Karuna Sharma
Creative Director · Brand & Packaging Design
Founder, Karuna Designs · Orange County, California
Education & recognition
- BFA, Graphic Design — California State University, Fullerton, 2007
- Published Artist — City of Los Angeles Dept. of Cultural Affairs, LGBT Heritage & Asian Pacific American Heritage Calendar & Cultural Guides (2013, 2017, 2018)
- Selected Artist — Cerritos College Alumni Art Exhibition, 2021
- Speaker — USC, Coming of Age: Models of Pride Youth Conference, 2013
- Peace Over Violence — community engagement, 2013–2015
Expertise
- Packaging & product design, production-ready
- Brand identity & visual systems
- Retail display, planograms, point of purchase
- Amazon, Shopify & e-commerce creative
- Campaign, email & education materials
- Creative direction for small in-house teams
Tools & process
- Concept: ChatGPT prompts and Adobe Firefly for directions
- Craft: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign to finished art
- Build: Claude for sites, systems and writing
- Figma · Shopify · Amazon Seller Central · Premiere Pro
Profile
"I find the solution with compassion. Then I design with it."
Karuna leads brand and packaging design for beauty, wellness and consumer product companies, with two decades of work sold through prestige, specialty and mass retail, and on Amazon. She builds the whole system: identity, primary and secondary packaging, retail display, e-commerce creative and the education and campaign materials that carry a launch.
As the sole in-house designer at Vitality Institute from 2019 to 2022, she built the VI Peel brand system and carried it across six product lines, including VI Derm Beauty, VI Peel Body and The Brown Skin Agenda, while the company grew from roughly $200K to $20M in revenue. Earlier work includes packaging and retail display for Markwins Beauty (wet n wild, LA Colors, Black Radiance), production design for Murad, and digital creative for Beachbody, Intuit and Kerr | Metrex.
She concepts with AI, finishes by hand, and works from Orange County, California, with teams anywhere.
Career
2007 — presentSelected clients
What colleagues say
Every brand has a story. So does every collaboration.
Karuna was a huge part of a rebranding project and always delivered excellent work. She is extremely creative, adaptable, and great to work with.
She always comes to the plate with multiple options, so you're not left being the only one trying to come up with creative ideas. She is also very personable.
Her work is amazing, and she really does set a quality bar for the rest of the team. Having Karuna on your team breeds success.
Karuna is truly a team player with zero ego who can handle a fast-paced work environment with positivity and grace.
She has a knack for taking limited information from clients and creating several options to meet their needs. One of the best designers with whom I've worked.
She is thorough, detail-oriented, and genuine. She demonstrates calm professionalism when handling the more sensitive aspects of her job and always offers more than required.
She can take an assignment and solve it with multiple ideations, both visually and conceptually, on strategy. She's an asset to any organization.
Her attention to detail is among the best that I've ever seen. Any company that employs Karuna would have a huge asset joining their business.
An exceptional talent in the field of graphic design, with a keen eye for detail, creativity, and a strong understanding of design principles.
During Karuna's time freelancing at AAAZA, she consistently demonstrated a strong work ethic and a positive attitude.
Working with Karuna is like sitting under a shady tree on a warm day: comfortable and easy.
Karuna is a great person to work with. She is helpful, hard-working, and an excellent team player.
Selected from LinkedIn recommendations · full text on LinkedIn
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