The brief of the project was to design the brand identity for India Design 2008, a design event organized by Ogaan events supposed to take place for the first time in Delhi.
I was initially apprehensive about working on this project because I wanted to work on a publication design project. Nevertheless, I decided that I would find a way to make the project interesting for myself. It would also be a great learning opportunity to be working on the brand identity of such a large design event. I was also looking forward to being a part of a design firm.
A major source of inspiration for me was the work produced by the design firm Johnson Banks in London. The articles they write on their blog explore current discourses in logo and identity design. I was particularly inspired by the idea of a flexible identity system in which logo is not the star of the show.
In this day and age, with so much information and so little time on our hands, I think there is some degree of logo-fatigue. As the audience that the event caters to is ‘design-friendly,’ I felt that this was a good opportunity to play with and push today’s idea of brand identity. I was quite averse to slapping the logo mindlessly on every piece of communication. Rather, I was interested in creating a language of colour and form that would hold the entire communication together through a playful variation of elements.
In retrospect, working on my diploma project was a wonderful opportunity for me to finally put all the learning to practical use. Apart from actually designing forms, learning to approach and break down a problem was an invaluable experience that I only got better at with time.
