Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy (‘Vidhi’) is an independent think-tank conducting legal research to make better laws and improve governance for the public good. One of their initiatives includes ‘The SARAL Manual: A plain language drafting manual for better laws’, which aims to simplify laws to make them accessible to all citizens of India, by translating them to a simpler or ‘saral’ version for people of all social and economic background to understand. SARAL stands for Simple, Accessible, Rational, and Actionable Laws while the word ‘saral’ translates to ‘ease’ in Hindi.
Role:
Graphic Design
Industry:
Legal
Duration:
8 weeks
Problem Statement
Vidhi team required a logo and brand design for their initiative that could differentiate it from Vidhi, allowing for targeted communication with the public, building trust, increasing visibility, and increasing engagement and awareness.
Deliverables: Logo, Brand Collateral Mock-ups
Tools: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Figma
Research
Design Guidelines
The client plans to use the logo across their documents, in the form of watermarks and logomarks for identity, as well as custom designed folders amongst other collaterals.
Ideation
Logo Explorations
We started out with sketches and initial logo concepts keeping in mind the keywords associated with SARAL: "Simple, Accessible, Rational, and Actionable. We tried to find words, phrases and concepts related to ‘law’, ‘simple’, ‘accessible’ and so on.
After multiple iterations, I decided to visualise a concept based on ‘how SARAL works’. It simply converts hard to decipher laws into plain language and remove barriers for the general public; it simplifies.
After exploring ideas on how to convey ‘complication’ or ‘chaos’, i tried using a maze or tangled strings. While the strings look good, they don’t follow the guidelines we laid before - keeping things simple, symmetric and bold.
The concept of a maze clicked for me; it fit the concept I had in mind - SARAL would be the destination for people across the nation who want to empower themselves with judicial knowledge.
While the idea of the maze seemed interesting, it also gave me the feeling that it could be good opportunity to explore the meaning and a purpose behind it.
After discussions with peer designers, we figured we could signify saral in another way, while also making it into a design element. Since SARAL drafts in multiple languages including Hindi, I used it as a starting point to try and create a special maze design while also maintaining the square symmetry.
Multiple maze designs later, the team decided to go ahead with the option where ‘saral’ is spelled in Hindi. A red square was also added to relate it to its parent, Vidhi, in their primary red colour which could potentially act as a unique design element.
Alongside logo explorations, we also explored typefaces. We were looking for bold sans serif fonts that could support multiple Indian languages.
Design
These versions allowed the client to have flexibility and adapt the logo for responsive use on collaterals, watermarking, and print.
Mock-ups
The Maze
The maze design followed my initial concept of ‘finding your way to SARAL’. It transforms the plain folder into an interesting piece, with an actual maze that can be solved from all four corners to reach the ‘s’ of SARAL (spelled in Hindi).
Creating a Pattern
Use in Documents & Letters
Client Feedback
The logo design and the application of the concept to create the maze was appreciated and received positive feedback by the client team as well as the principal designer. The logo has now been approved and in use by Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and live on their website.
