Anushka Tendolkar

About

Anushka Tendolkar is an Indian designer, art director, and illustrator, currently based in London. Her work spans branding, experience design, storytelling, and systems thinking with over six years of professional experience. She has worked independently crafting visual narratives for global clients including Vogue, Adidas, and Adobe, while also leading branding and UI/UX projects working full-time within tech startups.

Her personal practice is rooted in the philosophy of play and the emotional residue of everyday life, informed by a deep love for maximalism, pop culture, biophilia, and evolving ideas of identity. Her visual language is vibrant, layered, and often challenges conventional modes of communication through bold aesthetics and storytelling.

Anushka’s work is cross-disciplinary- from photography, film, 3D and digital art to print, packaging, and illustration. Notable projects include a global collaboration with Vogue, a capsule collection of illustrated t-shirts for Warping Theories, an exhibition for DesignxDesign 20 under 35 in India, and features in Mia Cinelli’s academic book published by Bloomsbury, Adobe Max, Vogue India, Elle, and Grazia.

She recently completed her MA in Digital Direction at the Royal College of Art with Draping Draupadi, a multimedia project exploring nostalgia and the liminality of South Asian diasporic perspectives through the lens of cultural fashion. The project aims to de-fossilize fragmented post-colonial identities, inviting physical presence and participation to blur the line between spectator and artwork.

At the core of this work is Anushka’s debut film, ‘How to Drape a Saree’- an experimental documentary/visual essay that premiered at the British Film Institute in July 2025. Proposing the ‘saree’ as both metaphor and vessel, the film reclaims cultural fashion as a living archive of resistance, generational memory, and community- rather than mere costume.

Play remains central to her creative ethos, not only as a method but as a mindset- fueling her personal explorations in illustration and visual experimentation across mediums. She’s currently exploring new collaborations at the intersection of design, art and technology to create impact.