Foodie By Day, Graphic Designer By Night | Navya Jhunjhunwala Merges Passion with Prowess to Curate her Career Path

“The Only Way to Do Good Work, Is to Love What You Do!” – Steve Jobs

All professionals strive to live by these famous words but not many are able to! In a world where everyone is focused on finding the right balance between Paycheck and Passion, coming across someone who has scripted her success story by merging both these aspects is heartwarming. Meet Navya Jhunjhunwala - a New Delhi-raised and New York-based Graphic Designer, who has taken an unconventional route to follow her passion. Navya is a Graphic Designer by Prowess and a Food Blogger by Passion. To bring out the best in herself, she decided to synergize these diverse aspects of her personality to carve out a niche career path in the industry.

In this success story, Navya shares her journey from being a child with stars in her eyes to becoming an established Packaging Designer in the Big Apple. 

The Prowess

Being a creative person since her childhood, Design was something that was Navya’s first choice since her early days. Right from her school days at Vasant Valley High School, she discovered her passion for the arts and took visual arts as a subject in Classes 11 and 12. At school, she displayed her creative exuberance in various projects and activities but, her eyes were always set to ‘Mecca of Design Schools’ i.e. Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Post schooling, she joined FIT for an undergraduate degree in communication/ graphic design. During her time there, she studied communication to earn an associate’s degree and then decided to specialize in packaging design for her bachelors.

One of the big achievements during her time at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, was that she was on the Dean’s List from February 2018 onwards until today. She also got invited to be part of the Honor Society (Phi Theta Kappa) of which she is still a member. 

The Passion 

Navya was always passionate about design, especially Graphic design that can help creatively build and re-invent brand identities. But, while being good at something is appreciable, polishing it to be the best is what successful people believe and that is exactly what Navya did. During her training days at FIT, she picked up multiple internships and freelancing projects at companies in New York to gain experience. Seeing her ideas come to life is what propelled her to the next stage, where she was able to bring two diverse domains and synergize them for success.  

The Synergy

Having been a foodie throughout her adult life, Navya started a food blog ‘@nyconthetable’ as a stepping stone for entering the industry. She synergized her passion for food with her eye for design and started to network within the food industry to connect with new and upcoming restaurants and start-ups. This allowed her to meet several entrepreneurs as well as industry veterans who connected with her for two reasons: their shared love for food and their need for her design services.

As she began to undertake several projects in NYC for well-known restaurants such as Junzi Kitchen, she started to help brands grow a unique consumer experience with strong brand identities and interactive packaging design. Her deep-seated understanding of the food industry as a consumer made her the perfect fit serving on the other side of these businesses as a designer.

The Achievement 

Navya’s big break came during one of the most challenging times faced by NYC, during the 2021 pandemic. Last year, New York City’s ‘pandemic favourite’ bakery – ‘Best Damn Cookies’ approached her to lead the rebranding campaign for them. Staying true to her design sensibilities, Navya recrafted the key elements of brand strategy and comprehension right from the colour palette to font selection, to create a unique brand identity that resonated with the customers. Pedestrians now see Navya’s designs come to life as they cross Manhattan’s Market Line in the Lower East, taking her one step closer to realizing her dream. Driven by passion and ambition, the young graphic designer has worked on several passion projects in the restaurant business, such as ‘Sorso’, ‘Arki’ and more.

Check out Navya Jhunjhunwala’s Portfolio Here

The Way Ahead

Navya has done what remains a faraway dream for many, i.e., merging one’s passion with prowess and translating it into a viable paycheck. But as per Navya, she’s just getting started. She believes that a business provides the products and services; however, it is the brand that makes people buy. She feels that Graphic Design is a domain that brings together creativity, commerce and common sense to influence and shape our surroundings.

From the aisles of your local grocery chain to the large billboards that you drive past, Graphic Designers like Navya are hard at work, not only to capture your attention but also to instil the key message in our consciousness and build brand identities. The evolution in the world of graphic design along with the creative minds of young designers like Navya is a testament to the future of the digital era that we live in.