Assam is a North Eastern state in India. It is rich in culture, ethnic groups, language/dialects and literature. The Assamese script is a writing system for the Assamese language which in it’s continuous form has seen development since the 5th century rock inscriptions written in an eastern variety of the Gupta script. The present script is identical to the Bengali script (written in the West Bengal region of India) except for three characters.
Following a study tour to Assam, I got highly fascinated by the characters of this script. I started toying around with the form of the characters in the attempt to use it as a design form. Not knowing how to read or speak the language helped me look at the script objectively and purely as design forms rather than extracting meaning out of it. This project was a result of a calligraphic experiment that took the shape of a full-fledged branding exercise for a hypothetical Tea Bar in Mumbai called Hoktea.
One of the prime driving forces for expressive calligraphy is the spirit of experimentation. Breaking away from the norm of using standard calligraphy tools, I started playing around with other objects that each gave a different force to the form. Some of these tools included a piece of sponge, bamboo sticks, ink dropper and the oil container used to oil sewing machines. Each of these had a different effect on the form, but I was looking for something specific to the soul of Assam – Tea. And I eventually achieved that with the oil container!
The inconsistent flow of ink and the many air-bubbles formed while dispensing the ink on paper, formed an interesting ‘splash-like’ stroke. The splash gave an illusion of spilt tea especially when the color of ink was brown. Following this lead, I went ahead and scribbled on a thousand pieces of paper creating at least about 50 strokes for each Assamese character. Thereafter, I chose one stroke per character to form my own calligraphic Assamese script.
The one thing that Assam is world-famous for is the tea that it produces. The tea has a unique aroma and malty flavor that is favored by many across the world. The state of Assam is the world's largest tea-growing region, lying on either side of the Brahmaputra River, and bordering Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar).
Keeping this in mind, we created an entire branding system for a hypothetical Assamese tea bar in Mumbai, using the calligraphic script as the prime design element. Everything that went in creating this branding material was chosen based on things that are locally available in Assam and are relevant to tea-culture in general.
The branding exercise was a group effort by Anuja Singhal, Suhani Maheshwari and Charvi Ashar.
We extensively used Assamese bamboo to create the legs of the table, the tea mugs and a lamp in the mural. The mural features actual tea leaves stuck on it in the form of a character from the Assamese script, a loom to showcase the famous hand woven Assamese silk and a variety of tea cups used all across India.
The paper used for the Menu card and some of the corporate stationary is the semi-translucent parchment paper used to package tea bags.
