attended.
BTW Did I tell you about ETH India? I wasn’t a participant, but I judged pitches for Polygon in the Ux Category, Some pictures from there, BTW That’s me in the center.
But this year
was not only winning, but I also lost a big thing. I had closed one of my biggest side projects, Superdms, where I worked for 4 months. This project made me a Product Builder, My first but the best thing, which also had to end.
Now I am more excited for the year 2023, I will be working harder and focusing on my content creation skills, so I will see you next year. Till then, keep working, and keep enjoying life.
Ending with these awesome folks, I met this year.
