Hi, I am Harshal (हर्षल) —designer from India, currently with the Brand Identity team at The New York Times.
Resume, LinkedIn, Email, Instagram, Other stuff︎︎︎

Hi, I am Harshal (हर्षल)—designer from India, currently with the Brand Identity team at The New York Times
Resume, LinkedIn, Email, Instagram, Other Things






I earned my MFA in Graphic Design from RISD and have worked at Pentagram, Microsoft, and Animal, among other places, as a designer, strategist, and consultant.




NYT Audio

Ongoing design and art direction for Audio, the podcast app from the New York Times.

Verve

Website for Verve, India's premier and home-grown, digital luxury and lifestyle magazine for women.

The New York Times Communities Fund

Branding, Identity, and Website for 'Communities Fund' (previously called 'The Neediest Cases Fund'), a 112-year-old charitable campaign run by The New York Times.
CASE STUDY COMING SOON

I taught a seminar class at Parsons on understanding, usage, and application of typography in Graphic Design.


Dhoop

Identity and editorial direction for Dhoop, an initiative exploring and documenting stories around food at the intersection of culture, nature, sustainability, and design.

Other, Raw Mango

Design and identity for Other, Raw Mango’s summer spring 2021 campaign, inspired from the phenomenon of Aposmatism. Designed at Now Form.

System Iconography, The New York Times 

Defining and designing system icons that work across the NYT bundle– news, Games, Cooking, Audio, Wirecutter and The Athletic.
COMING SOON

Speculative Present

In a world with abundant conveniences, remaining mindful is challenging. What would it look like if tech giants revealed the truth? Here are some speculative collaterals.

Radiomics Labs at USC

Branding and identity for The Radiomics Lab, a cancer research establishment at the University of Southern California.
COMING SOON

The Cinema Issue

Microsite designed for Verve’s first-ever digital issue. Conceived for the increasingly globalized, plugged-in, and discerning online audience, this exclusive digital capsule approaches films as a medium for self-interrogation. It draws inspiration from traditional editorial layouts, reading habits, and patterns when consuming content in print and on screen. Visit the site here.

Manhattan Mumbai

A tall book documenting moments from Manhattan that reminds me of Mumbai, India.

I taught a class at RISD on design for web interfaces focusing on the aesthetics of digital products and their impact on user experience. Learn more


Chime

A typographic narrative written and designed in response to the endless time we spend on our mobile devices.
VIDEO IN PROGRESS

Torri Spontanne, Fornice Objects

Collection identity and design
LAUNCHING SOON

InOrdinary

Branding and website for InOrdinary, a curated platform of quaint found objects and functional pieces crafted by contemporary artists. Visit the site here.

Alankar

A Devanagari variable type and an analog tool that distills letters of the Indic script to visual abstraction, separating the form from its meaning.
IN PROGRESS

Ponder

A compilation of written works that take the form of questions, counter-questions, answers, affirmations, and musings. These pieces are interwoven to create a narrative that aims to explore and scrutinize my identity and how it shapes my professional work.
CASE STUDY COMING SOON
I am currently reading and referencing Less and More– The Design Ethos of Deiter Ram by Klaus Klemp; Designing Design, by Kenya Hara.

I am currently working on–

02903

A book on Providence, more like a memoir of what I’ve called home for the past two years– a compilation of images, printed collaterals, and other ephemera I’ve been collecting.

TypeShape
A typeface constructed using geometric shapes. Typography follows a system where each letter has a distinct form and a set of rules that make it unique. We use grammar to construct words, sentences, and paragraphs. What does it mean for these shapes and forms to speak a language?

People Are Like Shapes
A visual narrative about the complexity of human emotions and connections communicated using shapes.

Experience Shapes People
A participatory exercise inviting people to make a visual composition that reflects their experience.

Here in NY

Visual narratives about New York from the summer of 2022.

I am Not A Robot

A tapestry of smaller artworks depicting modern-day communication, drawing visual cues from traditional Indian tribal art and system icons from Google’s Material Design.
MORE SOON

Thesis–
Form, Feeling and Function

This study explores ways of expression, approaching storytelling through the lens of graphic design. It investigates the role of fundamental elements in graphic and visual design by putting them into practice and play, finding new ways to document, express and communicate.
MORE SOON

Being

A set of tools designed to express, communicate and document; that takes it inspiration from a Buremese tattoo manuscript and the idea of tattoos as markmaking.
MORE SOON



Sustainable Futures

Identity and system for Hyundai Motor Group and Rhode Island School of Design’s collaborative project for 2022 on the relationship between nature, art and design.
MORE SOON

Delhi Scapes

A series of eight illustrations capturing the Red Fort and terraces of old Delhi in atypical and raw frames.

More Wants, Wants More

Narrative and design responding to the Hacker Manifesto (The Conscience of a Hacker), an essay that rationalises the point of hacking, one that supersedes selfish desires.


I am interested in exploring the role of human instincts in a creative process, my role as a designer vs. a facilitator of design, the value of aesthetics, and the recall value of designed outputs as everything is starting to look the same. Given the surge of AI tools, I am interested in learning and working toward this next phase of branding and identity in graphic design.

Akathya

Branding, Graphic Design and Creative Direction for 'Akathya' (अकथ्य), a campaign by Shanti, a Varanasi (Banaras) based clothing brand.

Nothingness

A giant poster (that folds into a book) on ‘empty containers’ in graphic design, and design in general.


TithiChaYog

Wedding invitation and collateral set designed for a Maharashtrian Marathi couple. The invite consists of five leaflets, each dedicated to the five primary events of a Hindu wedding. Each icon depicts the significance of the rituals peformed in that event.

Kiso

Branding and packaging for Kiso, India’s first commercial banana wine brand based out of Jalgaon, India.
MORE SOON

Experiments with RISO

Play with risograph printing that involves constructing letters using stroked lines.


Corridor Seven Coffee Roasters

Branding, packaging and system design for Corridor Seven, a coffee roastry based in Nagpur, India.

Sozo

Identity for Sozo, an event management firm based in Bangalore, India.

Lagori Board Game

Lagori is an outdoor traditional Indian game involving a ball and a pile of flat stones. This board game adaptation, maintains the essence and the core game–play of the original game. The adaptaed version is strategy-driven, played between two players.
MORE SOON

I intersperse my work with walks, [elaborate] cooking, and clicking [bad] pictures of things.

Microsoft Office Lens

Image gallery design for pictures and documents within Office Lens, enabling the user to effectively and efficiently interact with images and get the desired work done.
CONFIDENTIAL

Sanitary Napkins Re–Packaging

Packaging design for sanitary napkins addressing the associated stigma in the Indian society.


Finding Myself

Finding Myself in a zine output is a compilation of diary entries from my stay in Mumbai back in 2013.
ON THE LOOKOUT FOR PUBLISHERS

On the Coil @323

A book compiling all the meals I’ve made in Providence.
PUBLICATION IN WORKS
Feel free to drop me an email [hduddalw@risd.edu] to discuss a project, point out any error(s) you’ve come across on this site, or just to say a hello!

MonkE

Rebranding for MonkE, a 360° creative digital media organization.


Currently tuned in to Home by Edith Whiskers.

Currently building products, cooking Table For One/Two/Many, writing Thoughts and Things, and drawing shapes daily.