A tale of two designers – and a window of opportunity on the Nasdaq tower
When you empower people with trust, fulfillment, and the right resources, success takes care of itself. This is one such Freshworks story.
It happened on an autumn Wednesday. The date was October 19, and the briefing invite read as follows: ‘Freshworks outdoor design competition for Nasdaq.’ Across Freshworks’ 13 offices around the world, designers grew curious. The atmosphere was infectious. The brief elaborated that every participant would be given about a week to present their vision of Freshworks on the Times Square billboard at the Nasdaq tower.
The stakes were high. So was the motivation across the teams.
More than twenty-five designers showcased their ideas on the presentation day through storyboards, mood boards, and creative sketches. Only the best five concepts would be presented to Freshworks’ Marketing leadership, including Stacey Epstein, CMO at Freshworks, who would select and announce the winner.
The window of challenge—and opportunity
In a Zoom call, the winning duo Roshan Richard, Senior Visual Designer at Freshworks, and Yuvaraj Thirumanaran, Lead Video Designer at Freshworks, recollect their experience designing the video that won all hearts and delighted the leadership team.
“At first, I was quite nervous,” says Roshan. “I created four concepts and shared my storyboards with Lucy Ji (Associate Creative Director, Brand Marketing at Freshworks), who offered great insights to make my concepts more appealing.”
Moving away from the busy interfaces and heavy-handed product experience of legacy software, Roshan wanted to create a design that resembled Freshworks in every way. “I wanted my design to be simple, consistent, clean, and easy.”
With clarity of thinking and focus on simplicity, Roshan was able to integrate the tough-to-tackle windows of the Nasdaq billboard as a part of the design—mainly the colorful Freshworks dewdrop logo—making it seem as ridiculously simple and elegant as our software.
Once Roshan’s design was approved for the second round, he reached out to his Freshworks ‘Kudumba’ — a term derived from the Tamil word for “family”— to find a better way to bring his ideas to life. “I am a visual designer, not an animator. So I needed help.”
The leadership team guided him to Yuvaraj Thirumaran, who was delighted by the opportunity. “I saw a lot of potential in Roshan’s concept, and I could actually visualize the whole thing!” recounts Yuvaraj.
Not only did the team need to consider how to incorporate the windows into their design, but they also had to plan for the asymmetrical top windows on Nasdaq. “It was challenging but also very satisfying,” says Yuvaraj, who designed the video animation in less than a week.
Many hands make light work
Yuvaraj and Roshan worked on fine-tuning the details. Once they were happy with their work, they shared their concept with managers and colleagues.
Yuvaraj says, “I was really fascinated by the kaleidoscope which I bought for my kid, and it became one of my main inspirations for the project. Once I created a few prototypes, I made it cleaner and minimalist.”
“The video concept had to represent Freshworks and how our software is not only easy to use and implement but also easy to scale affordably,” says Roshan.
“My team helped us go over and over the idea until it felt perfect,” says Yuvaraj, in true-blue craftsman-like passion.
From an array of light streams blending into one another like a unified omnichannel experience to the beauty of scaling through transitions, the duo worked with the leadership to ensure that they got every aspect of Freshworks right.
And their work did exemplify ‘Delight made easy’: here, take a look at the video.
At Freshworks, our leadership competencies help us hire, develop, and perform, which empowers our employees to discover their potential, passion, and purpose to do the best work of their lives. Yuvaraj and Roshan exemplified collaboration and innovation and drove results while energizing and engaging others. Visit our website for more information on how we live our values at work.
