Designing his way to success

Hyderabad: Failures are the stepping stones to success has come true to Karan Shah who was a poor student in mathematics turned to be a prosperous entrepreneur. Now he is a successful graphic designer. "Failure in my exam showed me the right path, that is graphic designing, else I would've been yet another Engineer!" he avers.

His journey as a freelance designer began one fine day he was going in a bus. His eyes fell on the hoardings and he got an idea that this is something that could be everlasting and that one day his creative skills could be useful to make advertisements and posters. Keeping that in mind he started to learn about graphic designing from YouTube and made YouTube his guru.

Using internet for knowledge helped him gain the required skills to become a graphic designer. In order to test his skills first he uploads a post on Facebook, saying that he was willing to do free designs to whoever is in need, and he had received various requests with different kind of works.

After completing his schooling from Delhi Public School, he rushed to a design college and sought permission if he could join them without Intermediate. Since the permission was not granted then he had to do his Intermediate in St Mary's College, Yousufguda.

Once again he had to face two subjects of Mathematics which was not his interest, he tried putting focus to learn the subject with help of tuitions and started practicing them. Along with his studies he continued his online learning about web-designing, doing that he also started to do freelance designing work for various clients and used to make his pocket money. That is when he realised the potential that everyone in today's world needs design and that's how his passion started to grow towards profession.

In the second year of graduation he founded 8fx, which had a unique meaning '8' on rotation become infinity, which signifies infinitesimal growth and 'Fx' stands for 'Effects'. 8FX is a fully integrated design and branding agency that crafts useful, connected digital ecosystems that grow businesses and build enduring relationships between brands and humans.

His journey involved immense hard work through the course of many internships commencing with a local film production company, Geeta Arts and simultaneous learning from YouTube videos. He continued to pursue graduation in animation and multimedia from JNTU Hyderabad.

Presently Karan is a speaker at TEDx JNTUH, and holds expertise over topics like "compound effects". He also conducts multiple workshops on Design Basics, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, WordPress, Brand Design, UI-UX Design and Online Media Marketing and has inspired many teenagers. He is also associated with Digital connect and VioletDB.

Karan heads the Design department for TEDx Hyderabad, "The Angel Summit". Karan has provided his creative skills and expertise to various corporate like ISB, She Teams, T-Hub, Tech Stars, Nasscom, iKeva, Design Summit, August Fest etc. He is closely working with the State Innovation Cell, an initiative by the Government of Telangana.