Steering The Brandwagon

As Design Center Manager for Philips Design in Bangalore, Abhimanyu Kulkarni has the opportunity to inspire a team to create iconic products that are synonymous with the company

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How have things changed during your long association with Philips?

AK: Organizations like Philips know how to change with the times. That’s their secret sauce for long term success and sustainability. Philips has changed over the last 25 years, and with it I have changed too. I started working as a product designer for Philips in Mumbai, at a big design studio led by Kumar Nadig. We used to render product concepts on Canson paper using chalks. I spent weeks learning to make realistic renderings under my seniors. Once these concepts were vetted by the management, we would turn them into engineering drawings using Rotring pens on Gateway paper. Because we didn’t have any computer software back then, we had to visualize their 3D forms in our head, draw cross-sections, specify joinery, etc. It was back-breaking work and I have to say, at the time, I wasn’t too kicked about it. It was only later that I realized how tremendously useful that practice was in training my mind to think in three dimensions and to understand the role of light, material, texture in defining product form.