who we are

About me

I am Kamaal Mustafa Sikander, a freelance graphic designer and Designage Works is my online extension for providing various creative services.

I cater to various sectors and I have been providing a spectrum of services to my esteemed clients in India and abroad since last ten years. I am supported by various creative artistes, illustrators, signage specialists, print executives and skilled technicians who are thorough professionals in their work. Designing is my core competency and I create a variety of artwork for you that make your services and/or products stand out from the crowd. A few of my creative and technical services include concept, design, artwork, pre-press, printing, binding & complete post-production and in the case of Signage, manufacturing, installation & maintenance of the same.

Apart from providing online services to individuals and small & medium business enterprises worldwide, I am currently in Dubai and welcome enquries from individuals and companies in Dubai Media City and other Emirates as well as Free Zones of UAE. Besides, I am also open to full time opportunities in Dubai.

Click here in case you are interested in hiring an in-house graphic designer who can be an asset to your business development and marketing team.

Why me?

In case you missed a few of your lectures while doing your Ph.D. in Economics, you will agree that the services that I provide cannot be as economical if the title of this paragraph was 'why us'.

A laptop, electricity and an internet connection constitute of all of my overheads ... obviously the benefit of such low overheads are passed on to you. Besides, the creative solutions provided by me are always made with your objective and target audience or viewers in mind. Besides, having done business for a long time, I can easily wear the business-hat while designing a creative solution for you. After all, it goes without saying that my own progress will be dependent on your own success!

My Computer / Software Skills

I have used IBM PCs since AT/XT days, 1990 to be precise. I still remember DOS (those) days of Wordstar, dbase, BASIC, COBOL etc.Here is a selection of some of my favourite programs / tools and software that I use for graphic design, web design, web updates and other online requirements.

 

Adobe CS 2 - soon upgrading to version CS3 Adobe Photoshop - PSD, Adobe Illustrator - AI, Adobe Indesign - INDD and Aldus/Adobe Pagemaker - PM5/P65 Macromedia Dreamweaver - soon upgrading to Adobe Web CS3

CorelDRAW12
I am a die-hard Corel enthusiast for graphic design, line-art etc., ofcourse there are some issues regarding colour but they can be solved by exporting the image in RGB and coverting it to CMYK for print in Photoshop. I have used corel since Corel3.

ACDC / IRFANVIEW
I love to use these tools for batch conversion / image resizing etc.

  • PICASA / WAYN
    These have great uploading tools for batch upload of images to the respective web galleries.

  • AUDIO GRABBER / SOUND FORGE / CUBASE
    These are my favourite audio recording and editing tools. Ofcourse Cubase is a professional programme used in recording studios but I use a few of its basic features, mainly for track-wise recording.

  • MYFLIX / WINDOWS MOVIE MAKER
    These are my favourite video editing / movie making tools that I use to create and upload videos to Youtube.

  • MICROSOFT
    From MS DOS to Windows XP I have used all of the operating systems. Also I love to use MS Office for Word, Powerpoint, Outlook, Excel and Access. I really admire the company which is responsible for adding the word "PERSONAL" to "COMPUTERS", making it PC as the computer is widely known now

  • APPLE MACINTOSH - MAC
    I have worked on Mac while working with Loud magazine and at Brandcom for a few freelance assignments but for creative work, I prefer to do it on a PC with Corel and then import the line-art / artwork in Adobe Illustrator on the Mac if need be.

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More about me

Either I am Perez Hilton, Jennifer Lopez or Brittney Spears or else you dont have anything better to read because the huge collection of ready-made templates that I resell is so interesting that I hardly forecast anybody coming this far just to know more about me. Anyway, if you can digest "Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi" kind of tele serials, then why not try this.

OK, there I go again.... I have a total 19 years of experience that includes 13 years in graphic designing for print media, signage and 1 year in web designing.

Flashback

Scene 1 ... Location - Khar (Bombay) ... Day

Camera zooms... I started my career in 1989-90 with two Bollywood films viz. Numbri Aadmi of Mithun Chakraborty and the second film was Akayla of Amitabh Bachchan. I was thrown out of both the production houses after the films flopped and the companies stopped production for the time being.

...cut to...

Scene 2 ... Location - Vile Parle (Bombay) ... Day

Well that was the end of my filmi career in the very first scene. After being thrown out, I was absorbed by one of the popular service bureau in Bombay. I was involved with the introduction of Desk Top Publishing in the Andheri/Vile Parle suburb of Bombay, along with a DTP professional, Ramesh Palan, way back in 1992.

...dissolve...

After a couple of years, I was taken as a partner by the owner of the same bureau to establish a similar setup at a different location. A few of my reputed clients included producer Mohan Kumar, producers Harish & Vinod Shah, director & producer Anil Sharma, actor Shabana Azmi, writer Javed Akhtar, actor Vijayendra Ghadge, compere Annu Kapoor, legendary actor Pran Sahab, writer Sachin Bhowmick, among others. It took me three years to build a similar successful setup.

Soon, I got an opportunity to travel abroad and I came to Abu Dhabi in 1998 where I worked on the prestigious Back File Conversion project of ADNOC in preparation of EDMS project. We converted around 1 million documents and 25K large format drawings to electronic format and upon successful completion, I joined Abu Dhabi Vegetable Oil Company as Print Media Incharge where I was involved mainly as graphic designer for creating advertisements and packaging for the company. My single biggest achievement as inhouse graphic designer was providing lots and lots of options and thereby saving huge amount of money for the company spent on external agencies.

In the year 2001, I returned to Bombay and started the now famous DESIGN SPOT of Andheri, Mumbai, which was in partnership with Mustufa Zee and Ali Altas, two of my friends and also print media professionals. The studio is now one of the most prominent one in the Andheri West area of Bombay run by Ali Altas.

I returned to Dubai in 2006 and got another wonderful opportunity to join famous music magazine Loud as Design Head and after that, had the privilege to be associated with the prestigious 2nd World CEO Forum held in Dubai and Abu Dhabi as Print Media Head. After the successful completion of this project, I associated with a business services company and was part of a core team involved in the successful re-branding of the company that enabled the company to reposition itself amongst the topmost companies in that field. Apart from this, while working for Brandcom ME, one of the biggest agency in Dubai Media City, I got an opportunity to work on two of the most prestigious multinational accounts of the agency.

I have now started providing online services, besides providing creative branding services on freelance basis, mainly to advertising agencies in Dubai Media City. However, I am also open to good full time opportunities in branding/advertising.

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My Hobbies


Well, let me be frank, you can safely turn to other pages ... what now follows is purely related to my pastimes and has no connection with the services that I offer.

The following sentences are mainly used as keywords to connect with others who share my passion which is listening to comedy shows and dramas, Gujarati jokes by Vasant Paresh and I am a great fan of his favourite character called "Dhiru Dharamshi". I also like to watch The Great Indian Laughter Challenge, Pakistani comedy dramas of Umar Sharif, Shakeel Siddiqui, Rauf Lala among others.

Listening and singing retro Hindi film music is another passion with me. I am a great fan of legendary HFM artistes like Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi, Naushad, O.P.Nayyar, Shankar Jaikishan, Ravi, S.D.Burman, Mukesh, Kishore Kumar, R.D.Burman and others. I also had the privilege to meet a few of the legendary artistes like Naushad Sahab, Ravi Sahab, O.P.Nayyar, Pyarelalji, Anandjibhai and a few others. I am also 'bantam'(infamous) for starting a number of groups dedicated to the music legends but then not taking care of them. I thank a few good samaritans who took over as moderators of some of them, like the late Iqbal Sahab of Naushad Ali Group, Pravin Kumar of Shankar Jaikishan group on Yahoo and Naresh Khattar of Sangeet Ke Sitarey group on Orkut.

I belong to various business and social networks on the internet and a casual search on google for "kamaal mustafa sikander" will bring links to all of them. BTW, in case you are not aware, this malaise of searching for one's own name on Google is called 'ego-surfingitis', a term coined by Feroz, one of my copywriter friend in Bombay.

Jokes apart, if we share anything in common, please feel free to add me to your business or social networks.

If you have managed to come this far, you surely deserve to be nominated for the next Nobel Prize for Patience!

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Network with me

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Services

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Graphic Design Services

Print Media design is the core competency of Designage Works.
We specialise in providing eye-catching and appealing designs for

>> Logo Creation
>> Corporate Stationery
>> Brochure Design
>> Leaflet Design
>> Print Ads
>> Packaging

The client's budget is always taken into consideration while providing creative solutions that are not only practical but can be easily implemented in the desired budget.

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Signage Design Services

  • Designage Works provides design for all your signage requirements.

    The range of services include
    graphic designing for:
    >> Hoardings
  • >> Signboards
    >> Banners
  • >> Indoor & Outdoor ads
  • >> Vinyl & Flex prints

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new
service overview

Designage Works is pleased to announce that we now also offer complete solutions for creation of your website, in association with

Template World
Hostgator and graphikamaal

 

Contact now for your
website requirement

 

 

 

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