Creativity is one field which has covered maximum space in this digital era. Many outstanding projects have been unravelled and new prospects have emerged. Fresh ideas have taken shape and formulated a better designed world around us. The Great Indian Fashion Town team had a really interesting, exclusive and insightful discussion with one of the well-known names in Fashion Retail industry.
Anuraag S is a Creativist, Visual Merchandising
professional and Founder of Pencilbox Design, with over three decades of
experience across retail, design and consumer experience. His work spans Visual
Merchandising, retail strategy, branding, creative problem-solving and design
education. A passionate mentor and advocate of “Creativity for Everyone,”
Anuraag S also expresses himself through cartoons, puns, writing and
experimental design. He is the founder of World Visual Merchandising Day (11 Jan)
and has authored six books on Visual Merchandising and humour. His work has
been recognised twice by the India Book of Records and the Forttuna Global
Excellence Awards.
GIFT : Pencilbox has been doing some incredible creative
work — tell us more about it.
Thank you! Pencilbox started in 2018, but in many ways it is
a culmination of almost three decades of my journey through retail, Visual
Merchandising, design and consumer experience.
For me, creativity is simply problem-solving. And good
design is creative problem-solving with purpose. So, at Pencilbox, we don't
restrict ourselves by saying, “We are a VM company” or “We are a design
agency.” A problem could be a store that isn't engaging customers, a brand that
isn't communicating clearly, a space that isn't functioning well, or even a
business trying to figure out how creativity can create measurable value.
That thinking has allowed us to work across Visual
Merchandising, retail experience, branding, packaging, spatial interventions,
design strategy and education.
Personally too, I don't like putting creativity into boxes.
I draw cartoons, play with puns and wordplay, write, teach, mentor, experiment
with AI and sometimes create things simply because they make me curious. I call
myself a Creativist for that reason.
One belief has stayed constant throughout: creativity
doesn't belong only to creative professionals. An accountant solving a
difficult business problem can be as creative as an artist standing in front of
a canvas.
GIFT : How does creative work (poem, painting, design etc.)
satisfy our society?
I'm actually not sure creativity always needs to satisfy
society!
Sometimes art satisfies us. Sometimes it entertains us,
provokes us, questions us or makes us uncomfortable. A cartoon can communicate
something in one frame that might otherwise require a thousand words. A clever
pun can make us look at an ordinary word completely differently. Humour,
cartoons and wordplay are incredibly powerful forms of creativity, something
more and more brands are also discovering in their communication.
But for me, creativity goes much beyond art.
Creativity, fundamentally, is problem-solving.
And India has always been brilliant at it. Perhaps our most
familiar expression of creativity is jugaad. Give an Indian a problem
and limited resources, and chances are we will find some ingenious way around
it!
But I believe the next step is to take that instinct for jugaad
and add design, aesthetics, empathy and scalability to it.
Saregama Carvaan is a wonderful example of this. When
the world was racing towards streaming, apps and increasingly digital
interfaces, somebody recognised a very human problem: there was a generation
that loved its old music but didn't necessarily want to search, swipe and
subscribe every time it wanted to hear a song.
Carvaan didn't invent music or even new technology. It
combined existing technology with a deep understanding of an Indian consumer,
wrapped it in nostalgia and gave it a beautifully simple, aesthetically
appealing physical form. The result? It crossed one million units in roughly 16
months after launch.
That, to me, is creativity — not necessarily inventing
something completely new, but looking at an existing problem differently and
creating a better experience around it.
Ironically, while India has an extraordinary aesthetic
heritage in its architecture, textiles, crafts and arts, we don't always apply
the same aesthetic sensitivity to our everyday surroundings. Look at the visual
chaos on many of our streets signage, traffic, parking, hoardings, wires and
public spaces. We are often very creative at solving our own immediate
problem, but sometimes that solution creates a bigger collective problem!
So, India doesn't have a shortage of creativity. Perhaps we
need to channel that creativity more consciously into better design and better
every day experiences.
We have spoken for years about Make in India.
I would love to see the next movement being equally about:
CREATE IN INDIA.
Because making something here is valuable. Imagining it
here, solving it here, designing it beautifully here and then taking it to the
world is even more exciting.
GIFT : Artificial intelligence tools — hampering or
boosting creativity? Your thoughts.
AI doesn't intimidate me. It excites me.
I use AI extensively, and I see it as one of the most powerful
creative collaborators we've ever had. An idea that earlier might have remained
inside someone's head because they couldn't sketch, render, write, animate or
prototype it can now become visible remarkably quickly.
That democratisation is particularly exciting for Gen Z. For
them, AI will probably not remain a “new technology” for very long. It will
simply become part of how they think, learn and create.
But there is a danger…I don't think AI will kill creativity.
Convenience might.
If AI starts doing our thinking rather than helping
us explore our thinking, we could end up producing enormous amounts of very
competent but very similar work.
In an AI-rich world, perhaps the differentiators will no
longer be merely technical skills. They will be curiosity, taste, observation,
originality, the quality of the question you ask — and your ability to
recognise a great answer when you see one.
AI should amplify imagination, not replace it.
GIFT : How do you see the change in the lifestyle of the average
Indian over the last three decades?
Having worked around Indian retail and consumers for almost
three decades, the biggest transformation I see isn't simply income. It is
access, aspiration and exposure.
We went from neighbourhood stores to organised retail,
malls, e-commerce, smartphones, social media, quick commerce and now AI, all
within one generation.
And I think we make a mistake when we discuss India's new
consumer only through Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru.
The fascinating story today is happening in Tier-2, Tier-3
and even smaller cities. Digital access has dramatically reduced the gap in discovery.
A Gen Z consumer in Jaipur, Indore, Surat, Lucknow, Kochi, Guwahati or a
smaller town can see a global fashion trend at almost the same time as someone
sitting in Mumbai or London.
But access to global culture hasn't necessarily made young
Indians less Indian.
In fact, I find the opposite increasingly interesting: our
lifestyles are becoming more global while our search for identity is becoming
more local.
Young people are far more comfortable mixing worlds sneakers
with Indian wear, street culture with craft, global music with regional
language, technology with tradition.
For fashion, retail and design, that makes India an
extraordinarily interesting laboratory right now.
GIFT : Do you see the fashion industry getting a boost in
the next decade as big corporate giants have invested heavily in Indian fashion
brands?
Absolutely, but I think the bigger story is not only
corporate investment.
India's fashion opportunity lies at the intersection of the
three pillars GIFT itself talks about — textiles, fashion and retail — and now
I would add two more forces: technology and a young consumer.
Gen Z is discovering brands differently. Fashion inspiration
no longer comes only from fashion magazines, celebrities or large stores. It
comes from creators, reels, communities, gaming, music, travel, regional
culture and increasingly AI. And this behaviour isn't restricted to metros.
At the same time, India has something very few countries can
replicate: an extraordinary living vocabulary of textiles, embroidery, craft,
colour, silhouettes and techniques.
The opportunity is not to freeze these traditions in time.
Preservation alone can turn craft into a museum piece. Creativity
allows heritage to evolve.
We already see Indian designers taking indigenous
craftsmanship and giving it a contemporary global vocabulary. Rahul Mishra is a
wonderful example of how Indian craftsmanship can participate confidently in
international luxury without losing its roots.
So yes, corporate capital will provide scale, distribution
and infrastructure. But India's real fashion advantage may come from something
money cannot manufacture overnight — our cultural vocabulary combined with a
huge, young, digitally connected population willing to reinterpret it.
The next important Indian fashion market may not necessarily
emerge from a traditional fashion capital.
GIFT : With the correct creative boost now — how do you
see the future of India?
Extremely exciting — provided we begin valuing our
creativity ourselves.
The recent conversation around Prada and the Kolhapuri
chappal fascinated me. My first reaction wasn't, “How dare they copy us?”
It was almost the opposite… If something developed by Indian
craftspeople generations ago is relevant enough to inspire one of the world's
leading luxury fashion houses today, that is also a compliment to the strength
of Indian design.
Of course, attribution matters. Craftspeople deserve
recognition, participation and economic benefit. But creativity has always
travelled between cultures. Inspiration itself shouldn't make us insecure.
My bigger question is: Why does the world sometimes need to
recognise something Indian before we Indians recognise its design value ourselves?
We live surrounded by ingenious objects, crafts, textiles,
techniques and everyday solutions. Because they are familiar, we often stop
seeing the intelligence behind them. Then somebody curates one differently,
packages it beautifully, gives it a story and places it in a global context —
and suddenly we rediscover it.
Perhaps we shouldn't be saying, “This is ours, don't touch
it.”
We should be saying: “This is ours. Look what the world can
do with it — and now watch what India does with it next.”
That is the confidence I would love to see in the next
generation.
India was never short of creativity. What we sometimes
lacked was recognising its value, applying it systematically, packaging it
beautifully and taking ownership of its story.
This is why I keep coming back to the thought of Create
in India.
“Make” is important — it creates manufacturing,
infrastructure and employment.
But “Create” goes further. It means ideas, design,
intellectual property, fashion, storytelling, brands, technology, experiences,
art and culture originating here and travelling outward.
Combine India's centuries-old creative vocabulary with Gen
Z's confidence, the reach of digital India and the amplification power of AI,
and the next decade could be extraordinary.
And perhaps creativity itself is much simpler than we make
it sound:
Creativity doesn't always mean creating something the
world has never seen. Sometimes it simply means looking at something the world
has seen a thousand times — and seeing another possibility in it.
So true Anuraag. GIFT is delighted to share such insights with the professionals as well as new fashionistas in India. May you get more power to brighten the design arena.
Do check out the amazing work of Anuraag at www.pencilbox.in
