Heer Mandalia: Finding Her Own Image in Design

The dimension of design is an intriguing field to dive into to create. The possibilities of finding a thread between reality and design is where the greatest most innovative artists grow and flourish in finding and creating their own image. Heer Mandalia is one of the great designers and creator we’re excited about. Heer’s work has been widespread among presses and magazines, and her image in design has been growing in part of her understanding of the world surrounding her.

Heer Mandalia is an artist and graphic designer based in New York City. She has a rich background in finding inspiration in herself and the places she has experienced during her life. The shapes and angles of architectural buildings, nature, and diverse culture led her to pursue photography and trained herself to an expert level. Her work and experience also pushed her to find a new passion in the realm of creation and innovation. She converted her ideas into the medium of graphic design.

Heer practices her craft in various expressions, including branding, exhibition design, packaging design, and publication design. She’s had incredible success working with clients such as Parle, Amy’s, and Epigamia. Heer’s design work is distinctive and prominent in her field because of the narrative quality to it. There’s an aspect of storytelling that shows the deeper dimension Heer enters for deciding the image she will be creating. Her entire experience with graphic design shows her excellent way of communicating, and how her messages reach audiences through imagery, and design work.

She’s currently working with KCSA. Heer is a senior designer in the company where she develops visual and strategic concepts for different clients. These clients include Falcon, GreenPower, Transphorm, Delix, and Sellas. Her time is also divided with focusing on exhibitions and collections that express and display her immense passion for creating messages through imagery. One of these exhibitions was called Mental Mark, where Heer presented the purpose of clothing in order to protect the human body from their surroundings. She explicates this purpose further in accordance with time passing, and humans evolving in their pursuit for personal style and meaning through clothes. She also progresses through the meaning of style and its relation to how people gained the need for identity. But the Mental Mark expands this phenomenon through the designs of accessories, and the various visual additions to the shape of our bodies. The exhibition is full of intricate installations with mirrors.

Heer’s understanding of personal style was extended through her project Effects of Material Aesthetic on Self-Presentation. She demonstrates many different notions of visual aesthetics on style and our interpretation of it, as well as how people relate to it and enhance their identity utilizing style. Effects of Material Aesthetic on Self-Presentation was published on Proquest. She also shared this collection at NYC Arts Empire and presented it with AIGA’s education summit “Shifted.” Heer was widely recognized by her peers and appreciated for bridging the gap between style and identity through visual understanding and the gains of graphic design.

Heer continued creating meaning with design and therefore, she designed a hypothetical neighborhood for the elderly. The neighborhood community is called Maza, and it is designed in a way to benefit their lives and enrich their experience with aids and tools that support their strengths and choices. She designed the community basing it on playschools, but in practicality it works for old-aged people. Colors have significant meaning, influencing the theme and energy of it. Brighter colors represent happiness and positive moods that the organization stands up for, and it incorporates playful designs and brand development throughout.

The Case is Heer’s other project in which she encounters the need to access phones in a healthy way. The project heavily relied on research and recent data that showed behavioral patterns in the way people use their phones. She combined her research with speculative solutions that accessorize one’s surrounding with visual aesthetic. Yet these solutions are incredibly practical and innovate. She designed a phone case that would emit a shock once a person grabs their phone more than five times in an hour using a three-dimensional software. The software also incorporates the screen of a phone or a watch in projecting accurate mapping and activating auditory aids as pointers.
Her solutions in The Case cover a wide range of behaviors that relate to a person’s phone-use behavior. The three-dimensional software works in a way that reduces the excessive use of phones. This becomes practical in the subway, during meetings, and other times when phones are used.

Heer’s other great projects in graphic design include Typography As an Art, The Dark Room, Labyrinth, Inside of the Outside, Perception of Inside, Cup O’ Bliss, Clean Your Community, Wings of Freedom, and Fashion is Changing. She has many other projects as well, but they’re very much tied into the same thread of visuals surrounding us and how we relate to them, and then take that perception of the environment in understanding ourselves. Heer has a deep focus on identity, and this was layered with the idea of “what is inside of an outside.” She successfully tied this notion to different personality layers of human beings in Inside of the Outside. She states, “I started thinking about human nature and how we have different personality layers that we show to different people. I took that idea and used various materials to explore it visually.”

Heer continues to present her masterful work and immense skill through many presentations and collections and shares her work her audience online. She also has a strong photographic presence on social media, and many people resonate with the rare and unique shapes and connections in buildings, nature, and our surroundings. Although her work always has the view of outside and the layers one sees, it beautifully connects it to the human condition and the experience of people through these mediums. She has been on the quest for sharing her exquisite understanding of human identity, and has successfully built her path.