The design idioms for Vision 2000:

As mentioned already, one of the first steps towards any image-building exercise is also usually marked by the adoption of a clearly defined set of design idioms. Which is why a similar course of action was expected to set the way for IOC to accomplish a clearer identity aimed at transforming the corporation's impersonal image. In the designer's opinion, this could only happen by evolving a 'design style' that was "manifoldly distinct from the prevalent ones," apart from projecting IOC as a 'consumer-. friendly' company. This image-building exercise was now going to be undertaken systematically through a design programme designated by the designer as 'Vision 2000'. Under this, projects would either be an outcome of a redesigned effort, as in the case of all existing retail IOC outlets across the country. Or designed from scratch in the case of a few select retail outlets yet to be constructed. And which would sport an entirely new look. As in the case of the project under discussion here.

One of the two design idioms considered appropriate for this programme was 'comprehensive designing' that would consist of designing an entire range of artefacts right from buildings to products to packaging to publicity material, rather than just a few items here and there chosen in a piecemeal manner for designing. All this, of course, with a view to creating a composite mental picture of the company in the minds of its consumers. Included under comprehensive designing process would be an entire gamut of artefacts, such as the architecture of the sales building of the retail outlets, the canopy to cover the oil-pumps, signage poles to guide the traffic around, the uniform to be worn by attendants at the pump station, the size and positioning of the billboards, and such.

The other major design idiom adopted under IOC's Vision 2000, and which is seldom undertaken by India's industry, was the concept of 'proprietariness'. It is an undertaking through which materials and processes are developed exclusively for the company's use. In the event, it would give IOC a major competitive edge to its revamped corporate identity by pre-empting the company's design initiatives from getting undercut through cheap imitations

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