Chai Pe Charcha — Let’s have a cup of tea!
In August 2021, Shaon Sengupta, Bangalore’s Philips XD Studio Director, approached me and asked to make a quick logo for ‘Chai Pe Charcha’ — an online socials which was about to flag off the very next week. A little context to set the stage — ‘Chai pe Charcha’ is a Hindi adage that literally translates to ‘a chat over a cup of tea’.
With the sky being the limit, she had some exciting plans for the team to connect and engage in order to fuse and forge deeper bonds. The intent was to have everyone meet-up, interact and unwind while exploring blended possibilities between the physical and virtual world.
I was absolutely thrilled to get started on this. Especially because we had hardly kept in touch with each other owing to the pandemic-related stress and anxiety in the previous year. While I listened to Shaon, it was like a flashback to pre-covid times when the team would pause their work, get up and go to PIC Street (Food court at Philips Innovation Campus) to have a cup of chai or coffee — The original conversation starter.
What a refreshing time that was! We would have many different conversations under one roof in that period of respite. This form of involvement was direly missing during covid times and everyone was secretly longing for a brand new forum to participate and have fun — and Chai pe Charcha (CPC) was soon going to change that!
What is Chai Pe Charcha?
Chai Pe Charcha officially started at Philips XD BLR Studio in 2015. Before covid times, we had events where we would discover our colleagues’ talent and conduct sessions to understand and celebrate it. In one of the sessions we had a lively origami lamp making exercise. In another we had a cheerful soap making adventure. We also used CPC to have new joiners introduce themselves beside their work experience. It was all about having a good time, something not related to our projects.
In India, ‘chai’ (tea) tops the charts for being a conversation starter for any situation. It is something that you can say instead of a ‘hey’ that will still turn out to be an instant connector. Chai literally brings together one and all in our heterogenous landscape and is an emotion that permeates through all stems of society.
Inspired by the above sentiment, Bi-weekly Design Events a.k.a. ‘Chai pe Charcha’ is a powerful networking experience organized by Philips Experience Design Bangalore studio, where we come together on a central location to meet internal and external speakers from across several streams — like business leads, healthcare representatives, clinical specialists, doctors, artists, craftsmen, chefs, researchers (and many more) to discuss, discourse and deliberate on varied topics.
It aims to bring the studio design team together in COVID times and pushes us to get out of our comfort zone and take a much needed effective break!
Approach
I started this Logo Design assignment by exploring ideas through Pinterest, Behance, and (of course) Google. I was free to design, and did not need it to be pixel perfect. I began to ideate 3 rough concepts and started brainstorming.
In Concept 1, I used different elements representing different topics in the fresh air, in a glass cup of tea form. I admit it didn’t turn out the way I intended it to.
In Concept 2, I rough sketched a steaming hot cup of tea with an outline of spilled tea in the background.
In Concept 3, I illustrated a talking tea cup, with fitting eyeglasses and a sprinkle of personality.
Quite obviously, we decided to go with Concept 3 as it had the right character and vibrance to a cup of tea — something the design event (CPC) was about in the first place!
I then fine-tuned Concept 3 by trying different colours, and played with different fonts.
I wasn’t quite satisfied as there was still some missing flavour so I tried to tweak the design a bit more. I added more components, resized and reworked with different fonts and colors.
And nope, I still was not convinced. When it came to the perfect illustration we definitely were getting close, albeit rather slowly. After much pondering, nipping and moulding the one with yellow bubble finally caught our eyes — It was a bright and happy color symbolizing optimism which would not only match our PIC Street tables but also in effect is an appetite stimulant that emanates a feeling of comfort. As one would expect, without any hesitation we zeroed-in on this!
The logo evolution didn’t really end here! I decided to try my hands on branding and reinventing with possible ideas for budget-friendly gifts and souvenirs for our guest speakers and visitors.
Amid painstakingly slowing social activity worldwide, COVID-19 sure led to a pleasant surge in adoption for this fresh expression of creativity with our digitally accelerated “Chai pe Charcha” initiative. Professional networks with virtual chai to spark an online rendezvous — Breaking barriers, banishing isolation and restoring links no matter where we are!
