Where most designers would tell you that a distinctly individual design sensibility directs the work they do, Vikram Sharma begs to differ. For him, the lack of a distinct, signature sensibility is a sensibility in its own right. “The lack of a signature is also a signature,” he affirms as he begins to talk about how his method of working and creative process has always been such that he has been able to maintain a degree of adaptability and versatility — which in turn has been tremendously helpful to him along his journey as a designer.
Specialising in spatial and display design, his most recent project has been the recently concluded Amazon India Fashion Week in the national capital where he worked on the venue, interpreting an interplay of frames and lines.
Vikram shares that his association with the fashion weeks goes back to their very inception in the year 2000. “I worked with a couple of designers in the first fashion week, Rahul and Rohit for example, for the sets of their ramp shows. Since then I have been associated with every fashion week in some way or another. In the earlier ones, designers used to set up booths with individual styles and themes and I have done quite a few of those for Rohit Bal, Nikhil-Shantanu and many others,” he recalls.
He came to the first fashion week in the professional capacity of a freelance spatial designer while simultaneously working as part of the faculty at NIFT, eventually helping to set up the Fashion Communication department and finally leaving after seven years. “I had begun to find teaching and mentoring very monotonous by then. However, working at NIFT gave me opportunities to work with a lot of government projects. We did a tableau for the ministry of textiles, for schools and much more. I was doing a lot of work as a freelancer too and was, therefore, learning a lot and growing a lot,” he affirms.
Today, his design company Vikram Sharma Design has a reputed studio in Hauz Khas Village in the capital, and he has been working on several interior projects lately with an efficient team of 12. “Right now, we’re working on Pankaj and Nidhi’s store at Qila,” he tells us.
Ask him to describe his design process from the moment he receives a project and he responds, “I need the brief to be very clear from the client. If it isn’t, my design process becomes like a monologue, and that really bores me. I like interacting with whoever I’m working with so that there is a dialogue that I can then interpret through my design language. As for my design process, one thing central to whatever I do is a habit that is an inseparable part of my daily routine: Browsing the Internet.
I have a lot of books and magazines, but I lack the patience to actually read them, so I just go through them visually. I browse the Internet visually too. One image links to another and then another, and it becomes like a dive into the sea. I’ve created a folder on my desktop where I keep collecting references from any and every Web page I visit. Whenever a project comes up, I go back to that folder for reference. I click pictures when I travel and find inspiration even in pictures that other people upload from their travel experiences. If someone is posing in front of an interesting backdrop, the backdrop becomes very important for me and goes straight into that folder. The eye, my memory and these references play a key role in my work.”
