Brand: Gulmarg
Scope: Branding, typography, strategy
Year: 2024
Location: Gurgaon, HR
Few projects keep me excited throughout. Gulmarg was one of those. Perhaps because I've always been a sucker for typography and Gulmarg allowed me to go full throttle on Devanagari type. The lab got real messy but the experiment turned out successful.
Vintage Indian sari fashion was a foundation for the design language
Gulmarg started off very simple and the project wasn't supposed to take more than a week because at the time of its inception, Gulmarg as a business was not established yet. Well, I did finish it within a week but I certainly didn't expect it to because of how excited I was. Because I knew what I had to do from the very first brainstorming session.
Stamp logo unit
At my first briefing meeting, I was instantly reminded of one of Rupi Kaur's poems that said "Our backs carry stories no book has the spine to carry." That was my 'aha' moment. I wanted an Indic, old money vibe to the brand and use vintage photos of women as a design element, as if those unknown women from history were a brand ambassador for Gulmarg. A feminine touch was also inevitable for a brand such as this.
Design element derived from the wordmark for use in very small scales
Vintage postcards over a colonial map of India aptly framed as a design element for Gulmarg
The following video was created as part of the starter kit for Gulmarg's Instagram. The use of an old song ('Main tenu yaad aavangi' by the one and only Surinder Kaur) only amplifies the message that Gulmarg wants to send across - that this brand is unapologetically feminine and proudly Indian.
For the primary logo, the wordmark is a maximal custom Devanagari type that I drew over the course of only a few hours. That's how sure I was about what I wanted Gulmarg to look like and that it was the perfect choice!
The only purpose I wanted it to serve was to unabashedly display the beautiful blocks and curves of Devanagari letterforms and look pretty. I get that it's not exactly legible in the first go, but that wasn't its job! To solve this problem, the name of the brand was added below the wordmark as part of the logo unit in both English and Urdu.
Main logo unit
Secondary logomark for use on smaller scales such as social media DPs
Some initial sketches
Vintage Indian women proudly incorporated as part of the visual system along with multiple languages
Note the usage of low frame rate and Indic / folk music as part of the vintage aesthetic
Vintage stamps seamlessly fit in the visual language with their rustic charm
Colours and pattern for Gulmarg; keywords- rural, vintage and feminine
A guide for digital text compositions and colour usage
At its completion, Gulmarg looked like straight out of a 70s Hindi magazine for housewives that served as a silent spokesperson for women and their untold stories. As a man, I am proud of having worked on a brand like Gulmarg that celebrates feminism and the very essence of being an Indian woman through the use of clothing.
As somebody rightly said, "Show me what you wear and I'll show you who you are." ❤️
