The initial brief was designing event based signage for Pune city. The brief eventually translated into a six month process of understanding a new city.

The project required planning the communication strategy to be used in Pune to generate excitement about the Commonwealth Youth Games, and spread the message of the games. The main challenge of the project was to give a flavour of the host city to the Games and the flavour of the Games to the city.

The process involved studying Pune’s history, architectural landmarks, people, culture, celebrations and festivals. Detailed study of the city gave clues for the visual language to be developed for the communication. Benchmark events like Olympics, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games were also included as case studies to understand the scale, reach and audience of such events and to also understand how the same design issues were addressed in other situations.

The final end deliverables included: colour palettes, a new typeface for key messaging, a typographic palette for the use of text, icon styles, key artwork for foregrounds and backgrounds, structures and simulations for the implementation of the designs. The final deliverable of the project was recommendations and a flexible design solution that could be adapted to diverse settings.

Designing for an international game event with a certain scale and impact was a great challenge. The key learning from the project was the importance of planning in any project and the different influencing factors that have to be taken into account.