Interview | Aamir Shehzad At this moment, SparkDigitus and Tesselate together have capabilities to put their finger into any vertical, while Banking, Telecom and Government being their core target. "We grow according to our vision. We want to get better, not necessarily bigger. “Quality” is in our DNA or, in the wise words of Aristotle, we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit". Please brief us about your career journey and the vision with which SparkDigitus was set up? I am a firm believer in creating your own success. As a self taught man, curiosity and learning were - and still are - crucial aspects of my evolution. I fell in love with my destiny in 2006 and the episode is pretty much like in that famous Einstein quote: “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.” Rewinding a little, early in my life I had glimpses of what awaits beyond the design board. My training within the industry began actually in 2004, but my “official” career began in 2006 in a Bahrain-based agency, Vahid Associates, pioneering from the first day on their first ever animation project. During the next few years at Vahid, I was mentored to cut above the rest as a designer. The following job roles unleashed and polished the talent and paved the way for my future role as a founder of Spark Digitus. I spent a lot of time during those early years, after work, learning and understanding new softwares, technologies, and design. For me the one motivating factor was to improve and to constantly do better. This attitude has been ever since one of my main drivers. When I look back now, I think there were several areas where I was a pioneer for which I can proudly claim to have been among the first in Bahrain. Working with Vahid Associates, we created the first digital annual reports for Batelco in 2006, and won the Bahrain eGovernment award for that. Back then, there were very few people who had an understanding of digital or who were driving their business towards digital. Those early years were crucial. My mentorship with Vahid was paramount because I learned there to exercise my eye for details, the eloquent speech, the immaculate content delivery. Soon there was recognition. People were talking about my zeal and anticipation of content needs. The reputation as a creative fountainhead soon followed. In 2011, I started a company called Auriga in partnership and evolving from there we started Spark Digitus the next year. By this time, of course, I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do. There are many agencies that started at that time and have not survived, but one of the things that sets us apart and which I believe is the reason we are still here, is that we always believed that the work we do must be of international standards and we have tried to maintain that. There are many others who do that, but what makes you different? We are forward thinkers and innovators. We are very selective with our work because we cannot accept anything but excellence. Excellence takes time, friction, discovery but the results are propelling our clients beyond any expectations. I can say that we are partners in vision. At this moment we have the capabilities to tap any market, any industry, any challenge. But I believe in focus in terms of the target audience, we have our core areas of specialization - Financial, Telecom and Government. We understand the requirement of our clients from the top of their potential, imagining their industry ten or maybe twenty years ahead. “How do you create value for vision?” is what we ask ourselves. We are very much “customer first” in our outlook: the simplest and the most engaging experiences for the most complex challenges. I have established at Spark Digitus and Tessellate an innovation process, a sort of “futureproof reversed engineering” where we focus on customer needs but we look at them from a future perspective. We leverage the uncertainty around clients’ preferences and bring business-clarity using our keen core for technology, user experience and our out-of-the-box creativity. The process actually mirrors my two companies - Spark Digitus, the tech body, and Tessellate, the creative heart. By understanding their business, we have helped our clients achieve their goals. To dive in deeper, one of our major strengths is our understanding of user experience. This has helped us when we worked with some of the biggest names in the region. Amongst others, some of the companies we have worked with are STC, Riyad Bank, Ithmaar Bank, Al Faisaliah Group KSA, TRA, Zain, EDB and Batelco to name a few. In Saudi and Bahrain, for example, we always find ourselves pitching along the top players and these are “those” moments when you have to pull out the big guns. We pour our passion into the smallest detail and it works every single time. So, I would say, we have created a space that carries both - uniqueness and a standard of excellence - we have a style that is our own which cannot be replicated. We approach solutions by defining the proper user journey. It helps us define a direction as to how we can design an outstanding experience. We ended up redefining workplaces in complex Sharepoint projects. We provided highly customised content through our websites and mobile apps. We designed highly targeted marketing campaigns and lead generation campaigns that exceeded expectations. For this unconstrained era, the most important feature for your digital annual report is to “honor your leadership”. To give our clients (and our clients’ clients) the very best possible experiences, we leverage our star-focus in UX and the skills of an incredibly diverse, remarkably talented group of awarded creatives and portray your achievements and major milestones in striking visual stories. We are ahead of our time and create unique futuristic experiences with a keen eye focused on what to innovate and to create our unique path. 12 <strong>Sep</strong>tember-<strong>Oct</strong>ober <strong>2019</strong>
I have established at Spark Digitus and Tessellate an innovation process, a sort of “future-proof reversed engineering” where we focus on customer needs but we look at them from a future perspective. <strong>Sep</strong>tember-<strong>Oct</strong>ober <strong>2019</strong> 13
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