Despite much back and forth from the family, she stood by her decision to attend design school. And, as her colleagues at Canvs would affirm — of course, she got her way.
At Srishti, she explored various design forms, with her favourite eventually becoming 3D and technical drawing. She appreciated the sense of vision these disciplines provided for her creations. In time, she specialised in furniture design, finding joy in working with wood and metal and making things with her bare hands — a tactile craft that she continues to long for in her day-to-day work.
A fateful meeting with Canvs
Harleen started speaking with Canvs after departing from the role of a Creative Manager at a mainline do-it-all comms agency. That was a deliberate choice to shut the door to a rather uncomfortable phase in work life, a place that was sapping her potential, but more dangerously, becoming a struggle that she was getting used to fighting.
We’ve all been there, sometimes we get so used to things we hate, that we end up missing them when they are gone.
Harleen’s first conversation with Canvs was full of skepticism. In 2022, Canvs was a 12-member team doing the work of a typical 30-person agency.
While she got satisfactory answers to these questions, she couldn’t help but have doubts about the setup at Canvs. It made sense — agencies toot their own horn but typically tend to lie about the spectrum of work-life imbalance.
Harleen took her time before she said yes. Little did she know that it would be so different from her previous experience, and such a significant departure from everything she had done before, that it was almost a shock to her system. Suddenly, she went from chaos to calm. There was now room to experiment, work at a sustainable pace, and communicate honestly with her colleagues.
She could take her time to talk through things and find her way. “How is everything so calm here?” she found herself often wondering. Looking back at the impact this work ethic had on her during her first two months at Canvs, Harleen says, "At the time, my reactions were shocking, even to my closest confidants." Her personality transformed, becoming calmer & quieter in her personal life as well as at work. And while she kept waiting for the other shoe to drop or for the mayhem to start, much to her happy surprise, it never did.
Harleen marvelled at the involvement demonstrated by the Canvs team even before she officially joined as the team helped her prep for the role by giving her a lot of study material.
"The fact that they cared about me learning before I joined—it's a crazy level of trust and involvement. ”
During her first week at Canvs, Harleen experienced firsthand a depth of care that extended beyond surface-level gestures. "This is what it feels like to work with adults," she notes with a sense of revelation. Her first days were about "learning + massive unlearning” — it was like a paradigm shift.
When asked about her favourite parts about working at Canvs, she recounts when her colleagues made her feel supported in a way workplaces generally aren’t known to do. “The best part is everyone volunteers to take responsibility without thinking twice,” she says.
Picking up the work of a colleague who had an urgent situation come up, and going the extra mile to ensure that each person is treated with the respect and appreciation they deserve, are just a few instances of this support — no-brainers among her colleagues. In her words, working at Canvs was the very first time that she truly enjoyed interacting with every single one of her coworkers, thriving among the mature and professional set-up.
This very radical shift to her system that values involvement, and a grounded, steady way of working helped over manufacture urgency, she hadn’t realised until then, was all the push she needed.
Over the last two years, Harleen has shifted gears and found a path with Canvs. Not every firm is fortunate to be able to boast of influencing something like that. Today, Harleen is on cruise control with a variety of responsibilities, and she takes on more with adequate ease.
Design management is highly critical to Canvs’ value proposition as a studio. Consequently, Design Managers bear immense responsibilities towards Canvs’ designers, its reputation, its brand and finally, towards its bottom line. When we hire Design Managers, we hire them for their intellectual command and their strength of character. They are the face of design strategy for our clients. Change always invites resistance, and that’s where our Design Managers thrive.
“You cannot drive results, if you cannot convince people of change.”
Harleen believes that for design to have its voice within any organization, albeit via an external party, it requires equal parts quality and personality, “You cannot drive results, if you cannot convince people of change.” Harleen knows the tenacity of craft required to bring about change, but having shaped her own flavour of impact via Design Management, she now understands, change can be brought about by a show of force, one push at a time.
And underneath all that polish and command is the grit and obsessiveness of the same 20-year-old student who spent endless hours perfecting her beloved chair, with unrivalled passion and focus.