Today we’d like to introduce you to Asavari Kumar.
Hi Asavari, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
When I was a kid growing up in India, my younger sister Shaivalini and I did a lot of creative projects together. We talked about working together when we grew up. Life, however, had other plans. I ended up in Los Angeles and Shaivalini ended up in Copenhagen. As we went about our lives and work, we missed making things together and the idea for Supernova slowly started to take shape.
My background is in film and animation and Shaivalini’s forte is visual communication. When it comes to design and illustration, our skills overlap. We wanted to create a collective that not only presented the breadth of our creative knowledge but also conveyed our ideologies and the energy and passion we put into our work.
When I founded Supernova in 2014, it was just a company on paper. Shaivalini was working full-time in Copenhagen and occasionally freelancing with me on projects here and there. As we both explored our respective industries, got to know people, and built good working relationships, we started to get more opportunities for projects with larger scopes. Shavalini was eventually able to work with Supernova full time and my husband Siddharth (who had been helping with marketing and admin work behind the scenes) came on board as the business development manager.
In the past few years, we have evolved from a scrappy little collective to a more organized studio that has created award-winning independent and commercial projects for clients like – Google, Adobe, Snapchat, Warner Animation Group, YouTube, Nokia, and Headspace.
Through our professional experience in the tech, entertainment, and advertising industries, despite the BLM and MeToo movements, more often than not, inclusion and diversity continue to be deep-seated problems that seem to only be tackled at the surface level. Being a studio owned and operated by women of color, we collaborate across timezones and prioritize the hiring of womxn and BIPOC artists. We also regularly take time out of our schedules to work with nonprofits and create independent projects with social justice themes.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Setting out on your own is never a smooth road and things rarely go as planned. Trying to run a studio across multiple time zones was uniquely painful. In the initial days of Supernova, we started with an incredibly messy work process of sending stuff through emails and talking over the phone and text. But after many years and a lot of intercontinental yelling later – we’ve managed to find a streamlined workflow involving Dropbox, Slack, ClickUp, and a host of Google Suite products. We’ve found that this not only works well for us but is also scalable as our virtual team tends to expand and contract on a project-to-project basis.
Another thing we still contend with is balancing different types of projects and giving equal weight to creative satisfaction and financial growth. We don’t believe in expanding our team just for the sake of growth and try to take every step deliberately. We are, however, surrounded by a pervasive hustle culture and get-rich-quick mindsets which makes this incredibly difficult. Pursuing quality over quantity often feels like swimming against the tide but it helps that Shaivalini, Siddharth, and I are on the same page regarding work ethics and business ideology.
As you know, we’re big fans of Supernova Design. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Supernova is a WOC-owned and operated design and animation studio. We help innovative brands and businesses tell their unique stories in playful and creative ways. Our core team comprises of three partners – Shaivalini Kumar, Siddharth Zutshi, and myself. We work with a diverse international team of artists and employ a multidisciplinary approach to storytelling that draws upon our team’s collective expertise in communication design and animation direction.
Our mission is to bring ideas to life, invigorate brands, and help businesses grow through empathic storytelling. We use research, branding, strategy, animation, and illustration to create compelling narratives. We cultivate close relationships with our clients and work collaboratively to solve problems and create something that is both functional and beautiful. Check out our brand film to learn more – https://vimeo.com/419837957
One of our absolute favorite projects is the short film ‘Passage’ – It’s a story about an Indian girl who revisits her immigration journey and voyages through a tempestuous emotional landscape of memory, identity, belonging, and discovers the illusion of the American Dream. We created Passage as a response to the growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the US with the hope of highlighting commonalities within various immigrant experiences. You can learn more about it here – https://www.supernovadesign.net/7/
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
We love collaborating with artists all over the world. If you would like to be a part of our team, you can send us your portfolio through our jobs page here – https://www.supernovadesign.net/jobs/
If you are a potential client and have a project that requires animation or design (or any of the services listed on our about page here – https://www.supernovadesign.net/about/) then feel free to reach out to us with your requirements at – [email protected].
If you would like to purchase some of our paper products (comic books, zines, holiday cards, postcards) – Drop by our shop page – https://www.faire.com/brand/b_e8zvcbbtt3
Contact Info:
- Website: www.supernovadesign.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/supernovadesigninc
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/supernovadesigninc/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/suprnovadesign
Image Credits
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