Graphic Design and Branding at Parul University: Mudra Dave on Blending Music and Design

Long before she knew the word “design”, Mudra Dave was analysing it. A student who is from Vadodara, she got inspiration from cartoon animations; she learned character design from it. She could explore colour animation; she analysed the logos of companies, the packaging of products at supermarkets, and the architecture of buildings, noticing each thing in detail; she learned from it that most people usually don’t register. These observations grew into curiosity and led her to make a career in it. She chose Parul University precisely because it did not lock her into one visual communication field from day one, giving her freedom to explore before specialising.

Mudra is candid that her hardest battle was not skill but confidence. She describes herself as an anxious person during her first. Getting convinced that no idea was of any good for the jury and overthinking about the presentation itself into paralysis. Calling herself a “walking bundle of anxiety”. The studio’s cycle of revising work again before every jury slowly rebuilt her, she gained confidence, started trusting her instincts and internal validation, she learned to test ideas, she took the criticism with positivity and used it to shape her work. Till the time she reached her final year, she could observe changes in herself. She became confident, more adventurous, and someone who is willing to take up the challenges and collaborate. She credits her faculty culture for this change.

Any composition, musical or visual, needs the same fundamentals. Music taught me patience, balance, and perseverance.
– On Mudra’s creative philosophy

One of the most distinctive threads in Mudra’s journey is that she connected a hobby to her craft. Outside design, she plays the tabla, an instrument that demanded serious, patient practice. Those skills translate directly: any composition, whether pleasing to the eye or the ear, rests on the same fundamentals, and the patience and perseverance, competitive practice requires are exactly what serious design work needs. It is a reminder that a designer’s edge often comes from outside design itself.

Mudra deliberately refused to narrow into a single skill. During these four years she got an opportunity to explore branding, storytelling, graphics, colour scheme, packaging, foundations of UX/UI, photography, and visual merchandising, along with complex spatial design, motion graphics, 3D, advertising, and filmmaking. Each year, each semester has something to offer with entirely different topics. The learning she gained was not only related to one software but also the end-use thinking process, looking out for a target audience, doing trial and error with ideas and without losing the grip on core idea. With all this she figured out that a good design is not merely visually attractive, but it should convey a specific meaning and solve everyday problems.

Four projects capture her range. She worked on Cristos that focused on branding and packaging. It required her to build a brand purely from scratch. She studied the company in depth, researched the target audience, developed a visual identity, designed packaging and took images of the final output, combining it with branding, graphic design, packaging and photography as one whole experience. To understand UX/UI, she worked on a project named PawPrints and worked in teams. It was a pet care management application to help pet owners and support daily care; it led her to research deeply, instinctive wireframing, and user-centred designs applied to an actual problem. The next project was Nomi Cafe, a premium cafe brand inspired by boho culture; she worked on developing the visual identity of the cafe, from logo, packaging, and social media content to brand tonality and language. She learned that through persistent work and consistency, good brand visibility can be attained. With a 3D camera modelling and animation project, she pushed herself into understanding form, lighting, materials, textures, movements and storytelling in three dimensions. This helped her gain knowledge of how motion elevates visual communication. Through these projects, she learned how a designer is able to combine creativity, research, strategy, and technology.

College life, Mudra says, is defined by what happens outside the classroom. By the time students reached the third semester, they received a group project; the team was given a task. They were asked to create something unique; they chose to use Gujarat’s traditional Bhavai theatre with Tholpavakoothu, Kerala’s shadow-puppetry art form, using two regional traditions for one performance.

Watching audiences appreciate it taught her the real power of design to bridge diverse cultures. She also displayed her work at the Vadodara Film and Design Festival on two consecutive occasions, finding it thrilling to have visitors walk up to her stall and acknowledge her work, exactly the kind of exposure that pushed her out of her comfort zone and built her public-speaking and collaboration skills.

On the recommendation of faculty member Rohit sir, Mudra interned as a Design & Media Intern at ThroughBlack, a Vadodara agency, from December 2025 to July 2026. She chose it deliberately for its variety of clients rather than a single in-house brand, as she put it, “I did not want to stick to one in-house brand.” She worked across healthcare, corporate, manufacturing, and tech, learning the nuances of brand communication for each and constantly updating her knowledge of modern graphic-design trends, and was thrilled to discover AI graphic-design tools that streamlined her process. Her work spanned brand identities, corporate communication, social creatives, packaging concepts, print collateral, client presentations, and exhibition graphics, including an international India-South Africa (ISA) project due to release soon. Two moments made her proudest: seeing the complete branding she created for the Advanced Bhopal Centre for Diagnostics, its logo, brand elements, and marketing collateral, printed and used in the market, and seeing her giant banners and corporate displays for Transformer and Rectifier (India) Ltd, one of the region’s biggest manufacturers, showcased at national exhibitions. Designers’ work, she learned, speaks louder in the real world than on a screen.

The internship confirmed her genuine interest in the field, her taste for solving real problems through design, and the importance of continuous improvement in a competitive environment; she now plans higher studies to deepen the business side of design. Her advice to juniors: stay curious and keep learning; gain experience beyond the standard framework through new technologies, workshops, and competitions; build a strong portfolio early, filled with a few impressive works rather than a hundred mediocre ones; embrace rejection and critique as learning; communicate confidently; and, above all, enjoy the journey, because college is the rare place to take risks and make mistakes without consequences. She describes her four years in three words: transformative, inspiring, and unforgettable.

Also Read: Interior and Furniture Design at Parul University: Preeti Lohar’s Path From Livspace to Her Own Studio