Vinitha Mammen

Hi Vinitha! Tell us about yourself - how did you get to where you are today?

Hello hello! First of all, thank you so much for having me – it’s such an honor to be included in this list alongside some amazingly talented illustrators from around the world! My journey to lettering and illustration has been quite twisted. I started my career as a mechanical engineer, then switched to fashion design and finally landed as an illustrator. At least so far, who knows what’s next? It’s been all about finding a balance between chasing my passions and adapting to my circumstances, really. But if you think about it, I’ve always been pursuing creativity. My first-ever dream job (when I was 6) was to be an animator, and somewhere along the line it evolved into wanting to be a chef by the time I was in high school, and eventually I went into mechanical engineering with the aim of becoming an automobile designer. However, instead of designing cars, I did a master’s in designing clothing. And then I moved to Oman, where I had to pivot during the pandemic and leaned into picking up my lettering hobby as a full-time career and here we are now!

When did you first become interested in design and specifically lettering?

I’ve always been into designing in some form or the other. My parents are both creatives and so is my sister – she’s an architect – and my earliest memories are all about craft projects and creating stuff with our hands and minds. So, I suppose it was inevitable that I find myself in a design career. Lettering, or more accurately calligraphy at that point, was a hobby I picked up during my fashion masters as a way to destress from all the pressure and tight deadlines. I struggled to let my brain unwind after a long day of intense work and learning to create bite-sized pieces of calligraphy helped me ground myself. That led me to more hand-lettering explorations and a couple of years later when I got an iPad to mess around on, I found myself naturally being drawn to digital lettering. I explored a lot of different styles of lettering on Procreate, which sort of revealed the kind of work I enjoyed creating the most. I think what really made lettering stick for me is that it is such a powerful tool for self-expression. All art of course can be used to express oneself, but I feel lettering has this extra element of accessibility because it just lets you speak your mind, quite literally. It perfectly complemented my drive towards initiating conversations about topics I care about the most like feminism, smashing the patriarchy, destroying gender roles and promoting self-love and body positivity. And that’s what I love the most about lettering.

How would you describe your design style and how has it changed over time?

I’d say my current illustration style is bold, colorful, mostly color-blocked with hints of texture and playfulness. I say current, because I believe style is ever-evolving. Probably because I started by using a lot of watercolor paints when I picked up digital art, I was inclined to replicate that watercolor style. But as I created more work, I started leaning in to what I enjoyed creating more, which was more bold, graphic styles of illustration and lettering. Lots of flat vector-style pieces. Someone once used the word ‘precise’ to describe my work and that’s when I realized that that was representative of what I was doing then. It was playful but there was also a sense of precision. However, I’ve found myself inclined to bring in some more textures and imperfections and a more handmade feel to my work recently. I now enjoy creating more organically while still staying true to my bold and colorful aesthetics. I believe my style’s going to keep evolving more as I create more, and I fully intend to lean into that natural evolution.

Are there particular themes you like to explore through your work?

Yes, absolutely. I enjoy creating around topics that are closest to my heart and I believe that that is an important aspect of keeping the passion and drive towards my work alive. My work is centered around women empowerment, mostly drawing from my own life experiences and those of other women I encounter. I love using my art as a spark to ignite much-needed conversations around feminism, body positivity, mental health, self-love and authenticity. I believe that these conversations are key to effecting small changes that will eventually smash the patriarchy and destroy gender stereotyping. It is a mission that I am committed to and I will use every opportunity to contribute to the cause in whatever little ways I can. I’m a huge believer in women supporting women, because unless we stand up for ourselves, we’re never going to see the change that is so, so crucial to a better world.

What’s your approach to creative collaboration with your clients?

My clients are welcome to be involved in the creative process as much or as little as they like to. Some of my clients have a clear vision of what they want from me, they already love my work, give me a detailed idea of what they have in mind and then trust me to execute their ideas to satisfaction. Whereas many others just want to let me take the wheel. I personally enjoy projects with some direction and clarity in the brief versus a completely open-ended project. But like most creatives, I do not enjoy being micromanaged and think that defeats the entire purpose of hiring a creative. So there’s always a balance but I’m quite flexible that way, and really do enjoy approaching my design projects as collaborative endeavors. With time and experience, however, I’ve learned that it is also important to set expectations in terms of the client’s involvement early on to have a smooth ride. So I always ask how involved they’d like to be and ensure that my revision terms are clearly laid out.

What’s been one of your favorite projects to work on so far? What would be a dream project?

It’s so hard to pick favorites, but it’s probably the International Women’s Day campaign for Audible UK that I created custom lettering for. It was a video about words that we as women want to reclaim, repurpose or scrap. It was a collaborative project where several lettering artists were assigned different words to illustrate. I had the privilege of illustrating “Emotional” and “Diva” and Audible’s in-house team animated them before including them in the video. I had so much fun and creative fulfillment from executing them. It came together so beautifully and it felt so right to be a part of such a powerful campaign.

As for a dream project, I have so many! From designing the title lettering for an animated Disney movie on challenging gender norms to the cover design for a Penguin Random House book on smashing the patriarchy, my dreams are all around women-centric creative projects with mass impact.

In addition to your client work, you’re a Skillshare Top Teacher - what led you to start teaching Skillshare courses? Can you tell us more about the types of courses you teach? Why is this something you devote your time to?

I received an email from Skillshare sometime in 2018 inviting me to be a teacher on the platform, which of course I just brushed aside because what would I teach, right? I didn’t even think I had anything educational to offer to the creative community. So I just ignored that email. However, over the next two years I was getting requests via Instagram to create tutorials on my lettering techniques, and I started wondering if I may have something to teach other creatives after all. Come 2020 and the global pandemic, when people all over the world were looking to do something fruitful from their homes, I remembered that email from Skillshare and told myself I would give it a sincere shot. I didn’t know the first thing about class production, filming, talking to the camera or video editing. I didn’t even know what to teach. It was super intimidating but I took it on as a challenge and dove headfirst into it. After probably the most intense 45 days of my professional life, lots of learning, experimenting, discovering and of course, crying later, I published my very first Skillshare class. It was a class on negative space lettering with watercolors, and beyond my wildest dreams, it was Staff Picked and featured on Skillshare! I was over the moon. Heart-warming reviews from students who took my class came in and completely overwhelmed me. I went on to publish my second class a couple of months later, and that led to an even bigger surprise, an invite to the Top Teacher program on Skillshare, which was the crème de la crème of the platform! I was so honored to be among so many wonderful teachers I admired and learned from myself. The Skillshare Top Teacher badge is one that I’ve carried with pride ever since.

I have 11 classes up on Skillshare so far. They cover a variety of illustration and lettering topics ranging from watercolor lettering, painting gouache houseplants, fun Procreate projects like illustrating using dots, mastering the symmetry tool, drawing botanical illustrations and creating seamless repeat patterns, to lettering practice and mastering lettering compositions. While I started off completely boggled on what I could possibly teach, I now have a running list of topics to teach any time I want to create a new class. Producing a class is a lot of work, but what keeps me going is all the lovely words my students say about my classes. To know I’m helping someone discover a new skill or break through their fears is the best feeling ever and that’s what keeps me motivated to put the work into creating more classes.

You’re also a fashion designer - can you share more about your work in fashion design? Why is this something you decided to pursue? Can you share some of your work?

Yes, I am a trained fashion designer. I was always fashion-conscious and designing my own clothes was something that excited me right from childhood. For some reason, when I was trying to decide on a career, fashion did not strike me at all. I suppose fashion was more about who I am, than what I wanted to do at that point. Fast-forward two years into working a corporate job in the air conditioning industry, spending all of my days in front of an excel sheet and following up with customers trying to make sales and requesting payments, I craved a career that felt more me. I was in Mumbai then, and the city offers so much in terms of fashion and style inspiration. The fashionista inside me was awakened and I decided to make a career switch to fashion design. That decision was what kickstarted real life for me because up until then, I was following this well laid-out, neat and predictable path where most things came easily to me. But the moment I decided to step outside of that path and shake things up for the sake of finding joy in what I do, reality hit me hard. I faced rejections for the first time, had to navigate uncertainty constantly and I felt like I was failing. But in hindsight, I wasn’t, and those experiences were the foundation to my resilience, adaptability and my drive to keep chasing joy and passion. It felt like such a drastic jump from engineering to fashion but I often told my friends and family that I did a lot more actual engineering after I left engineering and stepped into fashion. My area of expertise was in pattern-making – the engineering of clothing. It was not planned that way, but crafting patterns was what I was naturally drawn towards. Something about going beyond a sketch and figuring out the actual physical execution was thrilling to me. My master’s thesis in Scotland was about designing a collection of 3 garments that were put together with interlocking mechanisms instead of stitches- much like LEGO blocks – and could be worn in multiple ways. The wearer would be able to take it apart and reassemble it by hand, creating a different style each time, thereby increasing the wearability and life of each piece. I’m happy to show you some images from this collection.

What’s been one of the biggest career lessons you’ve learned so far?

You’ve got to start before you’re ready. Perfectionism is the biggest roadblock to making things happen and although I know this first hand, it’s still a journey for me because the hold of perfectionism is so deep-rooted that it’s not easy to break out of it. But I believe the most successful people are the ones who take action. Even in my own case, with Skillshare for example, even though I sat on it for two years, I took action way before I felt ready, and while it was still super scary and that’s why I am where I am on my Skillshare journey. Today when I look at my first class, I see so much that I could have done better. But it was truly my best effort with what I had at the time. And there would be no 11th class without that 1st class, right?

What advice would you give to designers who are just starting out in their careers?

If you’re a budding creative professional, my biggest advice to you is to try and find freedom from yourself – your own fears and expectations. Every expert was once a beginner. You cannot expect yourself to pick up something and immediately be fantastic at it. You need to let yourself make bad art, or make some business mistakes – it’s part of the process. And the fun part of that is, once you’re okay with it, it will not matter anymore if anyone else is okay with it or not. And also, comparison is your biggest enemy. Every single creative person is on their own journey. Comparing yourself with anyone – your biggest art hero or your peers even – just takes away your freedom to be the artist that you have the potential to be. It’s great to be inspired by other artists, we all need that. But, try your best to avoid comparing yourself with anyone – but a previous version of yourself.

What are you working on now and what’s up next for you?

I’m currently in the middle of some personal challenges, so I’m letting myself take it slow. I’m a big advocate for self-care and my mental health is my current number one priority. So, although I am working on a new Skillshare class and some other little personal projects, this is not the season for me to move mountains with my business. I’ve recognized that and I’ve allowed myself to take that decision. That said, I feel a very strong calling towards supporting other women. So that will continue to be at the center of everything I do.

A bit about A Sketchy Exchange, my ongoing passion project:

A Sketchy Exchange is a passion project I started 2 years ago that explores what happens when two lettering artists work from the same composition sketch. I handpick a guest lettering artist to work with each month on a collaborative project that pushes our creativity. We exchange lettering sketches, develop them in our own styles and share them on social media. Creating together can take us through a journey of fun, unexpected twists and turns, and we often end up in unforeseen destinations!

Sketches are such personal parts of each artist’s creative process. When we commit to working off of another artist’s sketch, we push ourselves out of our own comfort zones and into a place where anything is possible. Having worked with about 20 artists so far on this series, I can attest to discovering new and exciting parts of my creativity each time.

And in the age of us human artists having to compete with AI generated imagery, A Sketchy Exchange serves as a true reminder of the power of human intelligence. When two pieces that start at the exact same point evolve into their own worlds just because they were developed by two unique human minds, there’s no way we can ignore individuality and humanness as part of what makes a piece of art what it is. Although I did not start this project as a stand against AI-generated “art,” it has evolved into something of a protest series, where we unapologetically flaunt our very real intelligence.

To view more of Vinitha’s work, visit her portfolio – and check out her courses on Skillshare!

Vinitha was nominated by Skillshare. All Artwork courtesy of Vinitha Mammen.