Project Analysis: Idiom Design And Consulting Ltd.

Project analysis:

1) When and where: presentation of the context in which the project was done.

This project was done in the year 2010 by a design agency in Bangalore, India named Idiom Design And Consulting Ltd., for the XIX Commonwealth Games that was happening in New Delhi, India.

2) Essential information on the designer/studio (where, when, field of activity, approach)

Idiom is a Bangalore based design and consultancy firm. It was founded in 2005 with the merger of E-sign and Tessaract. Idiom designs spaces, branding, signage and packaging in a variety of industries, including retail, education and media. Some of their clients include Adlabs, Cisco Systems, Levis signature, Jealous 21 and Wipro [1].

3) Essential information on the
It is the body that is responsible for selecting athletes to represent India at the Olympic games, Asian Games and other international athletic meets and for managing the Indian teams at the events. It also acts as the Indian Commonwealth Games Association, responsible for selecting athletes to represent India at the Commonwealth Games [2].

4) Theme and goal

In an interview by Indian Express, Sonia Manchanda, Principal Designer, Idiom, who was in-charge of a team of designers, artists and technicians behind creating the logo, pictograms, mascot, branding graphics and the look of the cultural and heritage arenas for the Games, stated "We did not want to rely on typical metaphors about India. So we had to dig into our history and scrape out something that was new and improvisational." [3]

The theme of this project blended the contemporary with the ancient Indian art. For the pictograms, they have taken inspirations from the Munich Olympics pictograms designed by Olt Aicher and Sanjhi. Sanjhi is a traditional form of artwork created by paper-cutting stencils, which are used to tell stories and for decorating palaces and temples
In the interview she also mentioned that it was quite difficult for them to frame the logo, as that was the backdrop for all their designs, it had to go well with the other elements. They incorporated the 24 chakras of the Indian national flag and added colors and freed it up to represent an independent and a colorful India.

For the iconography, they took inspiration from the pictograms designed by Olt Aicher for the Munich Olympic Games and blended that with two other elements that are authentic to the country. One was the implementation of Sanjhi in their pictograms. Sanjhi is a traditional form of artwork created by paper-cutting stencils, which are used to tell stories and for decorating palaces and temples. The other was merging the Lungi’s as the costume for the pictograms; Dhoti is a white stretch of fabric that was tied around the waist and legs of the men while performing Indian martial arts.

The style of the pictograms looks realistic and more in the form of human body shape. This gives a feeling of realness in the pictograms and also makes it more relatable unlike the pictograms designed by Olt Aicher, which were more geometric and