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Hello, I’m Joy.

First of all, thanks for stopping by.

This website changes every other month, so I’m not sure which version you’re seeing — or if you’re one of the unlucky ones to catch an avant-garde version of it.

I am a designer. Just a designer. Product, UI, UX, digital interface, interaction, visual; senior, junior, staff, principal — I’m not sure which one fully applies, because design is beyond a rank or a job.

It’s a state of mind. It’s a process of communicating solutions and showing people how things can be done to achieve their goals. I was a designer as a kid, trying to organize my dad’s old computer desktop so it’d be easy for him to find things, or my mom’s spice rack so it’d be accessible to her. I just didn’t know what it was called, but the idea was the same. I watched them use it, fixed it, and then iterated.

Today I do the same, except now with more elaborate Figma files and Claude Code prototypes to explain how something can be made easy and simple to use. And I’d still be a designer even if the job “UX designer” didn’t exist tomorrow.

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
Rabindranath Tagore

That’s how I think of design — a service, and that service brings me joy.

I can be annoying sometimes at dinner parties, when I’m trying to tell people why their app feels off, why their landing page doesn’t convert, and why their AI app looks like a GPT wrapper.

But this isn’t all I’m about. I produce amateur Bollywood mixes with my keyboards and spend a lot of time tinkering with my PO-33.

I also take photos that make me feel calm and mellow — 35mm street photography with my XT1 (iykyk). You can see them here.

I’m also a HUGE typography nerd, and I want to learn how to make my own fonts — something I’m slowly learning to do.

The world is full of optimizations, and people trying to optimize everything: money, careers, goals, dreams, numbers out of it all. I think we’ve forgotten to have fun with what we do or what we create. That’s what I aspire to do — create something fun that provides joy, not because I need to objectively hit some number.

I’ve been a designer for almost a decade. It’s usually hard for me to focus on one thing — not because I have a short attention span, but because I have too many interests. I don’t go to restaurants with badly designed menus, I’m obsessed with metro maps and public signage, I love typography, and I’m probably one of the few designers who doesn’t use an iPhone.

These are the things and people who inspire me to create, every day.

Creatives

Edvard R. Tufte

Nobody can design complex data viz than him

Harish S

He turns everything into gold, whether it’s CRED or Agam

Mick Champayne

Illustrator, mentor and a friend only lucky ones can have

Philip Linnemann

Someone whose portfolio is all over public places in Denmark

Matt D. Smith

His videos turned me into a designer

Gawx

You don’t need time, space & equipment to create

Companies

March Tee

Small non-luxury boutique t-shirt company, who aren’t sellouts

Pigeon & Co

They know how to have fun in their work

Xiaomi

Very underrated tech company, often judged and overlooked

reMarkable

How to be successful with just one product

On Running

How to be successful with one ugly shoe

Teenage Engineering

Apple of musical instruments

LEGO

Every child should grow up with

Artists

Arijit Singh

How to stay grounded while being a god

Jeremy Hindle

Production designer of Severance

Indian Ocean

The sound of India

Tanmay Bhat

Only successful person whose story I saw from start to finish

Edvard Munch

Favourite painter of all time

Marius Bauer

The style of painting I like

Satyajit Ray

Non-designer who was a great designer

Style

Wes Anderson

The whole vibe

The War Kitchen

Instagram page all about retro vintage

Cyberpunk 2077

Game that reimagined what the future could be like

Flower Mountain

How to make colourful shoes look nice

RAINS

Rainproof apparel made cool again