Mughal frames, bollywood films, and an eclectic range of music genres: Ashaky Vig found his passion as a visual artist soon after enrolling in a graphic design program at school.

However, this is not to neglect his own undying ardor for graphics and visual communication, as the inspirations for his work derive naturally from hours and days of researching and adding to his archive. He calls himself a ‘habitual crate digger’.

Most recently, Ashkay collaborated with a small-scale music label called Discostan, a safe home to Southwest Asian and North American music, and sold an unexpectedly high amount of one of his prints in steadfast support of India’s less than desirable COVID-19 crises. Continue reading our interview in order to get to know this rising graphic designer to greater depth.

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Akshay Vig and I'm an artist and graphic designer based in Los Angeles

From mughal frames to the bollywood film, “Qurbani”, what inspires you to make?

Music for me I feel has always been a huge reservoir of inspiration for my work. Anyone that knows me also knows that I have a very broad and eclectic taste in music. But even more than that I get obsessed with music from cultures all around the world. And it just becomes a domino effect where music that I'm really into at the time really ends up dictating what I gravitate towards in terms of visual ideas. I'm also just a habitual crate digger, I love collecting images and music and sometimes I go into such deep rabbit holes that I could spend like half a day just researching ideas collecting stuff to sample or add my archive of inspo.

When did you start experimenting with graphic design? How’d you learn?

I started getting into graphic design in my first year of college and at that time I was really into street art and Shepard Fairey and I took a bunch of printmaking and design courses. But it wasn't really until I started my program in design school wear I found more of a passion for it and started to find my footing as a visual communicator. But a lot of what I know today in my practice I feel came from just learning from my peers, my experiences, and just on the job rather than from school.

I’m curious, what’s your favorite font right now?

You know it's hard to say cause I have so many favorites, but I've been messing around with Antique Nord and Brice quite a bit cause I have always been a sucker for thick fonts.

Tell us about an exciting project you’ve done thus far.

Recently, I've been working on something of a passion project for a while and some of the art I've made for that was used in collaboration with Discostan, a small music label that regularly has shows on NTS. And we took one of my pieces and sold them as prints to raise money for covid relief for India. And the response was just incredible our target was to raise at least 5k to donate and we ended up with 8k and even after we sold out we still had people ordering more which I feel grateful that my work is not only making an impact but also finding an audience that it been meant for.

What are your hopes and goals for the near future?

Shortly, I hope to just grow my practice and hopefully build a conversation and a community around my work as I continue to share my perspective and put myself out there. So I'm very excited about all the new work and products I intend to be dropping very soon. I also hope to collaborate with more designers and creatives who are also dabbling in the same spaces I am and share overlapping audiences so we can potentially build something bigger together.