Brand: Kalyan Silks
Owned by: Kalyan Group
Design: Fertilizer Films + Design
Design brief: ‘Kalyan Silks has the world’s largest silk showrooms. For many decades we’ve had a traditional Indian elephant as their logo. Keeping our world-wide expansion plans in mind, we felt the need for a new contemporary identity while retaining the traditional values.
The old logo had an elephant and the letter ‘K’. Both these elements, a strong identity established over the years, are retained in the new logo.
The letter ‘K’ is carved out from the figure of an elephant — the converging arcs are formed by the trunk and the tusk of the animal. Depending on how you look at it, the logo forms a ‘K’; and also forms a ‘smiling’ elephant. The skewed white square represents the dynamic, progressive, forward thinking outlook of Kalyan Silks. The red square that houses the insignia and and text represents perfect design vaastu.
The new logo embodies the spirit of youth and the values of our legacy all at once.’
Logo release: 25 February 2011
Previous Logo:
Did you spot the elephant?
When I first saw the logo, I spotted a small ‘discontinuity’ in the top curve of the logo. Then I guessed that it is there for a reason. I am proved right when I read the brief as everything became clear to me. There is an elephant in the logo!
Brand Ambassador
This is the first time that Kalyan Silks is appointing a brand ambassador. Malayalam film star Prithviraj is selected for the role and a lot of print ads and hoardings are published with his face. Prithviraj is popular in South India as he has acted in films like Mani Ratnam’s Raavanan.
Kalyan has appointed DraftFCB + Ulka as the advertising agency for Kalyan Silks rather than continuing with Nethra PUSH who did the re-branding of Kalyan Jewellers. You can read the Kalyan Jewellers story here.
The other elephants
Following are some popular logos featuring an elephant.
Appu, Mascot of 9th Asian Games, Delhi, 1982
Evernote is a suite of software and services designed for notetaking and archiving.
Kolner Zoo in Cologne are notable for their Asian elephant park.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank V Rajeev Menon (DraftFCB + Ulka, Kochi), Rajat Arora (BestMediaInfo.com, New Delhi) and N Ramesh (Fertilizer Films + Design, Bangalore) for helping me to publish this story.
The elephant photo I have featured is clicked by James Ray (London, UK).
Relevant link:
I feel that the logo has wrong typography construction!
I liked the elephant concept in the logo, but the overall look is not up to the mark. Compared to the old one, I’ll not go with this. The old logo also has typography in italics but the new one is over slanted.
— Anoop Konath Gopalan