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 Introduction:
Corporate Identity Systems work on the premise that there is the need
for a corporation to be perceived as being different from the ordinary,
especially in a business climate that is increasingly being besieged by
pressures of several kinds - political, social, economic. What does the
corporation then do to fight its way out of an impending or an anticipated
situation of facelessness?
We will exemplify this process with a recent hands-on
experience that is known to have set a few precedents in India through
its design initiatives. This is the Vision 2000 programme under which
India's largest as well as her only Fortune 500 company, the Indian Oil
Corporation (IOC), had set itself on a course of revamping its corporate
image three and a half years ago. Part of the outcome is now available
in the form of a recently inaugurated retail petroleum outlet near the
international airport of Sahar in Mumbai. The outlet bears testimony to
an arduous, and needless to say, comprehensive designing programme backed
up by an equally stringent implementation process. Also arguably the first
of its kind in India, the programme was systematically initiated in the
Fall of 1994.
The
objectives for IOC:
Any design solution as part of a corporate image-building exercise needs
to be a construction of the statement of the company's attitudes and goals.
Followed by the backing of a clear-cut design idiom. The imperatives for
a change in IOC's corporate image were rooted in several factors. In a
survey undertaken by the designer commissioned by IOC to undertake its
image-building programme, it would appear that on an every day basis,
neither the company's image nor its performance left any indelible imprint
in the minds of its consumers. A finding that applied equally well to
all the other oil companies in India as well. In the event, the only way
to distinguish one oil company from the other seemed to be the colour-bands
running across their pump station facias - red in the case of IOC, yellow
for BPCL, blue for HP and orange for IBP. And even there, the customers
found it difficult to remember which colour represented which company.
It was this 'impersonality' which had lent to the company's image an utterly
unexciting impression, and one that now required immediate addressing.
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
The
design solutions:
There were three design solutions offered as alternatives to IOC. Each
one reflecting a certain style of designing, and each style in turn, representing
a certain sense of purpose distinctly associated with that particular
style. Of these three solutions - traditional, modern and post-Modern
- presented in the form of models to the company for them to be able to
visualise the projected outcomes, the one selected by IOC for implementation
was the post-Modern one. In the words of the designer, the post-Modern
design was based on "an open, dynamic form in order to go along with the
futuristic aspirations of the company."
It is widely known that post-Modern design represents an attitude towards
precision and purpose, but not in a driven industrial sort of way. In
stead, it is an idiom of design that admits outside sensibilities with
less reservations, this by itself connoting an attitude towards change.
With its roots in the post-seventies' movement called Memphis, post-Modern
design had sign posted, through its protagonists such as Ettore Sottsass,
Peter Shire, Natalie Pasquire and others, a note of protest against the
orthodoxy of the prevailing design culture of the rectilinear that had
swept the Western world since the twenties. Which is why some of the key
design features of Vision 2000 display a move towards the curvilinear.
Adopting a post-Modern style for IOC's revamped corporate image was going
to send out a signal of unorthodoxy in an otherwise undifferentiated environment
of staticness that had come to mark the corporate-industrial scene in
India. IOC now desired itself to be projected as a 'futuristic' corporation
"poised at the cutting edge of technology, and up-to-date in appearance"
apart from being a 'friendly' corporation.
The
key design features:
Decidedly, one of the elements in the overall design scheme that was going
to impart IOC's future retail outlets with a sense of distinctiveness,
was going to be its colour identity. In its completed form at the new
retail outlet near Mumbai's international airport at Sahar, it appears
quite strikingly as a rainbow-coloured band that runs visibly along the
entire length of the retail outlet's facia.. Needless to say, the rainbow
band is of a proprietary nature, made in PVC and reproduced either through
digital printing or through screen printing. Then, there is the house
colour chosen by the designer especially for Vision 2000. It is a proprietary
'IOC Beige.' Further, the colour combination of white letters on a red
background developed specifically for IOC, has been set aside for use
on its signages.
Some of the other features that are the result of a dedicated proprietary
development for the corporate identity exercise are:
the concept of a convenience store on the premise of a retail outlet and
which combines the conveniences of emergency shopping and snacking with
the act of filling up gas;
a range of signages which are of a distinct shape and colour-combination
and which include the main sign poles indicating all facilities available
at the outlet, as well as directional signpoles and signages for the pump
island and the convenience shop; the curvilinear dumbell-shaped pump islands
to help the vehicles manoeuvre themselves with ease, as well as to create
space for the pump attendants to stand and attend to the vehicles;
the facia band in steps, as a feature along the top of the canopy as well
as on the sales and service building; and
the positioning of the oil-pumps in two separate spaces of the retail
outlet - one of them to provide easy access to two and three wheelers,
the other to four wheelers. This segregation is expected to promote better
space and functional management of the arriving vehicles in terms of the
customised attention that can now be accorded to the varying needs of
two and three wheelers vs. those of four wheelers.
Conclusion:
It is just as well that a Fortune 500 company should have taken the plunge
towards such a potentially massive exercise in comprehensive and proprietary
designing and set the pace for the others to follow. What holds a measure
of promise through this particular design endeavour, are the clues that
are embedded in the corporation's initiative towards indigenous designing.
Compared to the usual tendency in the industrial design history of the
Indian industry to plump in for already available designs, even if such
designs have been worked out to suit the needs of companies located elsewhere,
and quite usually of those located abroad.
It has to be said in a measure of fairness to IOC, that it was the top
echelon of its management that had opened up the doors for indigenous
designing. The strategic positioning that it had created for the designer
right from the point in time at which he was commissioned into the launch
of the Vision 2000 programme, could have a strong message for other corporations
in India especially the ones that could be in an urgent need for a corporate
image-building exercise. The fact that such strategic positioning had
enabled the designer access to the topmost levels of the management, compares
well with the way companies like IBM or Mobil had gone about their own
such exercise in the sixties. The relative face of coherence displayed
amongst IOC's top management, especially with respect to the critical
matter of freezing their design concept in order to move on with its implementation,
had all the hallmarks of a company getting ready for marketisation.
If IOC were to conform to a strict implementation-regime of its Vision
2000 programme, in accordance with the guidelines laid out in its manual
by the designer for its pan-India application (across an estimated 7000
retail outlets to be redesigned by the year 2000). And, if there were
to be strict adherence to material and process control, then IOC's post-Modernist
'rainbow band' could yet turn out to be her lucky mascot.
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