Symbol Design
My Role
Concept development, visual research, collaborative ideation, symbol design and refinement
Collaborators
Promit Basu, Piyush Mishra
Duration
Aug - Sep 2022 (1 month)
The Transport Department, Government of NCT of Delhi, commissioned a symbol and sticker design to mark a women's driving empowerment initiative launched on Independence Day. Under the program, 1000 women were to receive professional driving training in collaboration with Blu Smart, IDTR, and Azad Foundation, with the goal of employment, safety, and self-reliance. The ask was clear: design a sticker for vehicles driven by these women. Something identifiable, confidence-inspiring, and meaningful enough to carry the weight of the occasion.
The brief pointed toward pink and iconic, but iconic doesn't mean obvious. The challenge was to design something that connected with the Indian public instinctively, while carrying a symbolic depth that went beyond a badge.
The concept was rooted in creative symbolism, finding a visual form that felt familiar enough to be read immediately, but considered enough to mean something when you looked closer. A mark of identity, not just identification.
The design process was deeply collaborative, working alongside a batchmate and guided by our professor, the project became as much about the thinking in the room as the thinking on paper. Concepts were debated, refined, and challenged collectively. Working within government guidelines while pushing for something visually considered taught me how creative decisions get made when the stakes are real and the audience is the general public.
For a cause this grounded in real impact, safety, employment, dignity for women, being in the room at all felt significant. I was early in my design journey and the project showed me what it means to design for someone whose life it might actually touch. The collaboration itself was a lesson I carried forward, how much better the work gets when you're genuinely thinking with someone, not just alongside them.
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