Words are a lot for someone that relies on visual communication to make my living, but I've chosen to be eternally creative, so I am guessing that every line needs to be a quip , every other word dripping with wit and each paragraph packaged with sarcasm. I am sure I can give you all of that visually, in words am not sure. How am I supposed to make my silly likes, my idiotic dislikes and my grey t-shirt in front of a white background future goals make you roll on the floor with laughter.
I am an Design Thinker and an Art Director, known for my whimsical thinking and selective deafness for
criticising font sizes and rolling my eyes at copywriters. I select my alcohol based on the design of the bottle and look of the label, I sail because of Instagram, steal cars only when I am Franklyn and I thoroughly dislike the mess of dying in a zombie apocalypse but I design because I’m curious and interested in people and their lives.
My name is Ritik Sachdev, and if my family archives are to be believed I was born on 22nd January 1987, which makes me old enough to understand that war and poverty bother me as much as anyone else who is allowed to vote.
The first few years of my life were fairly uneventful, learning how to walk and talk taking up a major portions of my time. Eleven educational establishments later (not because I was a delinquent but because my father was in the Army ) I found myself walking through the wood panelled halls (Noah’s ark would have been jealous) of Ogilvy, Mumbai to become an Art Director, since I had been one my whole life, I decided to make it official. I have now been a paid and professional one for the last 6 years. I got off to not a bad start by finding myself on the One Show Merit list for “Ponds Young Love campaign” and in the process I discovered love, since then creativity has become a way of life. A few more Ad’ world recognitions followed in the form of “30 under 30 ” with Economic times 2015, Impact magazine’s ‘ 30 Under 30 ’ ( 2015 ) , A Silver at Spikes Asia and a nominations from Cannes coupled with a successful run of creative initiative projects for Break through , Fosters, Channel V, etc ( is it too soon for Google to have noticed? ) I was also lucky enough to be invited to attend the Cannes Lion festival in 2015 , where my experience with creativity and food were life changing. Recently I made quite a few good decisions, like making friends with almost the entire cast of “Beauty and the Beast" and holding up tepid beer at jazz concerts just so I could pull a few favours while I directed my first Ad‘ film. I also decided to move on from my desk of six years at Ogilvy to the position of Creative Director at Mullen Lowe Lintas, Mumbai. While the view was good and the FIFA game nights became frequent, I found myself itching to something more, revolving around another creative culture, work ethic, another sensibility and add something to what I know from the never - ending list of what I would love to learn. 30 Kgs of overweight luggage I took off for Hyper-Island, Manchester ( UK ) to do my Masters in Digital Experience Design and make Human Centric design my centre of thinking.
Now I am currently in Amsterdam, completing my thesis and gaining work experience in this new design discipline by researching and building a A system for The Ticketing Group that aims to make culture accessible, intuitive and interactive. As my exploration continues through art, design, advertising, film, digital and user experience, the one common factor I have found that links them is ‘user empathy’, since all solutions deal with people and their expecta- tions, knowing that persons emotional state of mind and beliefs while understanding them like they are my own has helped me become a more effective creative lateral thinker.
Being a design thinker is not something I chose because it was the only thing I seemed qualified to do but because I enjoyed that it was the only thing I seemed qualified to do. And I want to continue to enjoy it wherever that may be.
In 2014, Brand Equity & Impact had nice things to say about me.
First half of the scan.