Hello, World

Some journeys start with a sketch, and mine led me here.

I’m Devanshi Mengar, a third-year Product Design student at Somaiya School of Design, Mumbai. Being in my third year feels like the perfect mix of excitement and discovery—trying new things, creating ideas I once only dreamed of, and now even building my own website.

These past few years have been full of learning, experimenting, and figuring things out one step at a time. From sketching ideas to actually building. There’s so much to learn and explore, and I can’t wait to see where this journey takes me next!

BUILDING

From childhood, I’ve always been into building things, crafting, drawing, painting—basically anything creative I could think of. I loved making paper flower bouquets, quilling cards, and best-out-of-waste wall clock. I’d spend hours playing with Legos, building towers and tiny forts, or crafting little cities for my mini car; There were afternoons spent spinning Beyblades with my brother, folding paper into not-so clean lanterns, and even making pencil toppers out of clay. I remember once trying to create a puppet theater out of an old cereal box, attaching threads to cotton stuffed dolls! And, how can I forget 'loom band' and 'scoobies' era... These little activities made my childhood so colorful and full of creativity, and I never stopped since then.

Growing up, I realized it’s not just about staying busy with fun activities, but also about learning from them and improving. For example, when I started drawing, I first used a pencil to sketch and slowly moved to pens, charcoal, and brushes. Each time, I noticed how different tools brought out different effects—pencil for soft lines, charcoal for bold strokes, and brushes for more fluid movements. The more I practiced, the better I understood how to use each one and how they could work together.

For me, same goes with everything in life—whether it’s drawing, building something, or even talking to people. You learn, you try, you make mistakes, and you get better. Just like how a sketch becomes a finished piece with time and effort, our skills and understanding grow with each step we take, and every small change or improvement counts.

CAPTURING

Capturing moments has always been my thing. My love for photography really took off when I started tagging along with my sister on interior architecture shoots.

At first, I didn’t have much to do except set up lights, shuffle things around to fit the frame, and adjust proportions and styling—but I quickly realized how much you can learn just by watching and being involved. Slowly,

I started making reels and snapping photos of everything—food, people, random street scenes—and that’s when I discovered street photography.

It’s the art of really observing, catching little details that often go unnoticed. Now, every day feels like a mini adventure, and I’m always trying to see the world in a new picture, one frame at a time.

DISCOVERING

Being a third-year Product Design student, I feel like every day is an adventure in discovery. Every material, every tool, has something new to teach me. I’ve worked with cement, which has this raw industrial feel to it, MDF and wood which is precise—perfect for creating clean functional designs while having different properties, fabric taught it wont work everytime how you want it to; each material varies with properties, form, functionality which challenges me to think differently and adapt to what I’m building.

Learning to work with these materials has been a real hands-on experience. Whether I’m casting and molding to form something complex or experimenting with Siporex to make something lightweight yet strong, every step feels like a new lesson. Polishing surfaces and playing around with finishes have shown me how tiny details, shades, quantity of product and layers can completely transform a design.

What really excites me is how technology ties into it all. Using Arduino, for instance, has opened up a whole new world of interactive design for me. Incorporating technology into physical products, watching them come to life—it's something I didn’t expect but now love. Tools like CNC machines and 3D printers are making me realize how much potential there is to bring ideas into reality.

I’m still figuring a lot out, but every project is a chance to grow and learn something new. The more I dive in, the more I realize how much there is still to explore. And that’s what makes it so thrilling.