Way of the symbol design

What does it take to discover a character, personality of oneself, situation or activity? Why is required? It comes with the innate need to build relationships with all the people you want to work with. You want them to remember you, your dreams, your values, your services, your ideas and you want them to listen to you, appreciate your work, build faith and confidence in what you are doing to gain trust. It is complex exercise of building trust. How can a symbol help in achieving this mammoth task?

A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different concepts and experiences. From ancient times we have used the symbol to communicate power, ideas, dangers, religions, families, enterprises, activities, events and so on.

Challenge today is is not designing an identity but to engage & help discover one together. Symbols bind the ideas for a long period of time. Is it possible to consciously identify expectations, memories, stories and relationships, that taken together account for all of our decisions to chose an experience over another? What would it take to gain trust of people who like you, who vouch for you? How much of this is a possible with a symbol? What role does it really play? These questions inspire me to work closely with partners collaboratively co-discovering new ways to build relationships with like-minded.

“Identity”in Sanskrit is “Advaya” meaning “non dual, united, not two without a second, only unique, the ultimate truth”. The approach of investigation starts with immersion, identification of “dvaya”- visible/tangible/relatable images, and exploration of non-indetifiable matter — “that which is not obvious or visible”. It is followed by creative mixing of possibilities that affect all connections. These connections include heritage, competition, position, fans, buyers, aspirers, their values, benefits and the story you want to tell to discover your own self. It is not complicated as it sounds but certainly it puts all the participants into a lively/intense mode of seeking. Immersion workshops help to bring everyone on together on the journey .

There is often tendency to hurry by drawing dozens of iterations of ideas of visual on paper or computer, select the best few, improvise, digitise and give a pretty presentation trying to push a premature idea. Instead immersing to contemplate its origin, its meanings, its historical traces, its mixtures and contemporary positioning helps in developing the idea around the form rather than the ideas. I wait for it to be born by itself naturally by constant drawing, from abstract to concrete. I avoid ideations depicting creative mixing, focussing on the meaning and possibilities of the form that match the spirit of the meaning.

Once the ‘visible’ manifests, it operates in the form of ‘events’ (active) and ‘intervals’ (space). This is a rhythmic system. The purpose of this is to form a systematic, consistent visual communication of the ‘visible’ that drives all the connections we listed above. They become a family of elements that will have the energy to communicate the purpose, personality, character, value and uniqueness of your idea.

I avoid hurrying into creating style guides prescribing all the visual elements (like logo usage rules, typeface system, colour palette, layout guidelines, and more). It is mostly an execution requirement and should not disturb your exercise of form creation. I choose to work on a conscious format of new language brings new strength to the message and its elements. It alone contains energy and confidence of the “visible” just like how new young cells bring energy and joy to a child so that he constantly plays. Collaborating to redefine/refine each investigation to improvise over a period of time by constant monitoring and getting feedback from all connections leads the process towards the creation of the symbol and its meaning.

A symbol seems to feel complete as soon as it radiates the meaning efficiently. It gathers the energy to make viewers remember its shape, its details, its meaning and its presence. This is tested by qualitative methods with viewers on what makes them remember the symbol. I believe the symbol has a unique time, orientation, audience, situation and psyche (TOASP) in which it works and operates with high level of power. It does not work all the time. Spraying the symbol without understanding its workings dilutes the communicative power of the symbol. You can see this happening all over world. Identifying the TOASP leads to document its details, guidelines, usage and kicks the production process.

Feel free to get in touch with me if you feel the need to discover the personality of your activity/passion and communicating it to your audience.

Symbols co-created with Sindhu Murthy Kulkarni for Tacit.