Five Questions with Ram Kanda, Art Director

BY: NICK IANNITTI  |  Fuel Family, Five Questions

Ideas abound at Fuel. Luckily, so do the people it takes to turn them into reality.

Ram Kanda knows his way around great design, and, as Art Director, the visual expertise he is able to bring to projects helps take them to the next level. Whether it’s for a client piece or our own licensed property, Ram Kanda champions the cardinal rule: the better the art, the better the entertainment. Between furiously scribbling on his Wacom tablet and challenging colleagues to a breakroom arcade duel, Ram stopped for a quick drink of water, and that’s when I caught him.

As Art Director for Fuel Industries, what are your main responsibilities?

I help translate brands and creative ideas into what you finally end up seeing in a finished piece. Moods and messages have to make their way into practical things like buttons, images, movies, and music. I work with Joel, our Creative Director, and our teams to make sure all the experiences we create are on-brand, high quality, and most of all, entertaining. I also beat people in Super Puzzle Fighter.

When did you first realize that art and design were in your future?

My grandfather and dad were goldsmiths and I have an older brother who is a photographer. Art runs pretty deep in my family. I drew a lot of Disney, Nintendo, and Marvel stuff as a kid. I job shadowed a designer – a friend of my dad’s – when I was in grade 8 and was lucky enough to attend a high school that offered Graphic Design courses. At 16, I got a summer design job at a local high-tech firm. In my graduating year I designed my high school’s crest and stationery.

The Internet today is overflowing with plenty of great design…and plenty that’s not-so-great. How do you make sure that your—and Fuel’s—creations are able to stay fresh in a billion page cyber-verse?

Fuel often looks to more established brand messengers outside of the internet for its inspiration. Video games, television and movies have their own heroes like Nintendo, HBO, and Disney. These guys have stayed relevant by sticking to engaging experiences and consistent high quality. The problem with chasing other web experiences is that many of them have been considered successful for simply being disruptive. They got people looking, but when people looked away, few remembered who the site was for or what the message was. Guerilla marketing takes you so far, but people are more likely to trust their time to you if you are genuinely entertaining and their money to you if you look like you don’t desperately need it. Without giving too much away, Fuel’s magic potion is to meld established best practices of process, quality and entertainment with the most promising trends and technologies. We also hire the best talent we can find.

This month, Fuel released its first original property, Fairies and Dragons. How has working on magical jungles and mythological creatures helped shape your understanding of digital entertainment?

Of all the types of jobs to work on, kids’ properties are my favourite. You really get to be free with ideas and it’s fun to build little suprises everywhere. I don’t think I’m the only one getting such a kick out of all of this either. The music sounds great and I couldn’t be happier with the characters. The games we created with the Fairies and Dragons, for McDonald’s, are a blast to play. The understanding has been pretty simple - To create the best digital entertainment, first decide which direction is best for a job, take inspiration from those who do it best, really make sure you’re building the project’s foundation in the right place, line up people who are extremely talented and love their jobs, then you build everything with a lot of excitement.

You’re stranded on a desert island with one video game character. Who would it be and why?

Absolutely Mario. Flowers give him the ability to throw fireballs, so that’s an easy campfire. He destroys dangerous mushrooms and turtles – from what I understand, these are the two biggest killers on desert islands. And, of course, finding a feather or leaf transforms him into a flying Mario, and he could get us off the island. Name me another character who can pull all that off (except Luigi).