My Portfolio

My name is Mira and I am a 25-year-old multi-discplinary designer specialising in graphic design and business management based in London. I am pursuing my master’s at Central Saint Martin’s, UAL in innovation and business management. As a budding professional in the creative industry, pop culture constantly inspires my work and I like to interpret the world around me through bright optimistic colours and observational approaches.

Passionate and professional, I am driven to work in culturally diverse teams to acquire new knowledge and perspectives while addressing pressing global problems.

Central Saint Martin’s, UAL | London

MA Innovation Management (2022-2024)

National Institute of Fashion Technology | India

Bachelor’s of Fashion Design (2015-2019)

TECHNICAL SKILLS GET IN TOUCH SOFTWARE

+44 7862 383318

mira.nagpal90@gmail.com

miranagpal24

behance.net/miranagpal

linkedin.com/in/mira-nagpal/

Sketching

Illustration

Research

Print Design

Typography Branding

User Interface Design

Procreate for iOS

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe InDesign

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe AfterE ects

Figma

An overview of the work I have done for clients, work and personal projects.

CONTENTS RETROGRADE

A self-driven project inspired by my love for sneakers and all things retro.

PROTOPIA

A speculative look on the future of housing, eutopian societies and environmentalism, as part of my thesis research.

MOVIN.

A speculative app design done for the UAL Creative Hackathon 2023 in the category ‘Responsible Technology’.

DYSTOPAEA

Inspired by Jon Rafman’s riot of a film, Minor Daemons. A grotesque imagery of a highly plausible future. The artpiece combines photography, art, writing and conceptualisation.

SELF-DRIVEN PROJECTS WORK EZ

A project done for a popular co-working space in India to design fun and inspiring murals.

Self-driven projects to push myself creatively, draw the subject of my liking, which are human beings and pop-cultural references.

RETROGRADE

ILLUSTRATION CONCEPTUALISATION FORECASTING

Inspired by WGSN’s Autumn Winter 24/25 Colour Forecast, I have illustrated and designed a Bob Brighton-esque polyptych of some of the community’s most beloved sneakers as stamps- going back to the good ol’ days.

This personally-driven project was to make memorable sneaker collectibles that can be traded and used to form communities around comparable art styles. As a result, I've chosen to design high-fidelity mockups of a speculative platform/app for sharing collections and connecting with artists all over the world, building entire collections of art pieces and learning about artists' inspirations. And why not turn the artpieces into cool merch, too?

Gucci x King Kong Magazine (Reference: WGSN)

Leighton Mcdonald

Each postcard and envelope artpiece will follow the same colour scheme as the stamp.

PROTOPIAN FUTURE

RESEARCH SPECULATIVE ART LITERATURE INTERPRETATION

Protopian Future

Tools used: Procreate for iOS

Planet City, a speculative city by architect Liam Young is one which covers just 0.2% of the Earth’s surface and houses 10 billion people by 2080, allowing wilderness to cover the rest. This city was inspired by Athanasius Kircher’s Turris Babel. “To reach the heavens, the tower would have to be 178,672 miles tall”. I was deeply inspired by this project and mankind’s constant quest of achieving utopiaism and equality, not without entropy.

This extreme densification of the entire human population forces communities to live with each other harmoniously but without losing their own individual identities. The rays of pink light emanating throughout the city is the source of energy for the people. I used this in my artpiece but with greetings in different languages.

Planet City by Liam Young (2022)

Planet City by Liam Young (2022)

Babel by R.F. Kuang

Illustrated by Nico Delort

inspiration from R.F Kuang’s book cover. The book touches upon the importance of language, loss of community and the effects of dual linguistic consciousness. I was inspired by languages for my final art piece as a gateway for diversity and community within the same structure.

Protopia: a state that is better than today than yesterday

-Kevin Kelly, Wired, founder

Protopian Future created on Procreate for iOS

WORK EZ MURALS

CONCEPTUALISATION DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION TYPOGRAPHY

keepgrowing.ai

A freelance project done for Work EZ, India, co-working spaces dotted throughout major cities in Tamil Nadu, India.

I played with typography, vector graphics and concepts to make sure the artworks are unique, motivational, inspiring and fun! :)

reachforthestars.ai

The brief for these pieces was to keep them young, fresh and stimulating at the same time. These murals were for the common spaces, breakout rooms, cafe and in some cubicles.

ouractionsbuildourworld.ai

humanexploration.ai

aerialview.ai

coffeeandchocolate.ai

Life-sized murals for office cubicles to promote team building and ideation.

MOVIN.

HACKATHON APP DESIGN RESPONSIBLE TECHNOLOGY

PERSONAL ART PIECES

ILLUSTRATION

CONCEPTUALISATION

PERSONAL GROWTH

Constantly inspired by my love for hip-hop and its evolving creativity, I dedicated this piece to Tyler the Creator, my current favourite artist. My favourite song being ‘Where This Flower Blooms’, with Frank Ocean, reflects on simpler times and about a young person trying to learn more about himself at his own pace. This song resonates with me, especially the ostinato “I glow, I rock, I roll.”

Miramen

Tools used: Procreate for iOS

A self portrait utilising all things I love, Tonkotsu Ramen, Jiji from Studio Ghibli’s Kiki’s Delivery Service and vibrant colours.

Places + Faces

A hand-illustrated monochromatic piece of faces from different places. Paying homage to Amine’s song, he talks about a phase in his youth meeting new people and leading a vastly different life, on the fast lane. I related deeply to the song and drew this piece looking at people in the London subway.

DYSTOPAEA

ILLUSTRATION OBSERVATIONAL WRITING CONCEPTUALISATION

I was inspired by Jon Rafman’s Minor Daemon’s for this artpiece. Walking back from work in West Hampstead one day and I noticed things about London I never would have. Huge white houses surrounded by squalor, Pret coffee cups strewn, leaking sewers, constant construction. Everything is a metaphor. This is a series of visual compositions I created to illustrate London’s crumbling ‘dystopia’ held together at the seams. Using ‘observational writing’ as a tool forced me to slow down, zoom in on the world around me and channel my inner Sylvia Plath.

,UK

West Hampstead 1666

The Great Fire of London in 1666 wrecked havoc among the streets of London, ravaging almost everything in its wake.

One-third of London was destroyed and more than 100,000 homeless. Some believe this burning inferno cleansed the city by destroying disease-ridden streets. An ember in the ashes emerged, a new London raising its middle finger to red skies. Finding, searching, yearning for a new tomorrow.

SWISS COTTAGE

Water Meeting Bridge

According to a study conducted by King’s College London, fish in innocent rural waters are being exposed to a wide array of illegal substances such as ketamine, pharmaceuticals, and MDMA. Cocaine snorted by Londoners is polluting the Thames– and making aquatic life hyperactive. Cocaine enters the river in users’ urine via treated sewage. Untreated sewage can also get in following storms. The experts said: “London is known as one of the highest consumers of cocaine and this suggested everyday usage.”

Many samples of fish have shown that cocaine is metabolized in the liver (like humans) but also deposits in the eyes of invertebrates. Moreover, the brain chemistry of fish exposed to methamphetamine has experienced several behavioural changes and withdrawal symptoms, much like in human beings.

This art piece is one of a Common Roach, a freshwater fish found in the canals of London. I have merged the skeletal and outer appearance of the fish highlighting the eyes and liver region to indicate drug metabolism and extreme weightloss. This is a theme found in Minor Daemons as well, where one of the protagonists ingests copious amounts of drugs in his prison cell and loses his appetite. I have depicted the drug in colour to show its hallucinogenic qualities and dependency.

Loss of Identity Crisis

AlienBlood is my art piece, heavily inspired by Rafman’s work. It is a metaphor for immigrants in the UK and the issues they experience in terms of cultural identity, mental health, and a distorted sense of belonging. Minor Daemons explores the loss of physical and spiritual identity, society's dirt, and a jumble of civilizations. According to me, people make up a society but when they lose their sense of self, it is the onset of a dystopia.

The Lonely Londoner

The Lonely Londoner by Samuel Selvon is an interplay between reality and illusoriness of London. I met a girl outside the Swiss Cottage tube station who perfectly embodied the words of this novel.

Racial Acculturation

London is one of the world’s most diverse cities, housing people from all over the world. This young girl is of Indian descent but heavily inspired by the ‘youts’- their lingo, dressing, style, mannerisms. She has no interest in her Indian roots- she is like a sponge absorbing so many different cultures. Hence the colourful splashes on her puffer gillet.

Social Alienation

Contemporary migration research shows that the number of foreigncountry-born migrants is increasing (Vukojević, B, 2019). She immediately asked me if I was “also desi” after she heard my Indian accent, which is considered a derogatory slur. Social alienation is marked by an intense fear of not belonging.

Learned Helplessness

Psychologists use the term “learned helplessness” to describe the effect of being subjected to systemic oppression and injustice regularly without being able to do anything about it (Lo, I, 2023). Though she is so young, she has experienced microaggressions and racism, giving her a defensive edge in her demeanor. “Is it appropriation if I wear a bindi, then?” she asks me.

THANK YOU