Vistara Airlines : How they built an airline brand from scratch!
Vistara’s brand identity like any other company is the culmination of all the elements it develops to communicate the effective tone to its customers. Even though the terms “brand identity,” “brand image,” and “branding” are commonly used interchangeably, they are not the same thing.
Introduction
The marketing strategy of actively creating a distinctive brand is referred to as branding. The brand represents how the public sees the business.
Your design is what will help your company’s brand identity develop, just as brand identity frequently shapes your persona.
Your corporate branding assets are the observable components that will impact how people view your brand. Things like your company’s logo, packaging, website design, social media visuals, business cards, and employee uniforms.
In other words, having a successful company that accurately represents your brand requires nailing your design and brand identity.
Key elements for your Brand Design
One must start from scratch and establish the fundamentals of your design structure — the cornerstones of your brand identity — before you begin producing your design assets.
The following are the foundational elements you should decide before producing your design assets:
Typography The typeface (or type) you select for your branding materials is referred to as typography. It’s especially crucial to make informed decisions when selecting brand and logo fonts. There are four main typographic styles:
Serif typefaces, such as Times New Roman and Garamond, have what some people mistake for an anchor (or tiny feet). If you want to give the impression that your brand is reliable, established, and just a touch dated, use this classic typography.
“Sans serif” means without the foot if “serif” is the foot. Sans serif typefaces (such as Helvetica or Franklin Gothic) use letters without the anchors or “feet” found in serif fonts. Sans serif typefaces give brands a more streamlined, contemporary feel.
Script typography is simulated using script typography .These fonts, such as Allura or Pacifico, might be a wonderful approach to give your business an opulent or feminine air.
In a way, display fonts are in a different league. Every display typeface has a unique feature, such as an odd letter form, an outline, shadowing, or a more creative, hand-drawn edge (like the lightning bolt font used by Metallica). Want to make a big impression and establish a memorable brand identity? A display font is a fantastic tool for this.
Choose your typefaces carefully because they will say a lot about your brand.
Color Palette
People — including your potential customers — have psychological connections to various colors, and strategically using branding colors and logo colors can significantly affect how your audience perceives your company.
- The following are some things that the rainbow’s colors (plus a few additional) can accomplish to support your brand identity:
- Red: The color red represents fervor and energy. If your brand identity is loud, vibrant, and young, this is the best option.
- Orange: Orange is a high-energy color that is perfect for conveying friendliness and playfulness. Because it’s less frequently used than red, it will also help you stand out.
- Yellow: The color of sunshine, yellow, is all about joy. It’s an excellent option because of the upbeat atmosphere if you want to feel lively, approachable, and inexpensive.
- Green: Green is a remarkably adaptable hue that can be utilized for almost any brand. However, when people see green, they typically associate it with either money or the natural world. Green is a particularly wise choice if either of those elements represent your brand.
- Blue: Blue is the most widely liked color in the color wheel and can make your branding seem more reliable and trustworthy. Use blue if you want to appeal to a broad demographic and win their trust in the process.
- Purple is a safe pick if you’re striving for an opulent vibe in your branding because it is the color of royalty.
- Pink: Whether intentionally or not, pink is regarded as being feminine and should thus be a strong contender for your brand’s hue if it caters to women. It works well for brands that have a soft or opulent personality.
- Brown: Brown is possibly the least used color in branding overall, but that might be to your favor! Any time you take an unconventional approach, it makes you stand out. Additionally, brown can make customers perceive your brand as tough or macho.
- Black: There is nothing more timeless and powerful as this color if you want to be perceived as modern or smart.
Form/Shape
You should consider form and shape when creating your ideas. A logo that is all circles and soft edges will elicit completely different responses than one that is sharp and square, for example, but this subtle but effective aspect can be leveraged to reinforce the emotion you want from your clients.
See how various formats might influence your brand’s identity.
- Circles, ovals, and ellipses are examples of round forms that are all about the fuzzy feelings. Brands that use round shapes can foster feelings of love, community, and unity. Additionally, the rounded edges can be seen as feminine.
- People tend to associate strength and efficiency with straight-edged shapes like squares, rectangles, and triangles. The straightforward lines convey stability and dependability, but you must be careful because if the shapes aren’t offset by something lively, like vibrant colours, they may come across as impersonal and fail to engage your target audience.
- Straight lines also have meanings of their own. Vertical lines imply masculinity and strength, while horizontal lines imply peace and harmony.
Designing your Brand Identity
Once you’ve figured out the building blocks of your design, it’s time to work with a designer to bring your brand identity to life and translate who you are as a brand into tangible design assets you can use in your marketing.
The next step is to collaborate with a designer to bring your brand identity to life and translate who you are as a brand into concrete design assets you can use in your marketing once you’ve sorted out the foundational elements of your design.
Any number of components can be used to express your brand identity. One asset may be more or less significant depending on the type of business you run.
For instance, a restaurant should give careful consideration to both its menu and setting. However, a digital marketing business must put more of an emphasis on its website and social network pages.
Logo
The core of your brand identification is your logo design. You should strive to have your logo check off all of the following boxes when working with your designer:
- Clearly conveys your brand’s identity and core values.
- Is aesthetically pleasing: simplicity, cleanliness, and orderliness go a great way.
- Is timeless and unfashionable since the last thing you want is for your logo to become outdated in six months.
- Follows the norms of your sector, and if you stray, do so on purpose.
- Creates an impact that stays with your audience.
Website
One of the most defining features of your brand identity is your website. Customers will undoubtedly visit your website before choosing to do business with you, especially if you operate an online business or sell digital goods. Your website is the place where your brand identity should be clearly visible.
Product Packaging
If you sell a tangible product, product packaging is essential for drawing in the correct clients. Don’t underestimate the importance of good design in enhancing the experience and encouraging loyalty and repeat business, whether you’re thinking about the bottle of a cold-brew beverage or the mail you’ll send to clients who bought clothes from your e-commerce shop. Using packaging to showcase your design is a fantastic opportunity.
Business cards
You should have plenty of business cards on hand if you’re doing any kind of business development — and who isn’t? A professionally made card gives you the ability to solidify a favorable impression of oneself in the eyes of prospective clients or consumers. Keep your business card design straightforward by placing your company logo on one side and your most important personal information on the other.
Email Design
Email is a fantastic tool for interacting with clients and generating sales. However, the majority of people have overloaded inboxes, so if you want to expand your business via email, you need the correct design plan to stand out from the crowd. Think about the email’s intended use. Are you attempting to establish a personal relationship? Then make it brief, sweet, and straightforward. Are you attempting to instruct? After that, format it properly for easy reading and scanning, and then add a few photographs to make it stand out. Are you attempting to inform your clients about a brand-new apparel line you have introduced? Make a few eye-catching product photos the centerpiece.
Create a Brand Style Guide
When you have your design assets, you want to ensure that they are used properly, so you should absolutely develop a brand style guide. With the help of this document, which specifies your design assets, when and how to use them, as well as any design dos and don’ts for your brand, you can be sure that all upcoming designs will be consistent with your brand identity and influence your audience in the appropriate way.
To have a strong brand identity, consistency is essential. Your brand shouldn’t appear completely different on social media than it does on your website, of course. Customers would become perplexed as a result, and your brand would appear less reliable and competent. Therefore, be careful to follow a brand guide that details all the components of your brand identity. Long-term brand loyalty and brand recognition can only be achieved in this way.
Vistara: Brand Identity
Your brand identity is what distinguishes you from the never-ending field of rivals and reveals to your clients who you are and what they may anticipate from dealing with you. Furthermore, it’s critical to nail your brand identity and produce graphics that faithfully represent you to your audience if you want your brand to be seen favorably.
New Beginnings
Sujata and the late Ram Ray co-founded the branding and design firm known as R+K in the 1990s. WPP acquired R+K in 2006.
R+K enjoyed a successful career, creating some of the biggest brands in the nation, including Airtel and Kotak. We had never, though, branded an airline. There was therefore tremendous excitement when the RFP for the Tatas and Singapore Airlines (SIA) joint venture arrived.
Not just an Airline but an Experience of lifetime
Jet and Indigo led the market in 2014. We claimed that, given the competition, there was room for an airline that prioritized customer satisfaction over practical considerations like punctuality and efficiency. We suggested that the airline be marketed through the perspective of hospitality, with every aspect — from the livery to the cabin décor to the music — chosen to create a luxurious “hotel” experience for the corporate traveler.
In 2014, the design language of airlines was dominated by visual cues of flight. We broke away from this completely, recommending instead that all interfaces speak the language of premium hospitality. Given the SIA and Tata lineage, we knew this was a powerful and credible brand idea.
-Sujata Keshavan, Founder & ECD, Ray+Keshavan
Unbounded World
Choosing a name for an airline is challenging since it needs to be memorable across cultures, phonetically correct, and available for legal registration in several nations.
Vistara is derived from the Sanskrit word “Vistaar,” which denotes an infinitely large area. The existing attitude in the aviation sector, which was about imposing limits, be it by cutting shortcuts or putting on extra fees, was completely at odds with this concept.
This new airline would provide a full-service experience with all the bells and whistles as part of its premium hospitality offering. The name Vistara refers to the fact that it would lift restrictions rather than impose them. (The extra ‘a’ was added for phonetic convenience.)
Because it was a tribute to the warm Eastern hospitality that both Singapore and India are famed for, choosing a Sanskrit name suited our hospitality-based strategy. Vistara was a beautiful word that was simple to say. The name also made me think of the limitless blue horizon that flyers see out their windows during an effortless, pleasurable journey.
A Moving Octagon
An eight-pointed star, sometimes known as an octagram, which has been used throughout history as a symbol of harmony, greatness, and good fortune, was used to graphically represent Vistara’s limitless globe. The logo’s continuous, overlapping lines give off a sense of movement that makes it appear as though the space they enclose is dynamic rather than still.
The logo’s design was chosen so that it could be applied to a variety of products without losing its visual appeal, including water glasses and the tail of an aero plane. The logo was also tessellated to provide designs for uniforms and frequent flyer cards.
Color me Purple
The predominant color for the brand was a topic of significant debate. The overdone red and blue color schemes were obviously outdated. Imagine the Vistara crew passing through an airport; we want them to be noticeable and simple to identify, Sujata said during a brainstorming session. What shade ought they to be donning?
The deep aubergine and gold color scheme that has come to represent the Vistara brand was ultimately selected by the team not only because it was eye-catching but also because it complemented the overall “luxury hospitality” experience we wished to create.
Branding the three “CLASSES”
The first airline to provide a Premium Economy class on domestic flights was Vistara. This was viewed as a dangerous approach at the time. If a cabin wasn’t Business Class, would passengers be willing to pay more to sit there? Our goal was to differentiate the experience as much as possible by adding “prestige” to Premium Economy. To effectively distinguish Premium Economy from the standard Economy purple, we utilised a deep blue for branding.
Brand identity in a Nutshell
After a carefully studying Vistara’s brand identity we can conclude that; your brand identity is what distinguishes you from the never-ending field of rivals and reveals to your clients who you are and what they may anticipate from dealing with you. Furthermore, it’s critical to nail your brand identity and produce graphics that faithfully represent you to your audience if you want your brand to be seen favourably.
