About · Santhosh Kumar M
Santhosh Kumar M — Visual Designer, Brand & Marketing, Bengaluru, India.
I'm Santhosh Kumar M. I've spent seven years going from CG artist to handling all of brand and marketing design at DriveU — through agencies, freelance, and a few studios in between. Along the way I built an AI-assisted design process that actually works in a real production environment. Not a side experiment. Just how I get things done.
Academic background
Specialization: Industrial & Product Design. Learning UX and product design so I can handle brand, marketing, and product work without needing to hand off to someone else. Covers AI-powered design, user research, and product strategy.
Animation, motion graphics, visual storytelling, graphic design, photography. This is where it all started. It gave me the eye for detail, timing, and knowing when something is done — skills that still show up in every brand project I do.
Career path
I handle all the visual design for DriveU's marketing — hoardings, print, performance ads, social media, lifecycle campaigns, and partner creatives. I also set up an AI-assisted workflow using Firefly, Google AI Studio, Midjourney, and Claude. It cuts down the time from brief to final artwork, without lowering the quality of output.
Senior designer managing 5+ clients at once. I handled briefs, built brand identities, guided freelancers, and kept clients updated throughout. Delivered 10+ brand identities across different industries, most of which are still actively being used.
Started freelancing and built it into a full-time offer. Handled multiple clients across brand identity, campaigns, social, and motion. Learned how to manage projects, set prices, and deliver work entirely on my own.
My agency years. Worked on campaigns for multiple brands across three cities — concept, art direction, print, social, and on-ground creatives. This is where I learned how big brands actually operate, and how to stay consistent across many formats at once. Also helped junior designers understand brand guidelines and maintain quality.
Early studio years doing motion design and video storytelling for education and community campaigns, mostly in Tamil. This is where I stopped thinking about single designs and started thinking about how everything connects — how the same message needs to look and feel consistent across different formats and audiences.
My first job, straight out of college. Did 3D visuals, title cards, basic animations, and visual effects for short films, YouTube channels, and OTT content. This is where I got the technical base before I moved into brand and marketing design.