How Ad Asia found the right design metaphor

The ad festival, which kicks off on October 31, found a template after many brainstorming sessions.

At a time when nation states across the globe are grappling with economic uncertainty and chaos, how can the relative tranquil of Asia be best represented? How can the different colours of Asia be merged to form one common picture?

This and many more questions coursed through the minds of team members at Water, the strategic branding & design unit from the Mudra group, which was tasked with working out the theme for Ad Asia 2011, to be held in New Delhi from October 31 to November 3.

This was the fall of 2009 and the team had barely a month and a half to go before unveiling the theme at the Ad Asia that year, which was to be held at Kuala Lampur in Malaysia between 22 and 24 October.

The biennial event has emerged as a premier festival in Asia that celebrates advertising. Unveiling the forthcoming edition’s theme is a customary practice at the event.

So Water had its task cut out and in keeping with tradition had to zero in on a concept that best resonated the mood of the time. “The last time that Ad Asia was held in India was in 2003 in Jaipur, when the theme was Breaking the Rules. It was unique in many ways. We had that at the back of our minds when we sat down to work on the festival theme,” says Ashish Mishra, chief strategist & head at Water.

But unlike 2003 when the world wasn’t buckling under the pressure of an economic crisis, 2009 was different. It had been a year since financial services firm Lehman Brothers had collapsed, and uncertainty loomed large. It still does. Mehra says his team poured through books by global thinkers and management gurus that captured what the future would be like.

That’s when they came across the work of Japanese thinker and strategist Kenichi Ohmae, who had written about how nation states would coalesce into region states and begin doing business together in his book ‘The Next World Stage’. “The germ of our idea came from here. Whilst the economic uncertainty did set the stage, we needed to take this thought forward. That nation states could merge into region states and have a seamless inter-connectivity seemed apt from Asia,” says Mehra.

The concept Uncertainty: The New Certainty emerged after a few brainstorming sessions. But the challenge was to find the right design metaphor that brought out the interconnectedness between different countries in the region. Amongst various element that Water considered was fabric and how its creation involved interweaving different yarns.

“It struck us then that we could use the concept of an Asian fabric that had different motifs from the region. We looked at the textile designs of six different countries including India, Thailand, Korea, China, Japan and Indonesia to create a tapestry,” says Mehra.

This tapestry served as the template for Ad Asia 2011, which has been used for the logo, banners, drop-downs, display panels, bags, notebooks, pads, leaflets etc.

Mishra says his firm has been at work to take the fabric branding concept to elements across the festival from the start of this year. “It’s been a painstaking effort. But we are satisfied,” he says.