------ A summer of sunny Yellow -----
I interned at Chumbak during the summer of 2012 - and it was an incredible experience! Those two months were the longest two months of my life - mostly because it involved a massive overhaul of my idea of life & the world outside our NID cocoon - and also because I had to wake up at 7:30 AM every single day.
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Chumbak is a Bangalore-based successful start-up that makes quirky, colorful, illustrated products based on our very idiosyncratic, Indian way of life. It's a unabashedly happy brand with a very definite design language.
----- Online Prescence -----
During my two-month stint, I indulged in product photography (always a treat because Chumbak products are so lovely!) and made facebook / website banners for their product launches, few of which are as follows :
Photo Credits : Vivek Prabhakar
Photo Credits : Vivek Prabhakar
Photo Credits : Vivek Prabhakar
Photo Credits : Vivek Prabhakar
Photo Credits : Vivek Prabhakar
Photo Credits : Vivek Prabhakar
I also made a few banners for their redesigned website:
----- Packaging -----
I was assigned the task of redesigning the packaging of the entire line of products.
They earlier had hand-drawn, organic, mostly cellophane-wrapped packaging - they wanted a more standardised, sleeker look. Now that Chumbak was coming up in a big way, they wanted the customers to take their products a bit more seriously. They invested in sturdier and costlier plastic-encasing for all their products, and decided to go for a uniform language for all their packaging.
Since Chumbak products themselves are such a visual overdose - no way could I slap any illustration of my own on the package. The product had to be the hero. Also, the color palette couldn't stray far away from the beaming set of Magenta, Yellow, Teal, Blue and Leaf Green.
I finally decided to use the friendly display typeface Geared Slab, a range of cutesy, Chumbaky Indianisms / phrases and bright, solid colors to ensure packaging that'll pleasantly hum around the products, and not drown them out with its own loudness.
With the front unencumbered by anything apart from just the logo and product name, this came at the back of the packages:
I tweaked the design a little when it came to premier gift packaging, like for the Crystal Magnet Gift Set below:
Similarly for The Chumbak Charm + Bracelet Gift set- had to look adorable enough for a boy to gift it to a girl :)
Apart from this, I helped shoot the Backlit Banner for Chumbak's store in Koromangala. The pretty models were my coworkers Kaveri Gopalakrishnan and Manasi Parikh.
I also made a Certificate for Chumbak employees who were performing well - and it could be anything but formal, this being Chumbak. I went to the warehouse to hunt for Chumbak products and made letters out of them to spell the following :
------ ^_^ ------
My first day was embarassing, as I took the entire day to do some menial Photoshop job that should have ideally taken me one hour. But it got better, obviously.
Whether it was getting to know the couple behind the success that Chumbak is today - Vivek and Shubra, working with two shockingly talented, gorgeous, cat-loving designers - who also happened to be NID alumnii (which I'm really greatful for), living alone in a new city where laundry was too expensive and the traffic unbelievable, learning how to manage my time, to think on my feet, to work hard enough to really appreciate the value of a weekend, getting along with the amzingly warm-hearted staff & warehouse members of the Chumbak family, or annoying the three new kittens at the office - Idli, Vada and Dosa - Bangalorean memories will always warm my heart.
