Bengaluru gets brand identity with its own new logo
BENGALURU: Namma Bengaluru on Sunday became the first city in India to get a brand identity and a logo, joining the league of cities like New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Manchester and Singapore among others. The new logo was unveiled at the Bengaluru Habba open street festivities on Sunday.
A brand identity is known to help cities create positive and exclusive links for its people with their city, in turn instilling pride and a sense of belonging to the city in the eyes of the world.
The logo is ‘Bengaluru’ with the ‘Be’ (the first two letters) and ‘u’, the last letter, in red colour with the rest of the word in black, all on a white background. It portrays the freedom of Bengaluru in various fields -- “Be You” -- with an eye on making the city capture the world’s imagination about Bengaluru while instilling a sense of pride and place among Bengalureans. The objective of this exercise is to boost tourist footfalls and boost business investments.
IT/BT and Tourism minister Priyanka Kharge points out that several cities have witnessed manifold growth in their revenues after coming out their respective logos. “A study says revenues of Singapore and New York in tourism and employment increased multiple times after they came up with the logo branding of their the cities globally. Branding Bengaluru is an attempt to put the city on the global pedestal to enhance the city’s economy, employment, trade, commerce, etc.,” he said.
With the introduction of the Smart City project, cities in India are competing to enhance their economies through various means like tourism and employment and depict themselves as the cities of opportunities.
Ashok Pamidi, member, National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), welcomed the initiative, saying the logo stands as a strong identity of the city. “As we speak about smart cities, each city in India will be competing with each other. In terms of attracting talent, attracting companies to set up trade, commerce, etc., a logo of the city will stand out as a strong identity. If you look at it clearly, certain activities are completely city-driven. The logo will stand for what the city stands for — its culture, tradition and the vision,” he said.
K Ravi, president, FKCCI says the logo will give the city an identity but added, “I do not see that it will carry any business. It is more of a brand equity.”Lovleen Bhatia, founder of Edureka, an online IT, cloud and mobility education provider, says that it is an important move and citizens will definitely have a role in promoting the image of the city with the logo. “Just governments can’t change things. It is important for citizens to involve themselves in getting the brand a global reach.”
Logo says ‘Be You’; city start-up wins award
City-based start-up Nammur has won the award for coming up with the catchy logo for Namma Bengaluru. The exercise was crowd-sourced through competitions with `5 lakh being the prize money. The exercise received over 1,500 entries. Vinod Kumar, creative designer at Nammur, said, “All those who worked on the logo are from Bengaluru and we knew what the city stood for. We wanted to employ the heritage, essence, culture and tradition of the city. ‘Uru’ is taken from Kannada and we have done the typography to match the Kannada font. The typography was created in-house from scratch.” “Bengaluru has always welcomed people from other parts of the world. It is a vibrant city with open culture which allows people to do whatever they want to. We made ‘Be’ and ‘U’ in red which represents ‘Be You’.”