Biography
Kruti Mehta is a multidisciplinary designer based in New York City. She holds a BFA in Communication Design from Parsons School of Design. She believes design is about creating a seamless experience through storytelling and interaction by combining different mediums. Her work is inspired by her observations of small things that go unnoticed in plain sight and questioning what that represents. She tells stories through motion graphics, identity design, package and experience design.

Process
Umbra started with understanding a person’s behavior and identity and finding an answer to one simple question: what makes a person the way they are? To answer this question, identity as a subject was broken down into what it is made up of. One of the most interesting section that make up a person’s identity is the unconscious mind. A topic not spoken about often but directly linked to reality. Tis led to a deep analysis about dreams and what they can be used to solve in reality. 20 people with recurring dreams were asked to anonymously write them down. Each dream was then studied, analyzed and divided into categories based on similarities such as emotions, theme, characters, color and symbols. Tis exercise had two key
observations: firstly, dreams are map created by our brain from the fragments of reality which highlight problems, solutions, fears and behavioral patterns of reality. And secondly, people undergo a lot of stress and trauma trying to deal with recurring dreams as it is something they do not openly talk about to others. This brought forward the problem statement: what if the unconscious could influence and help determine the conscious?

Description
Umbra is a platform that makes dreams universal by initiating conversations and creating a community of dreams divided by categories predominantly for people with PTSD, OCD, epilepsy, or anxiety. A gradually escalating alarm slowly transitions you from the unconscious to a hypnopompic stage enabling you to remember and record your dreams. It normalizes the stress and trauma faced by presenting the user with dreams similar to theirs and initiating a conversation between the dreamers. With a continuously expanding database, dreams can be openly shared creating communities based on similar experiences of the users. Umbra strives to encourage the act of being open with dreams because one single dream entry can easily be a large support system to someone else.

Advice
See. No. Really. Open your eyes wide and see. Observe and really focus. Focus on things that go unseen. Hear, but more importantly, Listen. Listen to people tell their stories. Dream, until you don’t know what reality is. Resonate and really feel it. Fall. Ten get up. And fall again. But say yes to everything. Experience everything because that is the ONLY way to grow and learn. So keep learning and applying the knowledge in interesting ways until you create something magical.

Want to know more about Kruti Mehta? 

Website | Instagram