Unpretentious Auras

By Savitha Hira

“Design is not about ideas, but making them happen; and that too by making complicated simple, awesomely simple,” says multi-disciplinary designer and brand expert Rehan Saiyed...

When you are entrusted with designing a brand ‘recognize and build’ exercise, you are helming a company debut in the corporate marketplace. Adept at chiselling a complete brand experience for clients across the globe, Rehan says that understanding where your client comes from is perhaps as imperative to the exercise as the venture itself.

With almost a decade of designing brand strategy, brand architecture, brand design and brand environment; and receiving global recognition, Rehan attributes his USP to the art of simplification. Explaining his process of rationalizing as a 2 step endeavour, he explains, “Studying the cultural nuances of your client and his brief are integral to the contextual elements of the design. Secondly, I justify every element in my design - why it is there and the relevance of it in the design. This is then followed by a stringent process of simplifying the design to an awesomely simple form.”

We document one of his Corporate Identity design concepts for the ‘Narayan Group’ in Gujarat that has been hugely successful. A Harrish Ambalal Choksi venture, the Narayan Group is the parent company with several companies operating under its umbrella.

Using the nomenclature of the parent firm as a starting point, Rehan researched its roots, wherein lay the solution to the entire branding campaign.

.

.

.

Contemporizing the name and lending it a corporate feel without overlooking its innate religious relevance, the design is ultimately an overpoweringly simple form - timeless and pragmatic in its application and approach.

.

Working in tandem with the name is the philosophy behind it – the circle or energy generator and the structural efficacy of the numeral 6.

.

.

Based on the ‘circle’ and ‘six’, the symbolic construction of the identity is structured to accomplish the concept visually.

.

.

Implementing his programme with sound research, lots of sketching, brain storming and then coming down to a simplified solution applying techniques and materials, colour, font and fold palette distinctive to the project and its approach, the ‘first look’  easily takes a gestation period of 3-4 weeks.

.

Predictably, success is attributed to the campaign being well-structured from a branding perspective, with a clear vision for the company’s future growth. The key being – scalability and pragmatism in toto.

.

.