Lahore City Branding

We were asked to pick a city in Pakistan, and create an identity branding for it.

I picked Lahore.

Lahore's history is more than a thousand years old, and is considered the cultural capital of the country.

The most interesting fact is, that it has been the capital of the illustrious Mughal empire, and beautiful architecture of that era still adorns the city.

Therefore, I began looking at some work produced during that era (which I can do without complaints any day of the week).

I began with the logo:

I tried incorporating Hindi letterforms in it with the nastaleeq calligraphic type, to add depth and tie it with its centuries-old history.

Next, I set up a colour palette, taking colours from a range of Mughal-era inspirations.

I proposed naming Old City neighbourhoods/areas to the different indigenous flowers and plants drawn by Mughal painters.

In this instance, the name is renamed Nargis (or narcissus), a flower the Mughal painters loved to draw. The painting is turned into an icon of the flower, and will be used on all branding to denote the neighbourhood/area.

One other feature of the Mughal architecture is the mehrab - the arch. Taken from Islamic architecture, this was perfected, innovated & revolutionised by the awe-inspiringly talented craftsmen of the Mughal court.

I was able to distinguish and pick out different types of mehrabs, that I made an integral part of the identity project.

The shapes of the mehrabs gave me an important element in the identity.

I decided to use these shapes as backgrounds, and used beautiful nastaleeq lettering with it.

Nastaleeq is a breathtakingly beautiful calligraphic script born in Iran. The Mughal dynasty had close ties with the Irani court, the Safavis - who themselves advanced art & culture to exponential levels in their time. Regular exchange of craftsmen and artists from Iran was a norm, and most Mughal art, in the beginning, was done by Irani craftsmen.

I was lucky enough to make acquaintance of a awfully talented typographer from Iran, Amir Mahdi Moslehi, and was able to acquire a font by him based on the world-renowned calligrapher Mirza Gholam Reza Isfehani.

This is the breathtakingly beautiful font Mirza, designed by him:

One idea I proposed was giving the airport all the aesthetics of the Mughal style.

Here is a very large lit sign announcing the Allama Iqbal Airport written in huge glowing letters of Nastaleeq type.

In addition to that, making the architecture of the airport inspired by type of Mughal architecture found in Lahore will elevate the entire experience of Lahore for tourists.

Above is a rough idea I put together for the airport facade.

Moreover, I proposed branding popular public locations and assigning them a colour, a mehrab shape and a flower painting as icon to be used in any communication related to them.

Here is Shalimar Bagh, and its dull olive colour, the Isfehaani mehrab shape and the pink lily repeated on a flower exhibition announcement: