Alumni Spotlight: Mira Khandpur
Where and what are you working on right now?
I’m currently an Associate Partner at Pentagram New York (team Oberman), where my focus and area of interest is brand identity design. We have launched quite a few identities in the last year, a recent favorite of mine being a new logo and visual toolkit for Hartbeat: a multi-platform entertainment company founded by Kevin Hart. We tried to capture the intersection of humor and heart via an angular, intersecting logo and a radiating graphic system. And of course the logo is a heart and a B, acting as a rebus for the brand name.
Another favorite recent launch was the identity for 53, a contemporary Asian restaurant in midtown Manhattan, featuring an intricate icon built with the interlocking numbers 5 and 3, and mirroring the architectural interiors of the multi-leveled restaurant.
I am lucky to get to work on many projects within the media and culture space, including titles and graphics for the Conductor, a documentary about Marin Alsop, for which the identity is centered around delicate, swooping ligatures like the motion of a waving baton; the super simple and clean identity for Roxane Gay’s publishing imprint; and the fluid and adaptive system for Serif.
A not-so-recent but all-time-favorite project was our brand refresh for Fisher Price. We redid the logo and entire visual system (check out the full case study on the Pentagram website), but one of my favorite parts was the custom typeface we created in collaboration with Jeremy Mickel of MCKL. The typeface is a sans-serif version of the logo, and we built two styles: regular and ‘bouncy’, which features a playfully irregular baseline.
What impact has SVA MFADesign had on your career?
Such a big one! One of my favourite pieces of advice I got at the studio is something I still try to apply to my work. It is to ‘kill your darlings’, or the idea that even when design feels subjective and personal (always), and even when you think your first idea is your best one (often); remember to edit objectively, obsessively, and ruthlessly, and let nothing be precious.
In addition to teaching me to be ruthless with my design work, SVA MFAD originally connected me with Pentagram, where I have happily spent the last six years.
If you could choose a thesis topic today, what would you pick?
I love that our line of work allows us to briefly become an expert on whatever industry we’re creating design for. The MFAD thesis is a perfect example of that, and a chance to become an expert in something other than design to create effective work for it. At the moment I’m interested in reconnecting and experimenting with Indian cooking, so if I was choosing a thesis topic today I would pick one that makes eating good food a big part of the research!
Anything else you would like to share?
I’d like to give credit to those who worked with me on the projects shared: Emily Oberman, Tim Cohan, Laura Berglund, Greg Morrison, Jase Hueser, Chad McCabe, Anastasia Kharchenko, Elizabeth McMann, Renee Freiha, Meredith Zerby, Matt Varner, Shivam Sinha, Lisa Grant, Beatriz Congar, Samantha Infante, Dianne Kim, and Zoe Chrissos.
Full case studies of the projects mentioned can be found on Pentagram.com
Instagram: @mirakhandpur
Portfolio: mirakhandpur.com