Their TV ads with catchy, simple jingles of “It’s gone!” enthralled me as a child. The message was clear even to my pre-teenage mind : “If you apply Amrutanjan balm where it hurts, plain will be gone!”

I’m not going to dig into the re-branding per se and why they did it and the pros and cons of throwing away the “It’s Gone!” and bringing in “Pure Healthy Essence”. [ I don't know how the latter replaces the former but I'm sure there must have been a brief. ]

The old Amrutanjan logo that has been replaced looked like this :

Image from http://amrutanjansince1893.blogspot.com/

Compared to the new logo that has been released, I still prefer the old one. It is simple, it works in black and white, is easy to remember and focuses on the “Since 1893″, which, for a household brand like Amrutanjan, is a key factor in enabling trust. The solid shape, while not unique, accords it integrity, as does the solid color.

The old logo on Amrutanjan products used to look like this :

Image from http://www.drugneed.com/amrutanjan-health-care-amrutanjan-pain-balm25gm-amrutanjan-p-2256.html

Image from http://www.ayurveda-beauty-care.com/en/balms-oinments/ayurvedic-pain-balm-amrutanjan-strong-9-grams-p-762.html

As seen from the above, the application of the identity was simple and could be further built upon to differentiate the various sub brands. Moving on to the new identity – I dare you to believe this is real.

The Amrutanjan website explains it using the following image / description [ click for larger view ]:

To my eye, it seems that Amrutanjan, in an effort to get back the customers it has been losing, is trying to do only one thing here : attempting to position itself as a brand for young people by using colors and shapes that Amrutanjan thinks the young people like and identify with. Light greens and blues and shiny glass ball. I can understand this – their hearts are in the right places but their designer isn’t. The designer could have translated this need / part of the brief into a much better visual design. Instead, the logo designer has gone ahead and included all possible cliches in the worst visual representation possible.

While I might be able to make peace with the above explanation, I am unable to wrap my head around the typeface usage. Their “Know more about our identity” page explains : “Cursive typography to bring in modernity for easier brand recall and youth connect.” Unfortunately, just using a “cursive” typeface does not do much. The placement, the particular style of cursive selected, the size of the font, etc. are huge determinants of how the final logo will look and who the final identity will appeal to.

It does work on the level of easier brand recall though – because it is so badly executed.

The “shiny ball” is being called the symbol for nature’s essence. Probably because it has blue and green – which are supposed to represent the sky and the green earth and some yellow thrown in to maybe represent sunlight and the red to maybe represent blood. [ These are just guesses, I do not have access to the creative brief. ] Overall, the “shiny ball” ends up looking like a marble. But children in India no longer play the game of “kanchaas”. On a more practical note, if the company / logo designer believes that this approach with multiple colors and shades is feasible in terms of translation and application across all media, then they wouldn’t mind some shading in the logo [ this will become relevant below ].

This logo re-design engagement looks like one of those where the designer probably will not show the work in their portfolio because the client picked the bad design. Of course I am being generous but it could be a possible scenario because I have not been able to trace the agency / designer who did this.

Here’s what I would have done [ and this is without the brief, so please excuse the wild guesses ].

Since Amrutanjan – as a brand name – is very Indian and constitutes a meaning – approximately “something that is pure / like ‘amrut’” – I would have included that in my design brief. The additional “Pure Healthy Essence”, which avoidable, could also be represented by the same shapes / colors as used to represent the Amrutanjan name. I would have kept the design “Indian”.

To make the logo more friendly – with respect to the typeface – I would make it a lower case brand name “amrutanjan”.

For the logo, I would have kept the shape simple and the base colors simple as well and included shading to bring in the “modern” and “youthful” look that Amrutanjan was looking for. Something like this maybe. [ disclaimer : this is just an idea for the Amrutanjan logo - I have not been in communication with anyone at Amrutanjan or their branding agency. This design is representative of what could have been done. I haven't spent more than 30 minutes on the concept discovery and sketching and final design creation in Photoshop as opposed to my upto 30 working days timeline with multiple permutations and combinations after the concept and creative direction has been finalized. ]

I know this rendition is not perfect but this is only attempt number one and can only be taken forward when there is feedback forthcoming from the brand, which in this case is non-existent. For a brief description on keywords and ideas used to come up with the above : pure, health, essence, element, healing, nectar / amrit / amrut. The symbols elements used represent these keywords and represent Amrutanjan as a more modern brand / company than before and still keeps some of the trust / integrity / solid shapes and colors from the old logo. The typeface gives it an old-world / traditional look while maintaining a formal look without completely giving in to shapeless cursive employed earlier. As a healthcare brand, in my opinion, they should hang on to some form of formality.

Short blog post on the branding aspect can be read on Strategic Moves. I also believe that their ads on the company homepage of Amrutanjan are in bad taste [ there's a small square-boxed arrow on the bottom right of the shiny-ball-logo on the green Amazonian photo panel ]. Bordering on sexual connotation. Made me uncomfortable.

What do you think went wrong with the Amrutanjan logo re-design? Do you have inside information on how the project progressed?

Diwali wallpaper : 640 x 960 for your iPhone 4
Diwali wallpaper : 960 x 800 for your Nexus One
Diwali wallpaper : 1024 x 768
Diwali wallpaper : 1280 x 960
Diwali wallpaper : 1440 x 900
Diwali wallpaper : 1920 x 1080
Diwali wallpaper : 2560 x 1600

The previous years’ Diwali Wallpapers are available here : 2010, 2009, 2008, 2006 and 2005.

A very happy, prosperous and successful year ahead to all my readers.

Please keep in mind that these are made available only for personal use on your desktops and phones. For commercial usage, please contact Naina on naina@aside.in to discuss usage and payment terms. The image used in the wallpaper has been shot by Naina.

I bank with HDFC and when they got in touch with me for a logo design project for a new product that they were launching, I was excited. They were launching something called HDFC RED or HDFC Real Estate Destination – an online portal for searching real estate – in the most easy layman terms.

Apart from having the team fill-in my own logo design creative brief, I was also given other brand guidelines that had been pre-decided. Additional information, in the beginning, is always helpful.

I started with sketches based on keywords – the first stage of sketching is to determine whether the client and the logo designer are on the same page and the direction for the engagement can be set. [ click on the images below to view larger versions ]

One of the guidelines was that the HDFC RED logo should not be influenced by the parent brand’s logo. The team was working with another logo designer as well.
Before the project started, I met the team once in New Delhi and once in Bombay. Apart from these two meetings, all conversation and discussions around the engagement were carried out either over the phone or via email. After the above sketches were reviewed, I refined the direction for this phase and sent them the following.

[ the above image is clickable for a larger version ]

The team came back with more feedback and from the conversations, I was able to gather that in terms of the process methodology that I was using to design and develop the visual identity for the brand, the team was not comfortable with it / not used to it / was not sure where this was leading. I will admit that in my enthusiasm, I might have sent them more options than are typically “handlable”. All this is in retrospect and it WAS almost two years ago!

I sketched some more and sent them the following sketches / scribbles. [ click for a larger versions ]

This particular iteration yielded enthusiasm from the team and we were finally working with something that looked promising. Following color variations and small edits to the lion were made and sent to the client. Meanwhile, the HDFC RED website was also being developed and was influencing the decisions revolving around brand color – but only temporarily. Don’t miss the small changes in the shape of the Lion’s head.

This led to further placement / layout / color and shape iterations. Lots of them. Some typographic finishing and variations were also included in the logo drafts.

[ the above image is clickable for a larger version ]

At this stage, the team decided to ask me for an additional concept to work with – something fresh. Since this was in addition to what was on the contract, which we had signed in the beginning for this logo design engagement, a fresh contract was drawn up and a new deliverable was added. The team at HDFC RED was thoroughly professional and even though there seemed to be many decision-makers, I always interacted with just one touchpoint. Following are sketches and semi-finalized versions of the second concept using a different set of keywords.

[ the above image is clickable for a larger version ]

The above concept was related to “heart” and “housing” – I was aiming for a depiction of the various ventricles and auricles, the one below was related to “building bridges” between what the target audience needs and what HDFD RED aims to deliver.

Some more ideas that were presented :

And then there was a bunch of additional sketches based on a different concept altogether. By this time it was April 2010 – the engagement had started in February 2010 and the original estimate was for completion in 30 working days. Considering that I was working with a large organization, this was a better scenario than I had anticipated.

[ the above image is clickable for a larger version ]

[ the above image is clickable for a larger version ]

Following was the final shape / logo draft that was presented, after which, the client finalized a design that the other logo designer was working on.

The team still bought over the copyrights to the Lion design that we had worked on. You can see the logo designed by the other designer, on the HDFC RED website. This is one of my favorite logo design engagements since I started implementing my skills in the area of brand design – not only because I really like the Lion’s head logo design or that the team was excellent to work with – but mainly because I got to learn a lot. Working with a big brand puts things in perspective and you realize the possibilities of how an engagement can progress and where you can take it. And this is when I am not aware of what the client-side team really thinks / had to go through at their end.

Following is how the logo evolved. [ Having named the brand, the business element of real-estate had to be included in the visual identity, without making it seem like a run-of-the-mill real estate company ].

Below : The first sketch in this logo development process led to the final shape as well. Rare, but usually the first option can be literally path-breaking for developing the identity, even when it does not translate to the final logo. [ click on image for larger view ]

I was doodling when a conversation on Twitter, with Sumantra Ray aka @upjaaudimaag [ which literally translates to "a fertile brain" ] gave me a visual reference of the Burj Al Arab towers in Dubai, where, it is claimed that is you stand at the top, you can see so far away into the distance that the curvature of the earth is visible. I conveyed the same meaning to the client via the following graphic. [ click on image for larger view ]

Following are various options for typography, color combinations and shades, logo and brand name placement and final shape suggestions.

The decision to include the letter “S” was made because of higher identification probability in a cluttered marketplace. While there is no direct reference on “buildings” or “construction”, the shapes lend themselves to the idea.

The logo was presented in two placement formats, which the client will modify depending on display media.

An example of the business card, which is only a graphic representation, not the final design :

Having an exceptional client is as important to an identity design & development projects as it is to have an exceptional designer. Without Sahil’s professionalism and constant co-operation with the brief and the meetings and the innumerable emails, this projects would not have been accomplished as smoothly. Thanks Sahil and here’s to a hearing great things about Sigante! Cheers!

The letterpress company is @themandatepress with their website at http://www.themandatepress.com/.

I think I chose their cheapest option – believe me – letterpress goodies are expensive – with a gold edge, which, in retrospect, to my cheap-Indian brain – could have been better spent – it shows nicely in the images below – after I’ve told you – but when I hand out a card to someone, it’s not evident at all. Also, the embossing / the letterpress wasn’t as “impressive” / deeply embossed as I had imagined – which is probably my bad – I had all these ideas built up in my head about how the cards would look. I was thinking that the main “n” on the card would really stand out – be depressed deep into the card.

This was my first brush with letterpress and while I was a little disappointed with the result, and I will not be giving it another spin anytime soon, I definitely want to do it again.

I also got a call from someone today who wanted me to design their logo. They got in touch with me after one of their colleagues showed them this business card of mine. So I guess, it probably did have some effect after all. Disclaimer : I am not very big on the giving out of business cards and only ever hand them out when someone specifically asks me for one. After all, once you’ve met me, you don’t forget me, hence making the card redundant. I am also very easy to get in touch with, as my mobile number and email id are on the web for all to see / use.

The company will operate in India and will expand further to South East Asia. The name needed to be conceptual and with an international feel because the target audience would be individuals as well as corporate companies. During the engagement, we also learned that names with two words are impossible to register / trademark in India. I had never created two-worded brand names earlier, but I was not aware of this technicality either.

The inspiration of the brand name came from the Greek “Colossus”. The client identified with the mythology personally and wanted to represent the same in the brand name to some extent.

I started with a mindmap and there were close to 300 permutations and combinations in it.
The words used were related to land, earth, scale, size, large, wealth, build, etc.

The second step was to check for availability of domain names and condense the permutations and combinations to a list of five names that represent the brand’s tone and voice best.

Since all other names presented to the client are unique, I am not able to share them on the blog. But the final name that was chosen, “Sigante”, came from the suggestion of “Xigante”. My notes to client were, “Literally “giant”. I can see that spelling might be an issue but it can also be used as a unique identifier. The only “competition” I can see is from a European consulting firm that calls itself Zigante.” Due to the spelling, we chose to go with “Sigante”. The moment the brand name is finalized, I book the domain on my own and transfer it to the client.

We were also discussing the logo design engagement and further branding story notes were : “A “giant wealth creator”, we could use that to build a logo with a character in it – like a mythological god and keep the identifying keywords specific to strength, posture, foundation, etc. Or we could tie it in with elements related to the earth / land, etc.”

The logo is currently being finalized and tied-in with the brand name, it works beautifully for the brand and it’s prospective target audience.

The biggest challenge in a brand naming engagement, in my opinion, is coming up with a relevant brand name that also has a .com domain available without a squatter on it. Since this is becoming more and more difficult, the art of naming a brand is also becoming tougher with an increased investment in hours spent on the engagement.

Also keep in mind that if you have to check the availability of a particular domain, the best way to do so is to do it from within your dashboard with whichever hosting company you use. I have never had trouble with Dreamhost but I have heard that if you search for the availability of the particular domain using GoDaddy, and if the domain is available, if you don’t book it immediately, there is a high probability that the domain will no longer be available.

What started with a re-design requirements for Media Redefined, which is a social media agency, soon turned into developing the brand for a new product they are launching. The change happened early on in the project and it happened over strategy discussions on where the company was headed. All meetings had all three partners, another friend who is a fantastic creative himself [ although Saurabh's more the writer kind ] and myself.

BRAND NAMING

The name that was finally chosen is DOKITO.
The name is derived from the Greek “dokimasia”, which literally translates to mean “test” in English. But we weren’t after the literal meaning and the derivatives and synonyms bring it back to our main keyword “analytics” and “to assay”. The other keywords were “social, measurement, media, tool, report,” etc.

There was also the consideration to keep in mind that the name should be snappy and new and young and should related to something on the web, without making it a typical Web 2.0 name.

The rest of the components of the word apart from the “doki”, are the Latin “ito”, which literally translates to “go wherever”, which we interpret as “travel / discovery” etc. which can also help in the name / brand story and helps connect with the logo that the app takes the client on a “journey” of discovery from confusion to clarity by delivering analytics reports. Without knowing the roots of the words, “dokito” also sounds like a “docket” or something to do with “documents / reports”, which is one of the things the apps does – delivers reports of social media analytics.

The Mindmap that was made for this brand naming engagement was the largest ever – I believe it shows how more and more difficult it is becoming to acquire domain names. Did a lot of searching!

I also checked for language variations and any negative connotations for all combinations in “dokito” and everything seems to be pointing to the positive. Doki. Ito. To. Dokit. Do. All good.

LOGO DESIGN

Since we had initially started with discussing the logo design for Media Redefined, the initial sketches were relevant to the letters M and R.

After these, we moved to Dokito and we had one idea, which fit in to almost all the criteria we had – visual, placement, layout, representation of meaning and we all loved it – atleast by the end of the process! It was the following image below, which had been brought up while working on the MR logo.

In these iterations we were trying various placements and typography and maybe better integration of the visual with the type.

I’d also like to mention that even before the client had given the go ahead on the name dokito as the final name, I had already booked the domain. The small $10 charge is nothing compared to when you recommend this wonderful name for a brand and the client loves and the client shares it with someone and then the domain is not available anymore…

I will also mention that the logo in these iterations, the logo visual is not optimized yet. That happened in Illustrator later on.

The last image above appealed the most to all involved stakeholders.

Further refinement to the logo and the design of a landing page, till the team launches the Beta – to allow visitors to sign on to receive notifications. They also needed a quick mockup of a business card to use immediately. [ We completely missed out on including the website url and email! It really was a quick requirement. ]

And don’t forget to signup to find out more about Dokito if you’re interested in social media – I can hardly wait for my beta invite – even as an independent designer / photographer or “visual identity specialist”, I am eager to finally find something I can put to use for my online presence. Thanks @praval and @gmishra and @honeytech ans @simple_sy

Shefaly has been one of the best clients I have worked with in my career as a logo designer. The design-world would be a better place if we have more like her.

Project Timeline :

75 days : started discussions & initial emails on 15th of July and final files delivered this last week of September.

Brief about the brand name & the creative direction :

Utplava is a Sanskrit word that roughly translated to English means : a boat, a leap, a channel for water. The boutique advisory and consulting business has been around for over ten years and has been attached to Shefaly’s personal name. It will now be separate from Shefaly’s personal name, hence the requirement of a new brand name. The brand name itself is unique and has rich meaning, which made the logo design & development process a little easier to handle.

From sketches to final logo :

It started with hand-doodles I scribbled – see all here.

I picked out three typefaces from MyFonts : Recherche, Origins and Sheila.

Till this point, the logo was almost finalized – one of the last three from above. But then, I had a dream. The dream was so vivid that I thought I’d shown those iterations to Shefaly. Then I started drafting this blog post and realized those iterations were not in the folder at all. I quickly mocked up a couple of versions – the two images below – and emailed them to Shefaly.

In the end, the logo we finally went with is this :

CreativeGaga is one of India’s only magazine dedicated to graphic design and graphic arts as well as other visual media like sculpture and photography. The best part is that the magazine is very well-designed and raises the bar very high for design magazine standards when it comes to magazines designed and produced in India for the Indian audience. I am lucky to have been featured in the magazine in the branding section. I was fortunate to work with Saurabh Kejriwal ( @simple_sy ) on the story and we picked up one of the logo design case studies from my blog and created an article out of that. Here are photographs of the article. [ click on images for larger sizes ]

Since CreativeGaga is one of India’s only niche magazine in the design space, if you have a product or service specifically targeted to this design audience, you could place your ads with them as well! If you’d like to subscribe, visit this link.

To find out more about CreativeGaga, you can visit their website and their Facebook page where they have contests and giveaways and announcements, as well as their @creativegaga Twitter account.

Thanks Nitin for letting me share my design experience and case study with your audience and I hope I can now get you to feature some of my photography as well!

I was trawling through various “Happy Diwali” emails in my inbox when I chanced upon one sent by the CEO of Ocimum Biosolutions. The email visual was using a Diwali wallpaper from my blog. No credit was provided and the email footer mentioned,

“The information contained in this email and any attachments is confidential and may be subject to copyright or other intellectual property protection. If you are not the intended recipient, you are not authorized to use or disclose this information, and we request that you notify us by reply mail or telephone and delete the original message from your mail system.”

This is what came in the email :

And this is the original wallpaper : link to original Diwali wallpaper 2008 blogpost.

I was appalled. It was also hilarious. Did the CEO not know or was she turning a blind eye? Conjecture on my part but how am I to know? I asked my lawyer to send them an email as well as a physical letter / notice with stipulations on the time they had to revert.

The email from Ocimum Biosolutions with the plagiarized Diwali greeting was received on 1st November 2010.
My lawyer sent them an email on 1st November 2010. The timeline for response was two weeks, which means my lawyer or I should have heard from them by 14th / 15th November. The physical notice was sent to them on 11th November 2010.

Not a word from their side.

Did Ocimum Biosolutions hire a bad designer who believes that the internet is public domain and anything can be filched? That designer should be fired. Does Ocimum Biosolutions believe that design is a worthless process and hence it is ok to copy and paste another designer’s work? Ocimum should spend more time understanding how design can help – and they should hire me for the same. Did Ocimum Biosolutions not read my blog post carefully or the copyright notice on each page? Ocimum should hire people who can read.

The CEO of Ocimum Biosolutions is a very well-networked lady on all social and business networking platforms and because I am in her network, I received her Diwali email. I haven’t had any other contact with the lady and hence cannot judge what went wrong.

The sad part is that this is just one case of plagiarism by Ocimum Biosolutions that I have come across. They might be plagiarizing more and there are definitely more companies like Ocimum Biosolutions who are plagiarizing not only my work but the work of other designers as well and we will never find out.