Deepak Singh Ola
06-04-2024
In 1997, National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad was commissioned to design a logo for IIITM Gwalior. They created a monogram that has three ‘I’s forming the ‘M’ and the crown of ‘T’ (see image below).
When we first saw this logo, the first thing that came to our mind was, this design would create problems while printing. To test our skepticism, we examined various images and documents available online and it turned out our concern was genuine — the logo does not print well.
It was a shock to witness such a poorly executed design, especially from the prestigious National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad. NID holds a legacy of creating some of the most iconic symbols of all time and is known for its design excellence globally. However, the IIITM Gwalior logo doesn’t seem to reflect the high standards of NID Ahmedabad.
One of the fundamental principles of logo design or any design per se is functionality. A logo isn’t merely a piece of artwork; The logo needs to perform effectively across various mediums and applications. Whether it is displayed on a digital screen, printed on stationery, used as a stamp, embroidered, or engraved on materials, a logo must maintain its integrity and legibility.
There are many problems with the IIITM Gwalior logo. The contrast achieved in the logo using dark and light colors makes it problematic to use both on light and dark backgrounds, its complex form impacts its legibility when used in smaller sizes and the design cannot be converted to pure black and white, limiting its functionality across various applications like using it as a stamp. While designing a logo of such a large institution, every possible application needs to be considered but it looks like these essential considerations were overlooked in this case.
The interesting thing is, to use the logo as a stamp they had to tweak the design (see image below) and make it a single-color silhouette with no overlapping elements. The important question to ask here is, why not this was chosen as a possible design solution in the first place? It has the desired form, appropriateness, aesthetics, and functionality.
We were not sure why these problematic decisions were made, so we discussed this with Ranjan De, an alumnus of NID Ahmedabad, who currently heads the Communication Design program at the School of Design and Innovation, RV University. Ranjan Said, “All logo designers should actually first design a functional black and white logo in both direct and reverse, and then add colour to it, with the direct and reverse treatment. But are young designers from diverse design schools to blame? No. Most of the faculty these days have zero industry knowledge, are half baked in their skills and there are too few senior designers out there in the field, imparting worthwhile training to the next generation of faculty. Even faculty at the 5-6 NIDs are half baked faculty, creating logos that we are discussing here. But how much can one person, or a few of us practitioner/faculty do?” He further added, “The logo and brand makers post 2000, have let go of all their principles, and instead of being in their chair of advisors to clients, they bow to them. Clients thanks to WA, Google and Wikipedia, think they know everything. 400+ years of printed shared knowledge can’t be uploaded onto the web in 25+ years.”
We agree with what Ranjan said. Designers are supposed to be decision-makers and act as partners of the organization they are working with. However, designers these days lack leadership qualities and are more comfortable taking orders. The majority of designers do not provide solutions; they provide options. It’s kind of a shortcut invented by lazy designers who can’t make decisions and want to avoid difficult conversations with the client. Because when you provide a solution, you have to prove why it’s the best solution for the company, and the designer will be held responsible if the solution does not work well. On the other hand, when a designer provides options, the client acts as the decision-maker, and nobody can point a finger at the designer for the decision made.
This also makes it difficult for design practitioners like us to critically analyze a design solution as most of the time we are not sure whether the decision was made by the designer or the client. Design criticism is important to preserve the core design principles, to open new areas of research and to improve the quality of design. As very well said by Winston Churchill, “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” In the case of IIITM Gwalior logo, we don’t know who took the decision but it is important to call NID Ahmedabad to the witness box as they have the huge responsibility of maintaining the design standards in India.