Landor creates a bold look for newly launched Bharat QR

Bharat QR is a digital payments solution system for which Landor has designed the logo and its look at various touchpoints like the mobile app and instore marketing collaterals

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | February 22, 2017

The Government of India, in a bid to make the country more digital friendly, has announced the launch of Bharat QR. A common platform for QR-based payments across banks and networks operators, Bharat QR was developed through the collaboration of Visa, Mastercard and National Payments Corporation of India.

Landor, a brand consulting and design firm, was approached to design the logo and Bharat QR's look at various touchpoints like the mobile app and instore marketing collaterals.

Lulu Raghavan

Speaking on the brief that was given to them, Lulu Raghavan, Managing Director, Landor Associates, said, “ICICI Bank is our client and they were leading this consortium and that is how we were approached. They explained to us that this was a bold new initiative that will aid in digitisation and that it is very different because many of the competitive banks and network operators were coming together to create this new product. They told us that the identity needs to be very simple and straightforward because everyone from someone in a village to a person in a big city should be able to understand what Bharat QR is all about. They also wanted it be very clear on mobile because mobiles were the medium and wanted it to stand out even in the local 'kirana shops'. So it was quite a straightforward, simple brief.”

Although the brief was very simple, Raghavan acknowledges that sometimes the simplest briefs are the most difficult.

“We presented a lot of designs and the one that they selected resonated with all the stakeholders. Typically when you have a lot of stakeholders it is very difficult to have a consensus and then the design solution often ends up becoming sub-par because sometimes the lowest common denominator does not end up being good. But here the power of the identity was such that it got great resonance with all of the stakeholders,” said Raghavan.

Taking us through the thought behind the logo, Raghavan said, “Because the whole thing is about the QR code we were thinking about how best to depict the QR. The compactness of the logo was also important because it was going to be mobile first and the mark had to be as compact and tight as possible. So actually having a word mark where the letters Q and R itself have the symbology was really the route that we preferred to take. So you have the Q which has been used as the square of QR code, it is not exactly like the QR code but it is a nod to the shape and the styling of a QR code. The R was used to connote rupees so it is a combination of rupee and QR code. The dynamism of the mark also suggests something on the move, fast, easy and seamless. We also have a gentle nod to the tricolour.”

Raghavan said that only challenge they faced while creating the look was the time constraint.

“The only challenge was creating great design in a very short period of time. But I also believe that when you have only two or three weeks to do something like this you put your best foot forward,” added Raghavan.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

Info@BestMediaInfo.com