Videocon’s Metallic V is melted and laVafied!

The Indian corporate, Videocon, has recently unveiled its new brand identity. It was launched by Shahrukh khan in LA, USA. The branding was done by Interbrand – Singapore.

The metallic V has been replacebed by a green and simple looking ‘V’. Also, the typography is changed from a slab serif to a sans serif. While the old logo exuded grandeur, I feel the new logo appeals to the younger audience. Personally, I don’t like the symbol but the typography seems to be done well.

About the logo (from Videocon’s website):

The Videocon logo is the heart of the new brand identity. The Fluid lava reflects the brand idea, ‘Experience change’. The color palette has been chosen to reflect the philosophy of Videocon Group i.e. the color green is symbolic to the company’s ecology drive.

Videocon will be launching its DTH (Direct-to-Home) TV service named d2h in India soon. The typographic logo sans the ‘V’ symbol is used in this branding. The d2h logo uses a violet glowing ball (a typical web 2.0 visual element). Nothing special about it. Also, Videocon is supposed to foray into the mobile market soon.

Videocon main website

Videocon d2h Website

Bharti, Parent Company of Airtel, Unveils Its New Identity

Bharti Enterprises unveiled its new identity on November 4. It was designed by JWT. Bharti also presented its vision to become “India’s finest conglomerate” by 2020.

According to the official communiqué, the new logo is youthful and reflects Bharti’s multidimensional character and avenues for growth. The indigo stands for depth and the orange, for youthful passion and energy. The arrows stand for movement that extends beyond boundaries and symbolise swiftness, precision and accuracy.

In addition to the telecom and insurance businesses, Bharti has a presence now in the agricultural and food processing sectors as well. With its recent foray into DTH with Airtel Digital TV, it has widened its presence in the communications sector. Its retail stores that are a part of the JV with Walmart are yet to see the light of the day!

Official Announcement on Bharti’s Website

Rebranding Bajaj

Bajaj is an automobile brand of India famous for its range of bikes and scooters. Elephant design, based in Pune, did the rebranding for Bajaj. The new Bajaj corporate identity was shown to general public during the 2004 auto expo. Bajaj adopted a new brand line of “Inspiring Confidence”. The Identity used a fresh new Blue color.

The small letters in the previous logo have been made all caps.

Elephant design 360° corporate rebranding for Bajaj and it even created steel pillars that read the logo when seen in one particular view.

In 2005, ReBrand published the case study in its 100 notable. People behind this rebranding were Art Directors : Sudhir Sharma and Partho Guha, Designers : Vandana Bhoj, Prashant Shingade and Rahul Wakde.

Case Study on Elephant Design Website

Interesting Read: Has Bajaj Copied Volkswagen Logo?

Agency Faqs! is now afaqs!

Agency Faqs! touting themselves as the world’s no. 2 advertising, media and marketing website, went for a change in their logo recently. Fair enough! The old logo looked gross with all lowercase letters of a serif font (Times New Roman?)

The new identity is designed by Pranab Dutta, a well-known Delhi-based designer. Read the press release here.

It doesn’t seem to be a groundbreaking revamping of the identity as the favicon is still the old one! Better website design could have been a part of their re-branding. The site looks mundane. Anyway, the news and views are accurate.

Arvind Mills Rebrands as Arvind

Many of those who love brands like Newport, Excalibur, Flying Machine etc., may not be knowing their parent brand Arvind Mills. It holds the Indian license for brands like Lee, Arrow, Wrangler, Tommy Hilfiger etc. It also owns Mega Mart. Recently, the parent brand went for rebranding and it changed its name to Arvind Ltd.

You can see the identity put to use on their website. I don’t know who designed the new logo. The new logo is a serif font with D and A as a capitals and the rest being small letters! A little color variation is incorporated in the new logo.

Though the logo may have a positive impact, I’m not a fan of this design. The serif for ‘r’ stands out awkwardly!

About Arvind Mills on Wikipedia

Ceat Leaves Behind its Rhino!

Ceat tyres has recently undergone re-branding. The new logo of Ceat is designed by Ray + Keshavan. It doesn’t have the racing Rhinoceros that Ceat is often associated with. After a span of 50 years, Ceat changed its logo for the first time!

According to an article on AgencyFAQs,

It is the result of extensive feedback received from Ceat employees, customers and partners. Its inspiration emerges from the idea of ‘raising the bar’. The lines in bright orange give the logo a youthful and contemporary look and combine well with the maturity and stability of the blue letter forms that signify Ceat’s rich heritage in the sector.

The logo blends an all-capitals contemporary typeface with a distinctive visual element. The upright hand-drawn type is in bold and connotes strength and stability. The E in the logo represents motion and movement.

The logo is very simple and typographical. There doesn’t seem to be a tagline to support the new logo. I guess it has been designed to suit the corporate needs of the evolving company. Ray and Keshavan seems to be very keen on being simple in its logo designs. But, it all depends on the company profile, the creative brief and the research undertaken.

Godrej Approaches Interbrand for a Change in its Master Identity

I already blogged that I liked the new Godrej ad. The company chose IPL as a platform to unveil its new identity. I felt that Godrej being an Indian brand would have trusted an Indian design firm to do the work. I was in awe for the firm who did the work. But, lately, I found that it was done by Interbrand!

Interbrand is a very famous branding firm which has many elite clients in its client list. It even did rebranding for Thomson Reuters, recently.

I love the color combo they chose for Godrej but I’m not a fan of the decision of placing these colors in the logo. I loved the vector animation they did for the ad. The type and the logo hasn’t been touched because it’s a long tradition for this family owned brand. Indians identify Godrej with its logo. Unlike Bajaj, Godrej stayed away from changing the type.

They even embossed the logo a little.

According to Financial Express, The group’s strategy outlined a roadmap to invest in a renewed Godrej masterbrand and corporate identity to support the targeted revenue growth of 25-30% compounded annually, for the group. The initial phase of the initiative will build the Godrej master brand in tandem with the four businesses of personal grooming, furniture, property and aerospace.

Godrej’s branding on Interbrand website

Shoppers’ Stop Gets a Makeover

The Indian retail stores has recently unveiled its new identity and tagline. The new identity has the apostrophe missing. The previous tagline was ‘Shopping. And Beyond.’ Now it’s been changed to ‘Start Something New.’

The new logo is very simple and clean without any frills. It’s very professional. It belongs to the league of typographical logos of famous clothing brands like Armani, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana etc. The new type used in the logo is very crisp. But, where has the apostrophe gone? I guess they tried a change in the meaning too. Previously it was ‘Stop of Shoppers or Stop for Shoppers’ and now it means ‘Shoppers, stop here!’ Seemingly, oozing attitude. Good design. Very minimal in nature.

The new logo has been designed by Ray + Keshavan. Shahrukh Khan unveiled the new identity. Along wit its new identity, Shoppers Stop has undertaken new initiatives like:

1. Trial rooms with day and night lighting options
2. Shoppers Stop Radio
3. Service Excellence Program
4. Shopping bags
5. Environmental awareness

Visit Shoppers Stop official site

BITS Embraces Web 2.0 in its Site Redesign

Once in a while my alma mater, BITS-Pilani revamps its main site. It has done it once again. Personally, I don’t like the site much. I feel that the site designs of BITS (like Oasis or APOGEE sites, sites of divisions etc) are very odd and most of the times not user friendly. The designs can neither be called corporate nor hip. They are a mix of all the elements thrown in to make a site that’s supposed to serve the purpose. Now, in its redesign, BITS has used web 2.0 elements like gloss, glow, emboss, transparency etc. Also, the main site has an Apple iTunes Cover Flow (inspiration. eh?) that’s designed in Flash. It could have been a little bigger for better visibility.

The previous website was mostly designed by my brother , Ram Sundeep P. He was asked to copy the Stanford website. Though he kept the images part similar to the Stanford one but he tried to incorporate a change in color scheme after 6 pm (It turns blue from red after 6 pm) and more. He says that their suggestion to copy something else was bad but he was helpless. A similar design has been used for BITS-Goa site where the color has been changed to green. The old design of BITS site can be viewed at BITS, Hyderabad site.

Certainly, the new design has its own flaws. The glow and colors for the different buttons like Admissions, Placements etc in the main site is the part that I detest most. They used the web 2.0 gradient but the choice of colors is bad and the same colored glow for the button is obviously irritating! And see the credits page! Awww.. exemplary of bad design! Reflections, emboss, lighting… Way too over-designed!

I guess it is time that BITS gives relevancy to design.

Update: Comments are officially closed.

Branding of Airports in India

Some airports in the world like Dubai International airport, Melbourne airport etc. have branded themselves with their own identities.

I guess the trend has caught on in India with new airports built in Hyderabad and Bangalore. The Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad has already started functioning and the Bangalore International Airport would start functioning from May 11, 2008.

As far as I know, Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai was the first Indian airport to take initiative on branding. Ray and Keshavan, the premiere design consultancy in India, created the identity for CSIA. It inserted the letters CSIA into a feather form.

This looks like a traditional logo with no frills. The type treatment is very usual and the design seems to have not concentrated on the type.

GMR roped in Ray and Keshavan for creating a brand identity for its new international airport at Hyderabad. The logo seems to retain GMR’s original logo elements and colors. I feel that the placement and the red and yellow elements in the logo are clearly of the M in GMR’s logo. The only difference is in the transparency and brightness of the colors. I like the type used. All the colors in GMR’s logo are intact in the airport’s logo (even the blue for the type Rajiv Gandhi International Airport). I presume that this must have been included by GMR in the creative brief to Ray and Keshavan.

The Bengaluru International Airport too has a similar logo. I guess this should also be the work of Ray and Keshavan.

The transparency used in the logo and the type treatment are very similar to the RGIA logo. Also, I see a similarity in the color used for the type – Bengaluru and the one used in the RGIA logo printed in Hindu Business Line. Anyhow, I feel the logos make the two airports related in some way!

The identity being used in Bengaluru International Airport (Image from BIAL’s website)

I feel that RGIA’s identity is secondary as GMR is trying to brand the airport more with its own logo but I like the way BIAL has used the identity as a primary one. It’s widely used throughout the assets to identify the airport. But, in the RGIA’s website, you can see the GMR logo prominently than the airport logo.

Bengaluru International Airport Official Website

Hyderabad Rajiv Gandhi International Airport Official Website

Update: Even Indira Gandhi International Airport has a similar branding as of RGIA. Read it here.