The success of a name comes from its instant memorability. When it precedes the product or brand experience, it creates an expectation of a certain quality or personality. It prods the instinct, provokes a reaction and directs curiosity. This is triggered by the sound of the name, by employing the appropriate use of phonetic aesthetic.

What are Names Made of?

The Sound of Names

Certain sounds have phonetic properties that appeal to deep-set instinct. The name Google, we argue, has less to do with its derivation from the googol (a very large employing known only to math-heads) and more to do with its resemblance to a baby’s blabber (known to every human). It is clear that the Google identity wears the visage of a curious child by using primary colours and basic shapes that cloaks its world-dominating, and some say sinister ambitions, with a childlike personality.

Similarly, culture (the noise through which the name passes from sender to receiver) can influence how we process a name. Take the case of the brand of mashed instant potato mix we named Vegit. Its brevity incites immediate action–do we hear ‘Just do it’ somewhere? It beckons the consumer to listen to his hunger and act on it instantly, no instruction manual required. The name semantically and phonetically suggests efficiency.

Similarly, a name like Inme immediately paints a picture of a confident but naive, childlike presence. Inme is a pioneer in the summer-camp business in India and they speak of the uniqueness of every child. The name is a simple utterance, designed as self-directed positive rhetoric that is meant to echo in every child—I have [desirable trait] in me!

Making Meaning

But this is not to say that the deeper meanings associated with names don’t work their effect. A name like Vrixa (our name for a human-resources-focused technology fund) has all the phonetic intent to turn heads, as also the x, which phonetically suggests efficiency. It’s a playful take on the Sanskrit ‘vriksha’ meaning tree, because tree names are beloved of venture capital firms, which need to suggest stability and growth at once. By astutely addressing this dimension the name first sets and later entrains a customer’s expectations.

Think Global, Say it Local

Local cues can make brands seem closer and more recognisable. For example the name Minute Khana addresses the ambitions and concerns of a modern homemaker who loves the convenience of ready-to-eat food but also finds the idea alien. While the quickness and convenience is implicit in Minute, it is the Hindi word ‘khana’ which alludes to a wholesome Indian meal that inspires her to include this product in her kitchen.

Another example is our name for Haldiram’s triangular nachos-like chips. Panga, an untranslatable slang usage in Hindi (roughly, a casual confrontation) phonetically echoes the sharp taste and angular shape of the product, giving it the edge of a light-hearted confrontation; not quite playing nice, but always with a wink.

Despite the enthusiastic allusions to tradition and local aesthetics, sometimes it serves the brand to avoid parodying its own culture. Haldiram’s foray into South Indian snacks was done with poise: our name Southern Delights, exemplifies southern restraint as it purveys ‘murukku’ to the North. Yet it has the sound of a small-town eatery that the Indian ear will pick up.

Constraints

…can often be the stimulus for innovation.

Design begins with empathetic conversation, but awkward situations arise when clients have preferences for particular sounds or letters based on feng-shui, astrology or vaastu. Clearly, the High Tech Robotic Systemz, looking to rebrand, needed to communicate their expertise more succinctly without compromising on its youthful energy. But there was a caveat— the name had to be numerologically sound and begin with the ‘th’ sound. We settled on Thebo, suggestive of a robotic pet (and rhyming with ro-bo, as robot was sometimes pronounced).

When the couture brand Ashima Leena decided to launch a pret line, as a daughter brand, it was to be similar in spirit but different in form. It required a link to the established original but also the freedom to be itself. The name Alias neatly resolves the contradiction. Embedded within the name is the abbreviation AL—a cheeky nod to the original brand Ashima Leena. To visually articulate this lineage, the logo itself carries the letters A and L from the Ashima Leena logo and completes the heist.

The Visual Word

Words are heard, and read; but they are also seen. And the way they are spelt or graphically represented augments the force with which they are read or heard. Our name for Haldiram’s healthy ‘namkeen’ snacks Snac Lite economically uses two syllables, doing away with the k to accentuate its ‘liteness’.

Vrixa’s identity also visually buttresses the sound of the x. The sound and look are simultaneous: they are synesthetic, or sensed together in a way that can’t be pried apart. The x marks the spot, and the x multiplies, as the tagline “HR x tech” implies.

Atomistic Naming

The phonetic, semantic and graphic aspects of a name are the ways in which minds, ears and eyes can be drawn to a name. But whole words are not necessary, nor always ideal. The use of word fragments can lend flexibility and precision. From these atomistic units, a new compound can occur, much like a chemist creates one in her lab. Vegit, encountered earlier, is one such.

A fragment can work on its own, too. Exper is our name for a leadership development firm that trains senior, junior or mid-level teams. Their methods involve no classrooms, but are experiential, their advice backed by the experience of the trainers as businessmen, as they help leaders maximise their expressive potential for exponential benefits. Apart from the extensions it suggests, the truncated word fragment Exper is a phonetic exhalation, a whisper, thus achieving a lightness that wholly befits the brand.

However, the best cases are when the chemist has creative influence over the goal of the experiment itself. Read on.

Integral Design

Not always does identity design influence the ethos of a brand. But when it does, the brand’s identity and ethos seem inextricably intertwined, making a telling and authentic statement. A new design school was to be positioned as a Master’s course at the center of design thinking, helping students tackle real world issues through design methods. The brand implores designers to grapple with the complex interactions of society, economy and technology. The name School of Integral Design is just as unassuming as it is profound. It communicates the serious intent of the school clearly by integrating the ethos into its name. The skeletal visual identity echoes this by revealing its structure while allowing ample room for creative play.

The Opportunity

The potency of a name must not be understated; it is the irreducible expression of a brand’s values. At ICD we encourage clients to invest time and effort in naming so that the brand and the consumer are coupled in text, speech and graphic. And in meaning: the word ‘logo’ is derived from the Greek ‘logos’ meaning ‘word’, and also ‘reason’ or ‘meaning’. Identity starts here: a name that points to its logos, and its ethos at the same time.

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They picture: a bicycle; a hand pulled rickshaw; an Ambassador car; and, that most beloved of urban symbols, a three-wheeler scooter rickshaw (TSR in sarkari bhasha; to some foreign tourists, a tuk-tuk). Visitors usually register them with micro-smiles, given with faintly amused approval and without comment.

Deep Design settles in to the soft cushions and runs a speculative eye on the road travelled by these variously-wheeled vehicles. How did these objects of everyday utility turn into what we may call figures of fun?

Visit an appropriately tony gift shop and note that these images are commonplace, reprised repeatedly by designers, named or anonymous. The bicycle is a popular street toy in wire. The Amby, as the Ambassador is affectionately known, appears as a toy, has served as muse to many nameless designers, also to eminent photographer Raghubir Singh who shot a documentary book around it, and celebrated contemporary sculptor Subodh Gupta who cast one in metal. (Gupta’s work frequently references quotidian objects, revealing a grotesque comedy of class manners). The TSR is a curio favourite, and the illustrator’s pet..

There are more such: the little bronze miniatures of coal-heated irons, the massive istri your presswala (the Delhi term for ironing man) flattens your clothes with (pictured); the ‘bhopu’ or air claxon that served as a horn on the TSR long after cars went entirely electric.

The ubiquity of these images, and the certitude of their interpretation, is the reason that my typical guest gets the image, without comment. You could say these images are in the ‘popular culture’ (itself a pop culture term) except that the term ‘popular’ assumes that we know who is or isn’t included.

An American, as a first time visitor, for example, would not warm to the TSR or the Ambassador in the way ‘we’ do. Without the shared reference, the image does not travel from us to him in the manner it travels amongst ourselves. This sort of generally westernised, English-speaking Indian visitors to my drawing room can be expected the access the encoded meaning of the images; the American cannot. We say that these images form an index, a code that is shared by a specific group.

But shared reference is not enough to enter an object in the index; nor is the property of antiqueness, or ordinariness, sufficient. A Honda car may feature as a toy car, but has zero status as an image for consumption.

To be indexed for enjoyment, the property that an image/object needs is what I call distance, a degree of separation from the object, so that it is taken out of our everyday, our present. Thus, the TSR driver and the ironing man cannot be expected to share in our jollity on their everyday tools being picturised, as innocent, glorious or fun.

The meaning is created not by the shared reference of the coal iron or TSR as objects, but by the distance from them, shared by members of a class that is characterising the other. By imaging and framing these objects, a class further distances and separates itself from the other (in this example, the dhobi and rickshawala class) by emphasising the object’s foreign-ness, and viewing it with a ironic, if affectionate gaze.

a class further distances and separates itself from the other by emphasising the object’s foreign-ness, and viewing it with a ironic, if affectionate gaze.

So the shared meaning is in the gaze, not in the object.

Class is thus a fecund source of image codes. Image and identity make each other. The objects both indicate and sustain a kind of intra-class signalling, making the mundane exotic, and the adjacent foreign. The result is the creation of a vernacular.

Meanings can also be reinforced by members of powerful outside groups. The westerner’s fascination with the TSR signals or reinforces its value; the class that can access and align itself westwards, now finds redoubled enjoyment in it. A kind of inter-class signalling.

Not just objects but styles and aesthetic themes can emerge from class or group signalling. Businesses can appropriate the codes thus created.

Not just objects but styles and aesthetic themes can emerge from class or group signalling. Businesses can appropriate the codes thus created.

In India, we recognise as a kind of kitsch the styles that emerged from Hindi cinema posters, now lost, as we do the swaggering (or swooning) dialogue that we parody. The use of polychrome gods on a notebook as a kind of urban chic (pictured), and the instructional “Ideal Boy Charts” (pictured) that now have meme status depend on this class-located gaze. The ironic enjoyment of these is for those at whom the original images were not aimed, in order: the not-filmy-at heart, the well-schooled, and dare I say it, the ungodly, to whom the notebook might be a mild sacrilege, or attract devotion, not a wink.

What’s in all of this for design? Design’s first task may well be the creation of better outcomes or adding value to a client situation, but it cannot be left at that. A residual task of design is to contribute to the visual world, leaving it better. We remember whether products were beautiful or ugly long after we took for granted that they worked, or didn’t. To do this, and perhaps even to be effective in her primary task, the designer needs a heightened awareness of how things come to mean something, and especially, to whom.

____________________

First published in a slightly modified form ‘A Class Apart’ in Business Standard, 31 March, in Deep Design, a fortnightly column by Itu Chaudhuri.

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Everyone loves a logo, or loves to hate one. Designing logos is the most easily understood example of the graphic designer’s work. Among the additions to visual culture since the 19th century, the logo ranks with television and cinema. Stand in Tokyo’s Ginza or New York’s Times Square and you will be overrun by them; in India, we experience a booming town through the sprouting of familiar logos on its streets.

Yet the logo is under attack. Dead, say bolder commentators, or irrelevant, say the more nuanced: it is a product of evolution, and eligible for extinction. The London designer Simon Manchipp found them “a hangover from old-school thinking… an old-fashioned approach to differentiating”.

Ironically, to the extent that this view is valid, the logo is under threat from the same processes that made it so successful in the first place. Though logos are ancient in the sense of marks that denoted community (the cross, the shaivite tripundara or the swastika), the modern logo is a creation of trade, media and transportation.

Trade and modern transportation ended local monopolies: suddenly, the village washing-soap maker was competing with imports from another district, and needed more than his initials on the product. Traders (wholesalers and retailers), being closer to the eventual customers, had bullying rights over manufacturers. These gents fought back with differentiated products, now with ‘maker’s marks’, regaining control over the customer and thus, terms of trade. These marks became the modern brand logo. (The tussle continues; the behemoth Amazon is a retailer).

Advertising speeded and sharpened the change in the design of these marks to answer the need for visibility, compactness and differentiation. It’s easy to make too little of the difference between these new logos and, say, the coats-of-arms and heraldry of earlier centuries. Those early marks served to identify, a deliberate act accomplished by reference to convention. In the modern mark, recognition, a more spontaneous form of knowing, along with ownability and recall, that marketer’s favourite, are additionally necessary.

Those early marks served to identify. In the modern mark, recognition, along with ownability and recall

By the middle of the 20th century, the power of the visual trade mark was firmly acknowledged, and the forerunners of the modern brand consulting firms were born. The logo became big business, a store of both value as well as meaning. This is where things started to change.

This turn in the logo’s fortunes was linked to the evolution of the language of marketing, and then a new understanding of the brand, approximately in the last quarter of the 20th century. The brand was now not just the name of the business, but an evocation of new ideas—benefits, values, promises and other more or less emotional fragments, tied by association to its name and other ‘signifiers’, like the logo. Oh, and It had a personality, like a human.

The logo’s fortunes was linked to the evolution of the language of marketing, and then a new understanding of the brand

This bundle was, said the gurus, at once embedded in the product or business and also, separately, an abstraction, capable of being explicitly managed, and concretised at will, into an entirely different product, again a late 20th century phenomenon. It gave rise to a new notion of the corporate brand, now as progenitor of brands, and thus to the concept of brand architecture. Also, the brand could also now be separately valued as an asset.

This complexity now required the logo to distill this bundle of properties, and made it a strategic decision: big business for consultants. But this wasn’t all.

New, geographically dispersed brands, including the modernised corporate brand (so went the thinking) now needed a consistent visual appearance, implemented via a centrally mandated visual system: a set of graphic assets, such as colours, and typefaces and added graphics, governed by rules for correct usage.

Crucially, corporate and other brand owners were convinced that these visual systems were also central to the bundle of associations that made up its brand, this new, mystically powerful lever. In other words, not just visually consistent but ideationally and emotionally linked—enter another new word, coherent.

Over the next decades, these visual systems grew in sophistication and ingenuity. In addition to ensuring recognition, they now cover the style of imagery, and the mood of the communications, across product design, retail spaces, advertising and more. Often not rigidly consistent like their forebears, they may go by names like ‘brand world’ or ‘experience’. The argument: sufficiently well executed, brand worlds obviate the need for a logo, while still delivering a powerful whiff of the brand, so to speak.

These visual systems grew in sophistication and ingenuity. Sufficiently well executed,brand worlds obviate the need for a logo, while still delivering a powerful whiff of the brand

There’s another strand to the anti-logo argument. Logos, by themselves, have no meaning, but derive it from the businesses they mark. Mercedes’ three-pointed star gets its value from the consistently admired cars it sits atop, not the other way around. So why bother with the hype and fuss of designing them to distill the brand into the logo?

We can see these as a clash between two notions: brand as experience, vs brand as a symbol. Deep Design believes that the brand-as-symbol perspective is under-appreciated.
Symbols, as carriers of identity are inseparable from human life, from tribe to kingdom, ancient to modern. And all aspects of brand experience—even the taste of Johnny Walker whisky—whisper to our identity (and are thus signs). Taste is sensory, but also associative, and there’s neurological evidence for this: it just tastes better with the label.

Second, symbols such as logos focus organisational and social energies, by substituting a physical thing for an idea that must be defended, in war or in peace. Most of all, a logo can travel from the bonnet of a Mercedes car to an advertisement, and trigger the same feelings with incredible economy of time and space. Of course, there’s no doubt that it’s a part of a ‘brand world’.

But why design them, if any old logo will do? Because it’s easier to build an association when the logo’s content encourages it. Laboratory-reared monkeys have been trained to ignore snakes and fear flowers, but it’s far harder to do than the converse.

It’s easier to build an association when the logo’s content encourages it

Does the logo rank with television? Just look out of the window: far from a burial, the party is in full swing.

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It’s a modern, seasonal disease. The new year brings with it a thick flow of trend forecasts, cheery and sweeping, and we read them with the forgiving spirit that the holiday season demands. For Deep Design, it seems foolhardy to indulge, yet churlish to desist, so here’s a holiday smoothie on trends themselves.

Some trend forecasts, such as those in fashion, are meant to be self-fulfilling. The great and big among the fashion industry make them. Thus buyers know what colours and styles to buy, and retailers know what to stock. The media is in it at the start, happy to report what the well-dressed citizen will be wearing. The consumer, she of the clued-in, independent mind, is eager to conform: it’s only fitting. Paris/Milan/Mumbai know best; empty shelves help no one.

The communications industry, unlike those that stock things, doesn’t face the risk of empty shelves. Yet trends there surely are. The dozen or so portfolios and the artfully designed CVs that our office reviews monthly give a clear view into what the bottom of the food chain has been eating. A set of colour palettes, a certain taste in typefaces, and a tendency to gratuitously quantify, in order to contrive a graph to replace text (give yourself a 75% hardworking score, or three and a half stars).

But unlike fashion, there’s no Big Design, no dominant source heavily invested in the forecast. Pantone, a widely used colour communication system, comes closest to announcing trends, along with paint manufacturers who try to drum up interest in their new shades, a hue and cry, if you will. For the most part, these graphic trends result from simple imitative impulses. This may account for the relative stability of these design trends.

But common to all trend forecasts, and trend commentating, is the theorising that identifies and proposes the driving currents. Inevitably, large, global turns of politics and their economic, social and cultural facets are called out as driving forces: Brexit, Trump and unless you are observing a news fast (another micro-trend) you know the rest. Deep Design, too, has indulged early and often, such as linking the discontents behind the rise of the US prez to those boosting the rise of Patanjali long before the final elections, not to imply direct link but to speculate on a similar mood driving both.

common to all trend forecasts, and commentating, is the theorising that identifies and proposes the driving currents. Inevitably, large, global turns of politics and their economic, social and cultural facets

Anti-globalisation and nationalism are the most familiar labels applied to this phenomenon. Commentators hear the voices of groups who feel ‘disenfranchised’, speaking with eerie simultaneity across continents. These voices have exhausted their patience with the ruling intelligentsia, and abhor its factual (or specious, or false), well-articulated utterances: better a mis-spelled, ‘feeling’ untruth that promises action, than an unproductive, pedantic truth. Going further: a suspicion of democracy, technocracy, complexity and balance, and the citified, corporate or university culture that spawns them; a yearning for viscerally inspired gestures. (Other strands omitted for brevity).

The trends forecasts that respond to these may be summarised (in a post-truth kind of way!) as a return to roots and basics; a preference for imperfection; the recycled; rough and natural finishes (call them unfinishes). The broad theme: authenticity.

The magazine Digital Arts purveys several forecasts, summarised here (Deep Design’s additions in brackets). Pantone’s Colour of the Year is Greenery 15-0343, to represent ‘fresh beginnings’ complemented by earth and mineral tones, and upcycled materials. Primary colours (from flags, and nationalism) remain in force. Expect packaging to be literally and otherwise transparent, to convey authenticity of provenance. (add: bucolic-ness and humanity). Photography, it says, will be more ‘real’ in terms of the human subjects, with emotion (add: imperfect skin) getting extra marks. The trend towards active, sports-inspired wear continues (cementing the general trend towards informality).

Despite the smell of truth about the causes that drive these trends, designers (which includes communicators, marketers and policy makers) should continue to take the trends themselves with a grain of ethically-produced, iodide-rich, rock or sea salt.

designers (which includes communicators, marketers and policy makers) should continue to take the trends themselves with a grain of ethically-produced, iodide-rich, rock or sea salt.

For one thing, many of these trends are old and long running. Look at restaurants that have opened in the last ten years in your metropolis, and note how similar many of the trends you spot in the concept and the design of the space. Exposed air conditioning ducts, cocktails in jam jars (Deep Design’s pet peeve), rope, rough hewn wood, local produce and food fusion. And watch for authentically brush drawn lettering on menus, coming soon to a grubhouse near you.

Further, trend forecasts are popular because they feed our confirmation biases; many may well have other less (or more) obvious causes, preventing a proper understanding. Several trends run concurrently, and play out differently depending on cultures (defined by geography and age).

Long-term trends, or movements, may exert a more strategic force on your next interaction with whatever you are designing, whether it’s a policy, product or communication. But it’s best to be ‘post-trend’—being alive to the babel of the conversations going on in the world without being in a hurry to isolate any one signal, is the golden path.

Long-term trends may exert a more strategic force with whatever you are designing. But it’s best to be alive to the babel of the conversations without being in a hurry to isolate any one signal, is the golden path.

This means paying attention to the invisible drivers behind the trends. For example, the most valuable lesson from post-truth is an ancient one: that the tendencies of people to think through the filter of their identities, anxieties, and pride trump all others. In this state, they will ignore ‘good design’ as a source of meaning. That’s what Trump’s diabolically plain election identity conveyed—nothing—which may have resonated with his voters as authentic, much better than the professionally designed, pointing-ahead, promise-laden ‘H’ from a Capitol-ist they didn’t trust.

Happy new (old) year, anyway.

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It was a film-maker friend on the phone.

“I’m making a film,” he said, “on a new script that’s been developed for the Wancho language, spoken in Arunachal Pradesh. Right up your street.”

Perhaps my friend was referring to my interest in typeface design? But my friend, aware of the distinction between the script (a way of writing) and typefaces (their printed form), went on, “The script itself has never been professionally examined. So I thought you might want to. Or is it linguists who look at such things?”.

I replied that I wasn’t aware of anyone who evaluated scripts, perhaps because they are handed down to us, and shaped by the same evolutionary processes that shape languages. (Imagine giving a Devanagari a B-).

Scripts, are handed down to us, and shaped by the same evolutionary processes that shape languages…

But to a designer, a synthetically developed script like Wancho presents a fascinating opportunity to develop criteria for evaluation. For instance, if ease of learning is an objective, we might ask of a modern script to represent related sounds with similar shapes (not significantly implemented in Wancho, as I found out). There could be others.

Design starts with why: why Wancho needs a script at all. I asked — and that’s when the penny dropped. The rest of this column is mainly about what I didn’t tell him, and a little of what I did.

The Wancho are a hill tribe, related to the Naga. About 50000 people speak Wancho, one of tens of Tibeto-Burman languages that dot the north-east and surrounds; none has a script. Wancho now does, thanks to the 11-year labours of Banwang Losu, a Wancho teacher.

The Wancho script, it was explained, is needed to capture Wancho’s phonetic peculiarities. The script, once established, would help preserve the entirely oral traditions (lore, prayer, song) of the Wancho and save the language from extinction.

But Wancho is unwritten, not for want of a script but for want of a culture of literacy. Such little Wancho as is written relies on Devanagari and Latin. Latin, an alphabetic script, serves, with small modifications, nearly all European, South American and modern African languages. And Arabic with local modifications has done duty for centuries, for 60+ languages. Phonetic functionality is moot: pronunciation is taught, written conventions learnt.

But the Wancho script is an original work, not a modification. Its need to exist comes from an assertion of Wancho’s membership among the comity of languages. In a uniquely modern moment, it has, since its inception in 2014, gained a typeface, designed by Anurag Gautam, a student at the National Institute of Design (NID); an animated primer on YouTube (by the first Wancho animator, Wangdan Wampan, also from NID) and a book by Losu on the same subject available on Amazon. In an instant, the Wancho language becomes, at least to its own users, more important than others in its neighborhood.

Wancho is an invention, but entirely synthetic and does not claim to be derived from antiquity. Yet it shares some of the same motivations with ‘invented traditions’, an idea popularised by E. J. Hobsbawm and T.O. Ranger. Their best known example is the invention of a Scottish ‘highland’ tradition: the adoption of the kilt, till then worn by farmers, as aristocratic wear, appropriately styled and accessorised. Along with bagpipers and the assignment of tartan weaves to aristocratic clans (rather than just regions) a visual toolbox became available to construct and give a visual face to a Scottish national identity. As a parallel, imagine the male Punjab government ministers turning out in Bhangra costume as if it were the way it always was.

Wancho is an invention, but entirely synthetic and does not claim to be derived from antiquity. Yet it shares some of the same motivations with ‘invented traditions’

The marketing significance of this invented tradition is immense. It enabled the promotion of ‘authentically traditional Scottish products, like its whisky which rose to prominence around the same time (the 18th and 19th centuries). The ‘rougher liquors of Scotland’ were promoted as the libation of choice of England’s aristocrats, perhaps sped along by Queen Victoria’s love for Scottish fashion.

the invention of a Scottish ‘highland’ tradition: the adoption of the kilt… Along with bagpipers and the assignment of tartan weaves…a visual toolbox to construct and give a visual face to a Scottish national identity.

Marketers love invented traditions: many sorts of mass-market food and alcohol products among others, pretend to some form of tradition, however spurious. Consumption rituals are often invented, and grown, by coopting what some consumers do and teaching it to the rest: drinking Corona beer requires the piece of lime wedged into its neck (Tastes better? Sure. All rituals enhance consumption). Don’t ever wash, or mend your Levi’s (creating a market for faux-distressed jeans). Even major religions coopt and re-make traditions.

Marketers love invented traditions: many sorts of mass-market food and alcohol products among others, pretend to some form of tradition, however spurious.

Paradoxically, all traditions are invented (and re-invented) at some point of time. If the Wancho script beats the odds and survives, it will become a tradition in twenty years. No other script seems to have managed the feat in this century. Well, not quite: Klingon, the fictional language of the Klingon people in the Star Trek movies of the 1970s and 80s was invented with a vocabulary and a grammar to give realism to the dialogue. Fans have extended it become a spoken language, complete with songs, poetry, and a script, even a language institute.

Like with Klingon, the written script is a particularly potent library of symbols—letters—around which the community can cohere and belong everyday, whether the language is fictional or real. Eventually it’s about an identity more than the survival of a language. The historian Benedict Anderson argues that modern nationhood has much to do with the merger of print technology and capitalism: the rise and standardisation of a local language, in all its uses.

Identity is a master-concept in design, marketing, politics and culture. Identities are not simply national, ethnic or linguistic: ‘authentic Corona drinker’ is a tag I can add on top. Modernity seems to compel the formation of these temporary and multiple identities, to re-balance a felt lack or anxiety; it seems to show them up in its complex and furious stride. Visual symbols buttress identity; so we attach ourselves to symbols, collecting, burnishing and drawing meaning from them.

Modernity seems to compel the formation of these temporary and multiple identities…Visual symbols buttress identity; so we attach ourselves to symbols…

The post The Language of Identity appeared first on ICD | Blog.

In India, the notion of the brand is both nascent and spreading at a gallop. States, NGOs, government bodies, spiritual leaders, cricket teams, and other once-unlikely entities are starting to receive marketing attention, so the brand is never far behind. It’s the new orthodoxy.

University brands, an oxymoron in India until the 1990s, are a fascinating example. They are numerous, often very old, and slow to change, and display, like species, many stages of evolution. This is reflected in their visual identities.

Of course, there’s much more to a brand than the logo, which is only the tip of the brand’s iceberg, so to speak. But it is a tell-tale sign of how an organisation sees itself, and the face it wants to show.

Deep Design reveals the interplay of symbol and reality and the invisible hand of evolution. We shall consider two epochs, the shift (in India) occurring in the late 20th century.

For 150 years, university identities followed an internationally prescribed code. The words seal, insignia or emblem come to mind. A circular typographic arrangement, or the ever-present shield serves as a container. The contents picture symbols of learning, or subjects of study. Shields, divided in a medieval manner, allow a set of images, rather than a unitary symbol.

For 150 years, university identities followed an internationally prescribed code

Like Olympic games symbols up to 1952, they were more traditional than the period warranted, and designed to look like authoritative insignia of learning (with Indian or other local inflections). This applied even when universities displayed modernity in other ways, like architecture. IIM Ahmedabad is housed in a famed modernist masterpiece, but its logo defers to the code: a Mughal arch and tendrils.

Privatisation is the lens through which the evolution of university identity, visual and non-visual is understood. Let’s use 1995 as a convenient year, when the first private university was notified. There are now over 200.

Privatisation is the lens through which the evolution of university identity, visual and non-visual is understood.

University identities after 1995 are visibly different from their forbears. There’s more variety and individuality, and some modernist simplification. The best attempts look more like modern logos, not insignia. Look, no privatisation! Case solved?

Not entirely. Many, like Amity (a prototypical private university) sport logos that reek strongly of the older code. And even in the previous age, there were privately funded and managed colleges and universities (BITS Pilani, for example). The name Ivy League (ivy climbing up those centuries-old stone walls), brands a club of old, influential universities that retain links to their heritage identities, a code imitated by several US universities.

So are university logos explained as effectively by period (design fashion), and imitation, as by private ownership? To gain more nuance than these hardy perennial explanations provide, we must return to the founding concept of the university, which is the archetypal ideal that we hold in our minds.

The oldest (let’s call them Classical) universities predate modern states though they enjoyed royal and religious support. A community of wise men, either proven or incipient seekers, self-governed, with their own rules, traditions and arcana, and free from excessive oversight. Often monastic in origin and spirit, joined by the pursuit of knowledge, for its own sake.

The oldest universities are often monastic in origin and spirit, joined by the pursuit of knowledge, for its own sake.

Modern states preserved the essentials of this arrangement, even for private universities in the new nation of America. These old universities approximate classical ones (and receive state support with minimal oversight).

The post-private university or PPU (a new phenomenon needs a new label) differs on many of these dimensions. It no longer lurks in the shadows of the state, but feels the harsh glare of competition, not of ideas, but for customers. Global rankings objectivise and hijack the meaning of institutional quality.

The post-private university feels the harsh glare of competition, not of ideas, but for customers.

For the first time, the university must be marketed. It is a product with a proposition for customers (students, donors, and faculty). In many PPUs, students rather than pursuing knowledge for its own sake, are buying a career. ROI calculations are openly made.

Its superboss may be an ‘edupreneur’ who exhorts a Chief Marketing Officer to achieve explicit business objectives. Annual ad spends may top Rs. 50 cr. Crucially, the PPU is managerially run, like a corporation, and thus not entirely collegially governed. (On the plus side, some academic staff may much better paid).

It’s natural then, that the university’s logo needs to maximise visibility, memorability, compactness and attractiveness, that is, more like a modern logo rather than a seal. It is an object of universal, accessible appeal, not a depiction of an immovable ideal. It’s corporate identity, and in some cases, literally so.

Despite this pressure to market and brand, the identities of many Indian PPUs, unlike their Western cousins, are ungainly vestiges of colonial codes or confused hybrids. Not for want of funds, but of vision.

Most PPUs start with a deficit of reputation. The logo (along with copious built infrastructure, in some cases) attempts to compensate by evoking antiquity. It’s an attempt to brand by association with the classical university and channel its trust, authenticity and experience.

Too few have the confidence to assert a fresh path, by conspicuous investment in wise men, or a long term program of excellence.

Two exceptions, among others, are Ashoka and Nalanda, who have made the former investment. I mention them because their names place them in ancient antiquity, rather than in the colonial past, and their identities are coherent with modernity.

It’s not inconceivable that these post-private pressures will apply to classical universities, who may compete for funds if not for students’ fees, as in the West.

University brands need to forget markers of antiquity, and express the values which make the old fellows relevant in modern times.

A university draws its credibility from research that seeks the truth on subjects of unchanging and ancient interest. That’s a philosophical standard that is universal, permanent and non-differentiable. University brands need to forget markers of antiquity, and express the values which make the old fellows relevant in modern times. Adopting a few of those values will be differentiation enough.

The post University Logos: What’s Changed And Why It Matters appeared first on ICD | Blog.

Everyone loves a new, public logo. It’s a polarising icon, and comments are free. So it is with Olympic logos. Deep Design seeks not to praise or bury them, but to discover the meaning interred into their bones.

Olympic logos support a strong, coherent brand, adapting its unchanging core to a dynamic world. The logos are only one of the brand’s elements, but crucial in a media driven world. The five rings, the flame, torch relays, Olympic villages, and the marathon all effectively emote the Greek myth romanticised by Pierre de Coubertin, the comity of nations and the ideal of human potential.

But Olympic logos have another job. A successful Olympics bid is a high stakes win, a sign of alpha-nationhood. Issues of national identity, overt or subliminal, matter. Equally, the fashions, and the design ideologies of the time leave their print on the logos.

Issues of national identity, the fashions, and the design ideologies of the time leave their print on the logos

So do other nations. Logos seems to follow their predecessor’s example, until one makes a huge change. Much like evolution’s Punctuated Equilibrium hypothesis, periods of stability and periods of rapid change alternate.  They thus fall neatly into three ages: Nationhood, Modernism, and the New Age.

Through all these, Deep Design, armed with hindsight, reveals the grand theme: the changing place of the Olympics in our lives and the logo as a sign of adaptation.

Here’s the parade; only summer games are included.

The Age of Nationhood, logos from 1924 to 1956

In an age of unprecedented acceleration in design, art, and modernity, Olympic logos are in denial. Sternly bureaucratic and monotone, they impose (quasi) national insignia upon the Games.

Sternly bureaucratic and monotone, they impose (quasi) national insignia upon the Games

By 1924, Chanel’s timelessly modern fashion and cosmetics are on the street; even the iconic Noº 5 perfume. But art’s capital city chooses its 14th C coat of arms, depicting maritime trade in Paris 1924. Vibrant USA gives us Los Angeles 1932, as if a police department had married an Ivy League college shield, whose Latin motto on scrolls reveal a yearning for antiquity. The land of Bauhaus, instead presents the Third Reich in Berlin 1936, its eagle oppressing the Olympic rings. The London 1948 Games seek to restore calm after WWII, with Westminster’s bureaucratic stiff upper lip. Helsinki 1952 at least shows off new architecture, but Melbourne 1956’s label-like logo reverts to type.

But Rome 1960 represents a thawing. It refers to culture for the first time, picturing the legend of the Rome (not Italy). Its feral snarl is oddly modern and its 3D treatment a tribute to both classical bas-reliefs and Hollywood styling (as in Ben Hur, 1959). The Roman numerals (what else?) bring a smile. Appropriately, it’s on TV for the first time.

The Age of Modernism, logos from 1960-1988

The Tokyo 1964 Rising Sun is a national symbol used as a geometric element. By doing so, it allows the the design to be read as a modernist work, rather than a patriotic symbol from the previous age. It  also shows Japan’s confidence in not projecting an overtly cultural identity. This is unlike the other Asian miracle economies of S Korea and China in the coming decades.

Abruptly, it unleashes Modernist design, as if a dam had burst. It features geometric abstraction and a minimalist ethic that mutes national symbols and history, and subtracts ornament. Also born: the age of corporate identity and design professionalism. From now, designers would be named, and ‘visual systems’ with manuals would become the norm for large projects, giving the practice a technocratic flavour. (Not coincidentally, this is also the age of Milton Glaser, whose ratings of the logos appear at the end of the article; Tokyo 1964 is his gold medalist).

Abruptly, it unleashes Modernist design. It features geometric abstraction and a minimalist ethic that mutes national symbols and history, and subtracts ornament

Mexico 1968, a modern classic, is the first Olympic wordmark. Its design grid is formed around the five rings, but also draws on early Mexican art and op-art, joining part of the 1960s zeitgeist. Munich 1972 eliminates the Olympic rings. The severe abstraction of the sun and spiral form may not, though, live up to its idea of the “Cheerful Games”. Montreal 1976 is typical too.

The cold war superpowers’ symbols appear more patriotic than others in this cohort. Moscow 1980’s shot at modernism is topped by its red star, and LA 1984 reprises a familiar theme, with its own stars, only moderately modern, with a classic touch. Star wars, surely?

In this sense Seoul 1988 is an outlier that hands over to the next age, with a vibrant, but modern depiction of a Taoist cosmology, a universe from which creation springs.

New Age Olympism, logos from 1992 to 2016

Maybe it was the tearing down  of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the fade of the cold war that caused this change. But Deep Design, remembering that even causes have causes, is a cautious theoriser, and sticks to what’s observable.

Flowing free forms. human figures and hand drawn art work show a fatigue with modernism’s technological side. Equally, a fatigue with ideals, and a populist desire to bring the Games down from the heights of Mount Olympus, make them human, not godly, to be celebrated, not looked up to. Everyone’s invited.

Desire to bring the Games down from the heights of Mount Olympus, make them human, not godly, to be celebrated, not looked up to. Everyone’s invited

Barcelona 1992 takes the leap. Its designers say that.‘…the symbol could not be made with a …geometric or technological vocabulary.’ Atlanta 1996’s centennial flame, is playful, not prayerful, and the stars even twinkle. Sydney 2000 reduces the Opera House to a sketch, and rides a boomerang. Athens 2004 reintroduces the wreath in the medal ceremony, but with casual flair. Beijing 2008 visually puns the character for ‘culture’ with a human figure. London 2012’s aggressive logo pumps out a megawatt heavy-metal party, painting the Olympics magenta (not part of de Coubertin’s 1912 Olympic palette, which covered the flags of all nations ‘without exception’).   In Rio 2016 the comity of nations becomes a sophisticated carnival in an in-vogue 3D style. Does Tokyo 2020 start something new? Look up Deep Design in 2032.

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Milton Glaser, legendary Graphic designer, ranked Olympic logos. Though his marking scheme is not known, Glaser judges their success in professional terms: logos should be understandable, memorable and formalistically attractive.

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