Having a decade-long career in graphic designing, Vijay Bashyal has already come a long way at a young age of 27. Originally from Palpa, he moved to Mumbai in order to explore graphic designing. Initially starting with an internship at Prime Focus Ltd. in India, he gained much exposure working as a motion graphics artist at Sahara TV, Channel V and an online fashion magazine. However, After his return to Nepal in 2014, he started working as a freelance designer. Till this date, he has made poster designs and motion graphics for more than a dozen films including ‘Classic’, ‘Dreams’, ‘Parva’, ‘Ay Mero Hajur 2’, ‘Premgeet 2’, ‘Shatru Gate’, etc. Having also worked on poster designs and motion graphics of Season 1 and 2 of Himalaya Roadies, he is now the founder of Tauwa Creations Pvt Ltd based at Anamnagar in Kathmandu.

In an interview with My City’s Sonam Lama, Bashyal talked about his experience and setbacks that he witnessed on his professional journey.

What drew you into graphic designing?
I used to do calligraphy while in school in Palpa. I was keen at designing since my childhood but it was quite later that I decided to follow my passion and geared up the courage to do what I enjoyed doing. Soon after I completed my high school I moved to Mumbai where I joined designing courses and later worked in collaboration with various companies for six years. Working there in a competitive and team-driven environment, I gathered good experience in motion graphics that eventually provided a strong base to my work as a graphic designer.

What differences have you found working in Nepal compared to India?
I collaboratively worked with four companies in India, but after spending some years, I thought of moving to Nepal and establish something of my own. Here, I started working as freelance designer because morning-to-night job was not financially challenging and it was not something that I had sought for while on my return to Nepal. There is not much difference in the pay scale here as a freelance designer but I feel that we need to work more on professionalism, strong and competitive team work and on guiding the newcomers who seek to explore new avenues in the field.

What setbacks do you face as a graphic designer here?
There is a notion that graphic designing is much about the pragmatic dealings of work which is true most of the time. However, there is a certain code of conduct and regulation that should be considered while carrying out the work. When it comes to branding and designing, the choice of color matters as to how it should complement the theme of the design. Graphic designing requires research and it has its own set of rules to follow. Many changes and trends have occurred to this day but following the fact that people are hardly aware of those trends and are highly consumed by the conventional practices in layout and designing, it gets quite difficult to please people with your style of work.

How do you find the work environment for graphic designers in Nepal?
At the initial stage of my career, I worked as a visual effects (VFX) artist. However, after I returned to Nepal, I engaged myself into designing and motion graphics. Since VFX required an efficient team work and while designing was much of an individual work, I switched to motion graphics. The current scenario for designers is such that there is heavy demand but there is an acute lack of human resource. People are hardly aware of the know-how of graphic designing which has been affecting its widening scope. Nonetheless, with the increasing importance of graphic designing in film industry and corporate sectors, there is a growing scope of work.

What improvements have you witnessed so far in the field?
The idea of designing has much broadened to this day. With the film industry adopting newer 
trends in designing, the scenario has quite improved. The movie posters used to follow the traditional style a decade ago when the stills were used to make movie posters. But there has been a complete change in the process now. The posters now are the outcome of a time-taking designing process which comprises of photo shoots and the mix and matching of thematic font, color and design. Moreover, from bold and drop shadow fonts to clean and minimal designs, the trends have much changed.