Today we’d like to introduce you to Dev Gupta
Hi Dev, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Hello, my name is Dev Gupta. I run a design studio called notdev that doesn’t do development 🤓. We are a group of weirdos who draw boxes, and talk about our feelings. We’ve worked with the likes of Toyota, Google Maps, Gmail, Docusign, Indeed, Twitter, Google Ventures, Albertsons, Box…(excuse the name dropping).
I feel like Mr. Magoo—my professional life is a series of random events that in hindsight somehow stitch together. I went to school for finance because I’m brown. I got my first job by reading “Flash for Dummies.” Worked as an art director and then accidentally became a college professor. I chased a girl out to San Francisco, where I ran design at a startup. Eventually got bored and opened a one man shop until my largest client forced me to hire. Now somehow I run a design studio (?).
Along the way, I also worked as an illustrator, ux designer, visual designer; writing copy and terrible code. I had a naive belief that, whatever the ask, I could figure it out.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I’ve had the usual professional and personal challenges. At more a meta level, my biggest challenge is balancing my passion for design with the realities of corporate America. Design is an emotional rollercoaster: a project starts with the excitement of something new, followed by days in the pit of despair, leading to an hour of productivity, only to be told that the client hates the design. Its this push and pull between caring, but not caring so much that you burnout.
And that one time I ran out of coffee.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about www.notdev.com?
notdev is a design studio (that doesn’t do development). We help our clients find the right problems to solve through an iterative process that prioritizes making over meetings. Our key differences are:
■ We start in the deep end
We are a consulting firm, meaning, we know that you’re hiring us because your house is on fire. We go in accepting that there will be chaos. It allows us to be responsive to a moving target without getting frustrated. “Oh, that thing that was a priority last week no longer matters? Dope—I hated it anyway.”
■ Screen sharing is caring
In every meeting, we share our screen so we can co-design with our clients. This allows us to deal with all the “what-ifs.” What if the logo was bigger, what if it worked this way…what if, what if, what if. Let me make edits in real-time so we can make decisions together and skip the weeks of passive-aggressive emails.
■ Design over decks
We believe design is a prerequisite to strategy. Things that make sense in a deck rarely work in an application, so we start with the pixels. This allows us to skip months of discovery work and comment wars about word choice in powerpoint. Let’s not argue in the abstract—we can just show you.
How do you define success?
I used to define success by how many famous logos I had on my website—I spent years collecting them like Pokemon. Now success looks like a slow morning eating avocado toast with my son and going a family walk.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.notdev.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noootdev/
- Other: https://dribbble.com/devgupta
