My name is Ibby Tarafdar I’m the creative director
and founder of Tarafdar studios. We are a design studio specialising
in brand identity. We design many different
things from logos to apparel design to social media campaigns and graphics.
When I was in education, I didn’t really like being confined to times of 9-5
and just working to rules, I was never a guy that followed rules so when I graduated
university I was like finally, I just want to be free, I just want to do my own thing.
And, being a creative I always felt like creativity can’t be boxed in.
So I was like, you know what? I’m just going to try it on my own.
One of the biggest challenges I had, especially when I started off my career, was getting
people to understand the power of good design. All of my design inspiration was from the US,
and the US, you know, they’re very brand aware. So trying to communicate
that in Cardiff to people was, really hard. But then over time I just let my work do the
talking and people started to understand. Being able to handle rejection,
throughout my whole career I had a bunch of nos from so many different people.
I had nos from the same people over and over again, but I didn’t for one second,
I didn’t get depressed, for one second I didn’t get discouraged.
I just kept going and I think being able to handle rejection is something as an
entrepreneur you need to get used to. And finally, I think that idea of
nothing is promised is a challenge in itself because every day as an entrepreneur
you have to make things happen. Nothing is promised, nothing is given to you,
you’ve got to go out and make things work. So I think a lot of people will
have to learn how to deal with that quite early on because nothing is promised.
I made my business stand out from the crowd by just being myself.
Authenticity, everything I’ve done is the way I do things in my personal life and in my work life.
So, I think the biggest thing that works for me is authenticity because no one can replicate you.
Just doing the work, you know, I would let my work do the talking.
I would do the work even when the work wasn’t needed so, I feel like that was
the ultimate way of standing out, is just letting your work, your craft,
your business, yourself, just speak for itself. And more later on, I think in the last few years,
moving into this studio space, creating a space where people can actually come in and experience
what’s going on in my mind, see my design work, see the way I think definitely made me stand out.
So, growing up one of my biggest role models was Floyd Mayweather, he was the highest paid athlete,
one of the greatest boxers of our generation and is somebody I really looked up to.
In 2017 I made a logo for Floyd Mayweather’s biggest fighter, Gervonta Tank Davis.
Already that alone was a massive achievement for me but one story, one moment that really stood out
was, I went to London to visit the team and I made a hat with Gervonta Tank Davis’ logo on the hat.
I took it to London, I gave it to Tank and Tank wore it the next day at the press
conference next to Floyd Mayweather when all the cameras, all the media, all the press was out.
And, me being from Cardiff, I really felt like that was the moment seeing my work
on the big stage, I felt like ‘wow’ this is when everything had paid off because
I had the vision, I had done the work, I took the risk by going to London and I delivered the work.
So, I really felt like that was the one moment that my career had changed because since that day,
that’s when all the doors started to open.
I think fear, everyone is scared of doing something different,
especially when you’re going to start your own business or just do something different.
Fear is always going to be there, but failure is part of the process.
The amount of times I have failed, before that Tank project people don’t
know that there’s so many other failures that I had, so many projects that could
have made it big but they didn’t make it. I feel like, just embracing failure is part
of the process if you’re an entrepreneur, failure and success go hand in hand.
I’m one of them guys, I didn’t access any services when I was starting my business,
I just had this mindset of ‘I need to do everything on my own, no handouts’.
But looking back, there’s so many services and support systems out there in Wales,
like Big Ideas Wales, that are there to help us and to help us grow our business.
The first thing you need is self-belief. You need to believe in yourself because if
you don’t believe in yourself, nobody’s believing in you.
That’s definitely one thing that I always had, even though I didn’t have the work
I had the belief, the work just comes after. Also as an entrepreneur I feel like you need to be
inspired, so whether that’s through books, whether that’s through travelling, whether that’s through
people, whether that’s through watching something, you need to have a source of inspiration.
Once you find your passion, once you discover your business you need to be dedicated,
you need to be one hundred percent dedicated, you need to make sure that nothing can stop you,
so dedication is definitely one thing that entrepreneurs need, which leads to
my next point which is patience. Patience. As an entrepreneur, you’re going to go through
ups and downs and you definitely need patience because everything that I’ve spoken about in this
whole video, everything I’ve mentioned, it didn’t just come overnight, it came over ten years.
So, patience is really one of them things as an entrepreneur, you need to embrace patience.