As a class, we were given a city to brand the 2036 Olympics. During our research for this project we had to create brochures, posters, and media for the events as well as a website to highlight the city and a popular sport played in the city.
Kolkata, formerly called Calcutta, has several possible name origins: from Kalikshetra meaning "Ground of Kali," from its location by a canal, or from the Bengali words kali (lime) and kata (shell), due to its shell lime industry. The name was officially changed to Kolkata in 2001. With around 15.6 million people in the metro area and 4.5 million in the city, it is India's third most populated city. Most residents are Hindu and Muslims, with small Christian, Sikh, Jain, and Buddhist communities. Bengali is the main language, along with Urdu, Odia, Tamil, and Punjabi. The city is known as the birthplace of modern Indian literature, art, thought, and nationalism, shaped by both Indian and British influences.
For my logomark, I took a lot of insperation from temples around Kolkata. Many of these motifs were found in various photos of different temples around Kolkata. As well as a nod to the goddess Kali, who is a prominent figure in Hinduism.
With various iterations and adjustments and looking at various motifs in these symbols, I also wanted to use a logo that represented movement, resembling a cricket bat being swung.
The icons were also easy to integrate with this shape as many of the movements within Olympic sports have swooshing movements, whether it be in the arms or the legs.
Many of the assets used with patterns are reworkings of the logomark and work well with the sport. When being introduced to this project, I sat down and watched a match of cricket and used the motion of the symbol to highlight the sport in my iterations and deliverables.
As for the various layering and collage like feel of the other assets, I wanted to make a small nod to the intricate art of paper flowers that are often used for holidays that do use a lot of marigolds. The craft of these flowers itself are extremely intricate and I wanted to try my hand at something similar but in a digital form with layering and material.
With the specific branding itself, I wanted to use the colors of marigolds that are most commonly used in celebrations like Diwali and the Bengali New Year. For type I wanted to find a typeface that reminded me somewhat of an old baseball card type but something soft enough to incorporate the Bangala,
The most difficult thing to do outside of my iterations and just overall project was working on breaking outside of the grid and really going in on having fun with the type and different aspects of the brand that I created.
Another challenging aspect of this project as a whole was the story telling aspect of it. Looking back, this project would have been less challenging if I had spent a lot of that time creating a narritve for my assets rather than creating and then narrating. This has given me an oppertunity in future works to focus more on the story telling aspect and letting the rest kind of fall into place.
