Meghna Saji

After studying virtual reality, the way Meghna looks at design has never been the same. Her projects transport users to new worlds, from a mixed reality musical sex toy project to a synchronous reality experience inspired by childhood memories. Combining senses and storytelling, Meghna's work embraces interaction and play. From persistent and intentional outreach to making time for your own creative work, Meghna shares below her creative journey and how she landed her current role at Mother Design.

What I do

My creative practice
I'm a multidisciplinary designer working at the crossroads of graphic design and technology. I love work that is also play and design that you interact with that gives unexpected results.

Influences and inspiration
Being born and raised in India and then moving to London has fundamentally shaped the way I find inspiration. Both places carry such distinct visual energies. The energy of movement in both cities, the way things are always shifting and never quite settling – that friction is where a lot of my inspiration lives.

India has always had a rich visual diaspora. With each new generation of immigrants making their way to different corners of the world, they carry their culture with them and a unique interpretation of the place they come from. I'm influenced by the methods, the mediums and the narratives of this movement.

I was first drawn to graphic design through Jessica Walsh's Frooti campaign in India. With stop-motion, tiny-scale models, it was nostalgic, playful and exciting. Some of my biggest inspirations are Wang & Söderström, Khyati Trehan and Talia Cotton. What I love about their work is how tactile and interactive it feels. It's not just something you look at, it's something you want to play with. Enzo Mari's children's toys carry that same spirit for me, balancing play and purpose in exactly the right proportion.

My training
I did my undergrad in graphic design in India, though it didn't go quite to plan. Our college had to shut down mid-year, but it turned out to be a silver lining: we moved to Coventry University and I got to finish my design education across two very different locations. That experience gave me a really robust foundation in communication design and an early sense of how diverse the field actually is.

By the end of it, I felt like my own practice needed more of a challenge, a completely different world within design. I did a Master's in Virtual Reality at the London College of Communication, UAL. I had never used a VR headset before, I didn't know 3D, I didn't know the Unity game engine. It was new, exciting and equally terrifying, but I jumped in at the deep end and absolutely loved it. The course completely shifted how I think about interactions and design outside of the traditional outcomes. The idea that you can mentally transport someone somewhere else and make them feel present in another world is an incredibly powerful thing – it's never left how I approach design.

Favourite recent project
The World is Yours, a book I got to design with Ambessa, a social enterprise that makes STEM kits for children, and the wonderful Sara Berkai last year. We asked the most brilliant people we know – from educators, engineers, designers, scientists, mathematicians – if they could build their ideal school from scratch, what would it look like? From this, the book was created. We wanted it to feel like a manifesto, a declaration of why Ambessa exists, what makes it so special for children and what the ethos behind it really is. At its heart, it's a love letter to the world of education and play. It was also the first printed book I ever got to design, which makes it particularly meaningful.

A day in the life
I've been at Mother Design for over a year and have found the work and the people equally inspiring. Our studio is in the heart of Shoreditch, where I'm in on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The day always starts the same way: an iced latte, no matter the time of year. Each day really depends on where a project is. If we're early on, it's very much about exploration – experimenting with mediums, new tools, testing directions, figuring out what something wants to be before you've committed to anything. Then, as a project develops, it shifts – you're refining, presenting, building out a system.

Sometimes you're across two projects at once, so you could be deep in a branding world in the morning and vibecoding a generative garden by the afternoon.

How I got here

Starting my creative journey
My first ever role was a short stint at JKR, where I interned during the pandemic when everything was up in the air. I got that role from winning a design pitch at uni – we were given a brief to design a food delivery brand for any cuisine, and I designed one for dogs. Around the same time, Craig Oldham was generously posting graduate portfolios on his page and someone at Pearlfisher spotted mine and reached out. I interned at Pearlfisher for two months and then went on to my first full-time role as a junior designer at Landor India. After a year and a half, I felt ready for a new challenge and a new skill entirely.

Then, after graduating from my master's, I was looking for roles that sat somewhere between graphic design and VR. That's when I came across Keiichi Matsuda, who founded Liquid City – an incredible studio working in the space of AR, VR and XR. We'd actually studied his work in class, so getting to intern there felt surreal.

Around the same time, a friend and I were entering competitions with a virtual reality project on sex toys we worked on in University and got selected for the Innovate UK awards, which we won. The prize was an internship with ARUP’s experiential environments team. Working in such a large company, with the breadth and scale of projects that they took on, was incredible.

I was also putting myself forward for graphic design roles and got an interview call from Mother Design. I remember walking in for the interview and seeing the wall of the proud mothers of everyone who worked there and immediately thinking it would be an incredible place to work. I did my internship for 3 months and was then made a designer.

Landing my first few jobs, clients and/or commissions
The first few roles I've had were all ones I reached out to directly. I think I was quite intentional about the studios I was applying to. The most successful approach I've found is connecting with people from the studios you’re excited about, such as designers or project managers, and asking for a chat or quick feedback on your portfolio. It goes a long way and has led to meeting a lot of new people; over time, those conversations often turn into recommendations.

When it comes to sending your portfolio, be quick about it. First in, first seen. The sooner you get your work in front of a pair of eyes, the better.

Biggest challenges along the way
Finding time to upskill while working a full-time design job is a real challenge. One of the biggest areas I'm trying to improve in is motion. A lot of studios now look for motion as an addition to graphic design. It’s an incredible skill, but the tools are constantly changing – it can be hard to know where to even start. The real challenge is staying consistent when you're learning something new on your own. Learning outside of work is difficult, and that makes upskilling at work even harder. I find it helpful to join a course that keeps you accountable and turns learning into habit.

The same goes for virtual reality. Finding time to keep that side of my practice alive alongside a full-time job is something I'm still figuring out.

My social media and self-promotion vibe is…
“Look at this random idea that has no functional purpose, but it was a constant exciting tick in my brain and I had to get it out there.”

I enjoy chasing randomness and unfinished end results. I think there's a certain humanity to that, especially in this age of social media where everything is so perfectly polished and beautiful. For a long time, I didn't want to post work because I thought it would be cringey; especially when you're learning something new, the first batch of work is always a bit rough. I think I set my standards too high based on what I was seeing on my feed.

But with experiments like vibe coding, I've made peace with that. I've been tinkering a lot with Google AI Studio lately and there's something I love about outputs that still feel like they're figuring out what they are. The unfinished randomness is the point.

Three things I've found useful in my career:

Courses, programmes, initiatives, access schemes or job boards I've found helpful

My greatest learnings when it comes to making money and supporting myself as a creative:
The small jobs matter. Taking on freelance work or a favour for a friend – especially when the brief is interesting – rarely stays small. Those projects come back around. The scope grows, the budget follows. You have to cast small to catch big.

The other thing nobody talks about enough: money. Having open, honest conversations with other creatives and what people are charging, what studios are paying and what the market actually looks like is some of the most valuable intelligence you can get.

My advice

My most useful career tips
If you're genuine about it and intentional with the people you choose to reach out to, it goes a long way. Make people remember you. Early on, I applied to Peter and Paul during the pandemic and wrote to them asking for advice on my portfolio. Lee Davies told me I should add an email footer with my name and website. I wrote back immediately with the updated footer, thought nothing of it and moved on. Five years later, they still remembered the bubble website and reached out to me about a project.

What I'd say to someone looking to get into a similar role
Find people whose work you love and want to learn from. Is there someone at your dream studio whose work you admire? Reach out. You'd be surprised how often people say yes.

Speak to people who will talk to people who will talk to the people who will hire you. Be intentional and know what you bring to the table – what makes you different? How do you stand apart from the pile of applications they're sifting through? We recently had an intern who hand-delivered their application to our office instead of sending an email. Do the work, go the extra mile and make people remember you.

Find a good recruiter. They know what they're doing and most of the time they'll give you the hard truth: about the state of the design market, what level you're at, what you should be charging. I'd put myself on the radar of as many recruiters as possible.