Entries from July 2006 ↓

That’s the new brand identity of Reliance Infocomm / Reliance Communications. I saw it first on a big billboard near my house. The first impression I had was: “uhh.. why are they using that emboss effect? That’s so 1999′ish.” And I wanted to rant about it for a while, but got the time only today!

Do you understand what the logo means? I tried to find it on their site, but the media kit available is the original Reliance Infocomm kit - dating back to 2002.

So here’s my interpretation of how this logo came along:

Top Management: We need a new brand identity. The current one does not position as a new age company - rather it mixes our brand with the other Reliance companies.

Brief to Design Team: Create a futuristic, forward looking logo. You are free to explore creative ideas. We want to reposition ourselves. The logo should signify progress, new age and be hip.

Designer 1: Let’s use some cool font. These new web 2.0 style logos look pretty good. Let me pick a font from there.

Designer 2: Hey, why don’t we use mixed cases? That would be cool uh? Title case is not looking good with this font. and all small doesn’t look catchy. We will surely look young and free if we use mixed cases. Like, how about using a small “e”! Like “e-mail” and “e-commerce”! It’s been a while I did those kinds. I think it would work for us.

Designer 1: Yeah! I think that’s neat! But let’s stick to some standard corporate colors. I think blue and red work with everybody. I think our boss likes them too. So let’s do them.

Designer 2: Umm.. well if you say so. But I think it’s looking too flat. I’ve got this cool emboss trick that I learnt from my friend the other day. (tries it out…) Yes! This gives that edge to the new logo. We are coming out to take on the world! It will also look good on our website. And we can use embossing effect on the visiting cards.

Designer 1: Ok, I can live with that. But I think there is this big void around the middle of the logo. Let’s do something with N. Remember we have to signify moving upward and forward. Let’s have a dynamic upward motion with an arrow metaphor under the N. That will make the logo a bit different and convey the message as well.

Designer 2: That’s really creative. I think if we make it in red color it will stand out and work perfect.

Designer 1: Yeah! Dude, we’ve got it rocking!

Designer 2: Yes. Let’s take the master piece to our boss.

Boss: Wow! That’s neat. I like the color scheme you have used. I think we should add a second line to the logo for the “Communications” text. Make it red. We can then use it for branding various SBU’s. And heck, how did you forget to add “Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group”?? That was the whole point in the new logo!

Designer 1 & 2: Good! We made it! Let’s stick up the second SBU line. Since we have to make the logo simple, let’s add a straight line after the SBU line and right the ego line. I think the higher ups will like it!

Top Management: Wonderful. This logo is serious, yet youthful. We have got it pretty good. It’s not perfect yet, but then we don’t have time to work more on it. So let’s go ahead and start on all the other marketing material!

As a matter of fact, Reliance is one of our customers; but I think the new logo just doesn’t cut it. Take off the embossing at least!

There were seven bomb blasts in Mumbai suburban rail system yesterday. About 140 are dead and many more injured.

One of my uncles had a small injury in hand, but he is safe. Thankfully, there are no other mishaps and families, friends and colleagues are fine.

I was shaken to see the pictures and read the stories about the tragedy. I think when something bad happens to near and dear ones, that is the time when we realize the impact on others’ lives. It was terrifying to imagine bodies flying out of the train compartment and a river of blood.

I had called up many other people yesterday and they are safe. Everyone in office and their families are ok. Uttam (one of the new Magneteer)’s brother was in the next compartment where the blast happened in Borivali. He came to office and was describing how it was.

I pray for peace in the world and for the souls that drifted.

There were seven bomb blasts in Mumbai suburban rail system yesterday. About 140 are dead and many more injured.

One of my uncles had a small injury in hand, but he is safe. Thankfully, there are no other mishaps and families, friends and colleagues are fine.

I was shaken to see the pictures and read the stories about the tragedy. I think when something bad happens to near and dear ones, that is the time when we realize the impact on others’ lives. It was terrifying to imagine bodies flying out of the train compartment and a river of blood.

I had called up many other people yesterday and they are safe. Everyone in office and their families are ok. Uttam (one of the new Magneteer)’s brother was in the next compartment where the blast happened in Borivali. He came to office and was describing how it was.

I pray for peace in the world and for the souls that drifted.

We will have a voice over IP based phone setup in the new office. So I thought I would write up a note on what is VoIP and the various components in it.

According to Wikipedia:
Voice over Internet Protocol, also called VoIP, is the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or through any other IP based network.

It essentially means that the voice is carried over LAN or Internet and not the telephone lines. This reduces the costs and provides many other advantages.

We will be using Asterisk software for providing internal phone system. So all the incoming calls will be handled by Asterisk and then delivered to the appropriate extensions over the LAN. We will have a unique extension number for each employee, and most will be using SoftPhones. SoftPhone is a software running on your computer that can do VoIP. There are many soft phones available and we will be picking one that suits our needs. Even if you login from another computer, your extension number will remain the same and you will get your calls delivered to the computer you are on. This system can be extended to the level that an extension can even be across the Internet.

The Asterisk software will allow us to do automated handling of calls. We will also have voice mail feature. As a matter of fact, you can talk to Asterisk via PHP and do many interesting things. The Asterisk admin interface is done in PHP too! I was just talking to Amit about this and we even thought of providing an extension number to each client so that they can talk to the team directly over voice.

The whole setup requires special hardware and software. There is a card that you have to install in the server. This card connects to the incoming phone lines (via something called as FXO), and can connect to normal analog telephones (via something called as FXS). The Asterisk software interacts with this card and processes incoming and outgoing calls for external networks.

HowStuffWorks has a good description of how VoIP works.

Feel free to provide your suggestions on the topic!

If you like good design, and products that are designed well, check out the slide show on BusinessWeek’s “The Best Product Design of 2006“.

Not only computer / tech equipments, the awards are also for consumer equipments and others. You will certainly say wow looking at some of these products!