What is Mumbai city’s Identity?

A recent ‘art’ installation at Kala Ghoda got my blood boiling.

It was an installation that is / was supposed to (or rather hoped it would) be the identity of a manic, but much loved city like Mumbai.

Not only is it not original, but it is a blatant rip off what what New York or Amsterdam has.

Plagiarized stuff is passed for art all the time. I get that. But what I don’t get is why would you want the identity of a city to be based on what worked for someplace else?

So this got me thinking. I scoured the internet to see if Mumbai has a visual identity. Many cities have their unique identity representing the ethos of that city.

Some of the ones I like are Belfast and Singapore.

Belfast city’s logo is nice and clean. Minialistic. The play on the heart shape to represent the ‘B’ is a nice touch.

Even Singapore has a nice looking vibrant logo, representing the potpourri that it is.

For Mumbai I found logo that was designed by Umbrella design and which had sadly taken a lot of flak!

I liked the concept — a mother holding a child — representative of how Mumbai takes care of its residents etc. But on the whole it did not go down very well with Mumbaikars. While a lot of folks has commented negatively on why the logo was not representative of Mumbai, not one new suggestion or design was offered.

Mumbai as a city is very complicated. There are many facets to it — as do many other cities. But none other has the unique rhythm of organized chaos that Mumbai has. You cannot just ‘ represent’ Mumbai. There are as many perspectives as people in the city. So I asked folks in Mumbai “What word came to their mind when I said ‘Mumbai’?’

The responses ranged from the widely accepted #Unliveable to #Crazy, #Chaos, #money and even #Ex.

I asked my self what it meant to me and a plethora of words came tumbling out of my head — Chaos, Traffic, Beach, Derby, Acceptance, Ganpati, Slums, Money, Sensex, Bollywood, Gateway, Locals, Metro, Mohammad Ali Road! Phew! I knew there is no one word that can represent this city.

But that cannot be an excuse.

So I did what I know best. I ideated on paper. I drew a few sketches of what i’d like the city logo to be. Now, I am no artist, but I can think. What key qualities of Mumbai should come out?

• Land of opportunity : There is a reason people flock to Mumbai. The reason is Mumbai offers everyone an opportunity to try their fate. Bollywood, Sensex, Finance — you name it. Mumbai has it all.
• Shelter : Like it or not, Mumbai has a little place in her for everyone. People will find shelter.
• Tolerance: Now, many may consider this highly debatable, but the fact of the matter is that the people of Mumbai are extremely tolerant and no intrusive. No one gives a damn (unless there is a crisis, and I haven’t seen any city coagulate to fight a crisis like Mumbai) about who you are, what you’re wearing, or what you’re eating (ahem.).

So with my limited skill, and what little understanding of design I have, I made this (Yes and there is a lot of scope for improvement).

Allow me to explain my thoughts:

• The overall shape is ‘M’. M for Mumbai.
• The top arcs, form a soaring bird representing Mumbai as the land of opportunities.
• The sheltered ‘M’ below the arcs, represents two people holding hands. Any two people. Like I said, Mumbai doesn’t discriminate.
• The inside angle of the inside ‘M’ denotes shelter, which Mumbai gives to everyone.
• The blue denotes the island geography of the city.

So there! If someone like me can come up with something like this, I am certain more trained eyes /skilled folks can do much better. Why they haven’t done so far is beyond the scope of this post, but yes, it has to be done.

We cannot put up an installation and ask people to click a photo of it so that a brand can get the most leverage.

So Asian of us!

(Of course i’d like to hear what you have to say!)