The longer version

Atti in Tamil is an informal get-together with friends, and that is exactly how we wanted the event to feel.

Instead of inviting design leaders to speak while everyone else listens, every edition has a theme and a set of activities designed around it. Designers participate, make things, compete, collaborate and simply have fun with design.

We have hosted 4 editions so far, each receiving a strong response from the Chennai design community. Our space was originally planned for around 80 participants, but the latest Design Atti drew 120 designers — 50% beyond what we had planned for.

What started as an internal idea has grown into an event designers actively look forward to.

The Academy started from two needs that came together naturally.

First, we genuinely wanted to teach. There are plenty of design courses, but early-career designers rarely get to learn from people solving real client problems every day. We wanted students to understand not just tools and process, but how design actually works inside a studio — briefs, reviews, feedback, deadlines and collaboration.

The second reason was practical: finding strong junior designers was becoming increasingly difficult. Instead of only searching for talent, we decided to help build it. Designers who perform well through the programme can naturally become part of our hiring pipeline.

With the full support of Terralogic, Lollypop’s parent company, the initiative has now completed 5 batches and mentored 100+ aspiring designers.

Popshot started in 2019 from a simple idea: create purely for the love of design.

Anil, my mentor, and I kicked off the initiative as a space where designers could explore concepts without worrying about client requirements, timelines or practical constraints. We would take an idea, push the visual direction and bring it to life through motion.

We gave the initiative its own identity and logo, turning Popshot into a recognizable creative property within Lollypop.

Over time, more designers joined in and the team has now created and animated 30+ Popshots. The work gained strong traction on social media, helped grow Lollypop's design audience and, unexpectedly, some of those experiments even turned into project enquiries for the studio.

What started as an outlet for creative exploration became a way to showcase how Lollypop thinks when there is no brief telling us what to make.