Time Out with Prekesh Chavda
Timeouts are lightning-quick interviews. Five questions to help you get to know the players holding court at Dribbble. Many thanks to Prekesh for being today’s interviewee.
Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.
Hello :) I’m Prekesh Chavda. I’m from Loughborough, in England. I’m a designer and student. I design icons and user interfaces, but I like designing anything really. I’m fascinated by all visual communication and I’m trying to explore and learn as much as I can. On the side I like to try my hand at some photography and illustration.
What are you working on?
I’ve been working on university projects for the past few months, most of the work is quite dull (and sometimes rushed!) so I don’t bother sharing it. But when I have time, I work on an icon set that I’ve been posting on Dribbble for the past couple of months, a couple of iOS UI projects and I practice developing my illustration style (which is proving to be as hard as I thought it would be).
Choose a favorite shot of yours. Tell us why it’s a favorite.
I really like the icons that I’ve been creating for the past few months, this being the most recent shot from the set. I set myself a small challenge to create a larger set of icons, rather than 32px/48px I thought I’d move up one step to 128px. Not a huge challenge, but I want to move onto creating even larger, more detailed icons after this and I figured moving up gradually can help me learn more along the way.
Tell us about your setup. What tools did you use to create the shot(s)? (e.g. hardware, software, pens, paper, blowtorch, etc.)
I’m like most designers I guess, I use my iMac and Photoshop/Illustrator to create the majority of my work and almost all sketches are done in my many sketchbooks. Recently I’ve started taking an interest in illustration so I’ve started using pens/brushes/paint on paper to create lines and textures. I use a Canon EOS 500D (and iPhone 4S) to take photos, but that’s just a hobby that I one day hope to pursue more seriously (when I can afford it! hahaha).
Choose a favorite shot from another player. Tell us why you dig it.
This is tough :P, I spend quite a lot of time on Dribbble and I’m constantly blown away by work that everyone posts. I hope you don’t mind if I pick two shots, one icon and one illustration.
This shot by Artua inspires me every time I see it. I think that the icon has a great balance between functionality and realism, so that when it’s scaled down it still looks great. They’ve used the rounded-rectangle shape very well. I’m not a fan of the “fit-an-object-into-a-rounded-rectangle” trend that a lot of designers are taking part in - but this icon does this very well. Of course like all of Artua’s work the execution is flawless, the lighting and details are fantastic.
I’ve been trying to develop my own style as I’ve been learning and practising illustration. So of course I’ve been following the work of many illustrators on Dribbble. I could go on and link to a hundred awesome people but Glen’s work always inspires me and I love the mood and textures in this shot.
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