Information Made Digestible

Born and raised in Mumbai and currently residing in New York, Akansha Kukreja is a graphic designer with a bold minimalist aesthetic—her colors vivid, her lines purposeful. Her work, through its elegant simplicity, sheds light on complex—and often times overwhelming—topics like mental and physical health. While studying at SVA in New York, she created Sour, a process-orientated magazine conceived as a tactile remedy to social media addiction. After finishing grad school, she became the visual designer at Tia, a New York-based women’s health clinic and startup app founded to provide holistic care to women. If information is power, then Akansha’s striking designs deliver the information to empower. Interview by Sean Arenas.

Can you tell us a little about your background and how you became a graphic designer?

I went to undergrad in Bangalore, India, at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology. The curriculum encourages you to take classes in every aspect of design and art. There, I started to gravitate towards information and communication design and typography—things like that. I graduated in 2014 and moved back home to Mumbai. I got a job at a studio called Thought Over Design. They were doing work for small startup brands to big brands. I was designing for healthcare companies, food and beverage packaging, websites for ecommerce. I liked the versatility the company had to offer. It was a really small company when I joined—just three of us. It eventually grew into a fifteen-person company in two years. I was excited to be there, to watch how a small company grows because one day I want to have my own studio.

What brought you to New York?

I started to wonder how the design industry worked outside of India. So, I came to New York. I applied to an MFA program at SVA called Designer as Entrepreneur. It was about how you take design and build it into a larger entity. I learned technical things like the nitty gritty of typography and layout, but also what goes into audience research, design sprints, and how the business of design works.

What was it like moving from India to New York?

It was a culture shock. I grew up watching TV and that was my only perspective on American culture. I never understood it until I came here. In America, people are very autonomous. In India, there’s more community, bigger families, tons of people having dinner in your house. I didn’t know anyone here, but it was exciting for me to have a blank slate. In terms of design, graphic design is given more importance and value in the U.S. Indian budgets are more interested in marketing. While here, the focus is on design and marketing.

What gave you the idea for Sour, the magazine you created at SVA?

Our second year of the MFA Design course revolved around a thesis. I have always been interested in mental wellness, so my project focused on mental health and social media addiction. At the time, it was something I was personally struggling with. In the last ten years, we’ve shifted from being social creatures to hiding behind social media. Sour is about changing behaviors slowly, as opposed to dopamine fasting and instant solutions. It’s an antidote to social media. It offers guidance and exercises. It’s less a magazine, more a workbook. The name comes from the saying “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”—to take something sour and make it sweet. It’s about changing habits. The exercises included were activities like writing a letter to your friend and getting people together for dinner at your house. Unfortunately, it never went to full print, but I personally made copies.

“In the last ten years, we’ve shifted from being social creatures to hiding behind social media. Sour is about changing behaviors slowly, as opposed to dopamine fasting and instant solutions.”

How did you end up joining the team at Tia?

It was a struggle after I graduated SVA. My work experience in India didn’t hold much value here. Like every other industry, design revolves around networking and connections. I joined Tia two months after I graduated, but I really spent those two months writing to people and reaching out. I eventually got an interview with Tia  and not long after I jumped into the deep end. Moving from an agency background to a startup was crazy. The startup world requires you to move fast. It changes constantly. Business goals evolve, so you have to adapt. But I get to learn so much. When you work at an agency, you’re in a room with other designers and you share a language. In my case, I’m put in a room with care providers.

What is Tia exactly?

Tia is a membership-based healthcare company that focuses on women’s health. It’s both a clinic and a digital product, where you can do things like track your health and chat with a care coordinator. They’re trying to redefine what women’s health means. To most people, women’s health means their “lady parts,” but it’s actually more holistic than that. It’s their behavioral health, mental health, primary care. Tia provides health services with the information to back it. I’m most interested in that aspect, the dissemination of information. Here’s your body, let’s understand it. Let’s talk about nutrition, wellness, acupressure, about every aspect.

What does it mean to be Tia’s visual designer?

My job is to take all this medical information and translate it into something digestible. Healthcare, especially in America, is scary. What really interests me is being the bridge between heavy information and someone who needs to know. For example, we recently created a guide to insurance during COVID. Thinking about the situations people are in—people getting fired, spouses losing their insurance—we tried to consolidate all this information into one guide. We put it up on social media, on a blog, anywhere on the internet where people are looking. The design approach here was to make these recommendations glanceable and actionable by using a linear format. Additionally, I designed a glossary to make obscure insurance terminology easy to grasp.

You also designed their Female Stress Signatures zine. What is that exactly?

It was actually a print version of an online quiz. The project started before I joined Tia, but when I joined the team, I designed the zine version to be given out at different clinics. Women and men experience stress differently and we don’t talk about that enough. We created the quiz to allow women to see where their stress type lies on a graph so that they may mediate it. It asks you questions based on your energy levels, your arousal levels, your habits, your medical history. Everything affects your stress signature. It was designed to be interactive so that people can engage with the information. The design challenge when making the zine was to convey a gamut of information in a compact print format that could travel, be placed in health clinics, be used as a marketing tool to drive awareness.

As a visual designer, what is your thought process when tackling these complex, technical projects?

What I’m thinking about is, how do you get people who are not medical professionals to remember this stuff? I’m thinking about recall value. You’re trying to get people to not only interact with the information but recall it when it’s most necessary. That’s how I want to impact people. It’s about creating moments of action. I’m not a healthcare professional. For me, it’s about learning this information, making it digestible, and simplifying it for a person who is sitting in front of their screen. Just boiling it down to the basics. If this information is disseminated at the right time, it can play a large part in preventative healthcare and help people act sooner than later. That’s the goal, especially during COVID because everybody is glued to their screens.

“You’re trying to get people to not only interact with the information but recall it when it’s most necessary. That’s how I want to impact people.”

For Tia, you have also designed their fun and informative Food as Medicine series. Tell me about that.

That’s an ongoing project we dole out to our social channels. We pick an ingredient or food group and talk about its health benefits, about how it affects your sleep, your body. What women put in their body is another important decision they make. Food as Medicine is meant to empower them to eat healthier. It doesn’t have to be trendy superfoods. It’s about foods most of us have in our houses and how to better use them. It’s about keeping the audience informed and engaged. We work with a researcher and talk about things like, “Hey, it’s Thanksgiving. What do people eat during Thanksgiving? Let’s think about how to help people understand what cranberry or turkey do to you.” It’s timely, relevant.

Was food and cooking important to you when growing up? Do you cook a lot now?

Growing up, there was food at every gathering. My sister, Saloni, who now runs the blog Food of Mumbai, was interested in food as a child. She grew up to have a more nuanced palette. She always wanted to try different things. I was there when she said, “Hey, I want to start a blog.” I offered to design it for her. I made her logo and helped her think about what the strategy should be. Now, she’s been doing it for a few years.

Personally, I never cooked until I lived alone in America. My day is basically thinking about what my next meal is going to be. I love cooking Indian food because it’s a way to connect with home. I haven’t been able to go home for a long time. In New York, I’ve been able to experience all these flavors I hadn’t been able to taste before, like Ethiopian food or Turkish food. All these different flavors I’m now learning to cook with. One day, I wanted to make roasted almonds with kaffir lime leaves, and I was able to find a store in New York called Bangkok Center Grocery that had the leaves. It’s such melting pot of food here. Ultimately, my cooking is a result of the autonomy I acquired in coming to America, the crazy busy life I have to maintain in New York, and my ability to discover so many beautiful ingredients.

Given all your work, what ultimately attracts you to health and wellness?

In India, when I was raised, I wasn’t offered enough information about my body and health. There was a lot of shame and stigma around sexual health and women’s bodies. That confusion and curiosity led me to constantly dig for more. To me, design is information made digestible. I feel like I acquired this skillset to be able to convey information in a better, clearer way. Before I was at Tia, I wasn’t sure this was what I wanted to do with design, but the longer I work there, there is this continuous confirmation that I really want to push to do that.

Find more of Akansha's work on her website and Instagram. All images courtesy of Akansha Kukreja.