Kartike Buttan

Kartike Buttan

Background

Education & Experience

I'm a multidisciplinary designer and product thinker who enjoys building ideas from concept to execution. My background spans product design, visual design, and entrepreneurship, with hands-on experience across the full creative and product lifecycle — from ideation and user research to design, launch, and iteration. I've taken on multiple freelance projects, completed an internship, and co-founded a startup after securing early-stage funding, giving me real-world exposure to both creative problem-solving and business decision-making.

On the technical side, I work comfortably with Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and DaVinci Resolve, and I have basic working knowledge of HTML and Python. I enjoy blending design with technology to create thoughtful, usable, and visually compelling experiences.

Beyond tools, my strengths lie in entrepreneurship, product management, marketing, and lean, goal-directed design. I'm experienced in project planning, UI/UX, web design, photography, videography, and editing, and I thrive where strategy, creativity, and execution intersect. I'm especially drawn to projects that prioritize clarity, usability, and impact — and to teams that value curiosity, iteration, and intentional design.

Molten metal pouring from a foundry ladle, sparks flying
Motives

A design legacy, cast in gold

I still remember my very first design project over two decades ago. When I was three years old, my mom, an interior designer, took me to work with her. She sat me down at a laptop, opened up Microsoft Paint, and gave me three very important tasks: draw a circle, a square, and a triangle. My dexterity had only just begun developing, and moving the mouse around felt like the most difficult challenge I had ever faced. When my mom came back, she was greeted by three shaky, jagged shapes and a screen covered in scribbles.

From that moment on, creativity became a constant part of my life. I was encouraged to explore many artistic pursuits from a young age, though I never really questioned it until I got older and had to choose a career path for myself. While I was deeply interested in STEM and enrolled in Honors and AP courses throughout school, I was equally immersed in artistic passions outside the classroom. Whether I was playing double bass in my school’s philharmonic orchestra or sketching on every spare sheet of paper I could find, I was always creating.

When I asked my mom for guidance about my future, she shared what inspired her own career. Her father, my grandfather, was a goldsmith. He spent countless hours designing jewelry, cutting and shaping materials, melting metal, casting pieces, polishing details, and bringing ideas to life with his hands. Creativity was not simply a hobby in my family. It was a craft passed down through generations. My grandfather’s father was also a creative, and so was the generation before him.

Today, I design because it allows me to honor that legacy. Design is a way for me to remember my family and carry forward the creativity they instilled in me. More than just a career or a job, design is my vocation. It is the way I connect my passion, my purpose, and the generations that came before me.

Hobbies