#30yearsofdesign #brandstories

Sometimes you land up with a great project when you are just chatting with friends and advising them on way ahead with their new role. So this close friend joined a company that was making great quality shoes for men for big name brands in Europe. The shoes were designed in Italy and Italians were supervising the production quality in India to their standards.

The owner of this company was so well versed with leather, its processing and what all could be done with leather..that we could already see a great brand coming up. His passion was inspiring and he outlined this vision of self branded shoes for men along with a self owned retail network.

The first job was to have a name..we considered many names..something like 400 names with a structures nomenclature process..and finally settled on RUOSH...that seemed perfect, it is a sanskrit word that means passion.. we juggled with letters...and were already focussed on "Passion and Style" as two basic values to move ahead with. Now for the visual identity, we decided to have a luxury lifestyle/fashion look that would define style. We did a san serif, equal weight letters logo..that looked very elegant... i wanted it a bit stretched so it would be great for Retail and shoe boxes etc. Decided a simple elegant Astral as the nemonic..and filled meaning in each leaf..it stood for Good DEsign, passion, Style and Craftsmanship.... and went for a simple single regal colour.

The overall effect was very elegant, lifestyle and expensive looking... many people do not believe it is a indian brand... The showrooms and shoes caught on very fast and very well..the brand had an accepted feel already. I always feel for brands like this designers need to be very restrained..very very careful..you have to takeout more from forms than you put in..design has to be understated..very tough with a client that might be doing brand for the first time.

The brand did very good business also because it was very focussed. This was done in 2010, and i noticed recently that they have introduced women shoes as well..and changed the logo..removed astral and pranked with O. Ofcourse it is their brand and they can do whatever with it..but i fear..it is a diluted brand now..doesnt have its passion as a resource any more. Story of all passion brands..

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