Month: July 2015

Logotype (Logo)

Shabbir Chunawalla

The short for logotype is logo. Logotype comes from two Greek words, logos meaning word and typos meaning impression. The word logo became par of marketing lexicon by 1937.

Logotype is a particular kind of typeface that represents the character and personality of the brand. Some logos consist of just logotype or wordmark with no accompanying symbol, e.g. Coca Cola, Dunhill or Kit Kat. Brands like Raymond, Usha and Indica have logos that only consist of just lettering. Typeface has another name — a font. Typography itself is a full-fledged subject, and has a wide array of typefaces to choose from . It is necessary to understand where the brand will stay before choosimg the typeface. If it is to appear on a miniature device, it should be extremely readable. Even outdoor types should be extremly simple so that they can be read from a distance quickly. In general, the faster the comprehansion of the typeface, the better are the chances of their recognition and recall.

Typefaces have two styles — serif and sans serif.  Serif typefaces have extra strokes, say small feet or stems on the letters. Sans serif is without these embellishments.

Serif is preferred for the body-copy as they are easily readable when set in paragraph form. Serif typefaces in logotype are considered conservative, elegant, authoritative and sophisticated. Banks and financial institutes generally use them, so do CA firms, solicitor firms and traditional businesses.

San serif find use in newspaper headlines and signage as they stand out. Logos preferably use sans serif for their clean, friendly, simple and contemporary look.

The character can be changed by changing the case of the font, say all caps, to small caps, to initial caps, to lower case.

Capitals show strength and power. They look authoritative. Lower case looks accessible and simple.

We can select a primary typeface for the logo, and can repeat it elsewhere, say promotional material and signages. Or else, we can have a secondary typeface to complement the typeface of the logo. It enables an apt juxtaposition of the typefaces. One can have a serif typeface in wordmark contrasted by a sans serif typeface in the descriptor or tag line. One must be consistent in one’s approach.

Visual Identity of Brands

Shabbir Chunawalla

Visual identity invests the brand with character and personality in consonance with the positioning and brand name. It becomes easier to recognise the brand, and recall it. It distinguishes it from the competitive brands. It is a unifying force that ties up the loose elements of the brand.

Visual identity is a comprehensive term and represents much more than a logo. It is a system that incorporates various cues such as typography, colours and shapes. The various components are so uniquely combined that together they represent brand signature. Other visual identities are the retail ambience, transport fleet, promotional material, signage, staff uniforms etc.

Visual Basics

The basic components are the signature, the logotype, the logomark, the wordmark, descriptive and tag lines.

Signature

The signature comprises the logomark, the logotype and the tagline though all these may not be present in all signatures. There may be just distinctive typography, e.g. Coca Cola or Bata to represent signature. It is called wordmark. Sometimes there is a combination of typography ( logo type ) and logomark.

The whole area of visual identity acquired importance with mass marketing, mass communication and mass production. The word graphic design became a mechanism to make ideas visible, and came to be used first in 1922. Logos became the graphic ambassadors of a brand’s personality.

Hindi Film Industry

Shabbir Chunawalla

According to KPMG study in 2011, the Hindi film industry is the world’s sixth largest movie industry. Its box-office revenues are around $ 1.4 billion and projected to rise to $ 3 billion in 2016. It is estimated that more than 1700 feature films are produced in India each year, the highest number in the world.

China is the second largest movie market in the world, after the US. Its box-office revenues are $ 2.2 billion. India and China combined constitute one of the largest movie markets in the world.

First Week Financials of Bajrangi Bhaijaan — a Salman Khan Movie

Shabbir Chunawalla

First Week’s Box Office Collection ( Net After tax ) ( India )   :   Rs 175 crore

First Weeks Box Office Collection ( Overseas )                           :   Rs 90 crore

Total Box Office Collections                                                            :  Rs. 270 crore

Exhibitor’s Share ( 50 percent of the net after tax )                   :  Rs. 135 crore

Producer’s Share                                                                                :   Rs. 135 crore

Total Investment in the film                                                            :   Rs. 110 crore

Profit to Producers                                                                             :   Rs.  25 crore

Return on investment                                                                        :   Rs.  22.7 per cent

Satelite Rights                                                                                      :   Rs.  50 crore

Music Rights                                                                                         :   Rs   10 crore

Total Revenue for producers                                                             :   Rs 195 crore

Cyber Security

Shabbir Chunawalla

Hacking is a big challenge in the digital world. It has economic cost. According to estimates, it costs $400 billion or between $ 300 billion to $ 600 billion annually. Most of the losses are borne by G20 countries. The brunt is more on the US, China, Japan and Germany. Hackers from China attack the computer system.US stands next to China as a home for hackers. Some other countries with hacker groups are Turkey, Russia, Taiwan, Brazil, Romania, India, Italy and Hungary. Hacking attacks business and economy. It damages the performance of companies — their IP gets stolen. There are losses of financial assets and confidential business information. Cyber security has to ensure detection and handling of cyber attacks. Cyber cops are created by drawing people who are ethical hackers. These ethical hackers intrude into the systems so as to know its vulnerabilities and then plug the loopholes and security gaps. They can be used in future warfare too to invade the enemy systems.

Secretly Run Ads on Mobile Apps

Shabbir Chunawalla

Mobile apps may not be genuinely helping the marketers. There are thousands of apps which run ads which cannot be seen by the users both on Apple and Android devices. Advertisers pay for these ads, and these are fake ads. This is a kind of fraud. The ads are called up at such a high frequency that the target audience cannot possibly see them. Ads in such rapid succession cannot not be seen by humans. They hit the numbers by showing as many as five ads in the background for every visible ad to users. Some applications scroll through the ads even after the app had been closed. At times, the phone takes a consumer to app store even when the consumer has not touched the screen. Pop up ads appear even when there is no accidental clicking. There are complaints of the phones getting slow or phones crashing. They run a code that produces a steady stream of unseen ads. To monitor this , it is necessary to assess the bandwidth usage over time. Google and Apple may no have the ability to do this. In online ad world,  fraud is endemic. The brands pay for the adds, and lose track of where the ads end up. There are many layers of automated intermediaries.The write-up is based on a report by Forensiq, a firm that tracks fraud in online advertising.

Search for the Aliens

Shabbir Chunawalla

Yuri Milner ( 53 ), a Russian billionaire, has been named after Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space and has been trained as a theoretical physicist, followed by an MBA from Wharton. He strayed into investment banking and has invested into Facebook, WhatsApp, Alibaba, Zynga, Groupon, Xiaomi etc. He also runs a VC Firm. His personal fortune is between $ 3 billion and $ 4 billion.

The powerful telescopes have spotted planets attached to distant stars. Minor has set up a project called Breakthrough Listen on July 20 15 by committing $ 100 million . The project’s aim is to search extra-terrestal life. The telescopes will be oriented to search in the directions of the spotted planets. They are very sensitive, capable of detecting a signal of 100-watt power ( a standard household bulb) from nearby stars and their planets. The distributed network of SETI : Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence consisting of 9 million PCs will analyse the recordings to detect an artificial signal. An associated project is Breakthrough Message which will beam digital messages into outer space. The data drom the project will be open. It is expected that definitive results will be visible in 10 years. Or else, the projects could be prolonged.

He has roped in Stephen Hawking. Luminaries such as Sergey Brin, Jack Ma, Anne Wojcicki and Mark Zuckerberg has been persuaded to fund these two projects.

Mobile Applications

Shabbir Chunawalla

The apps market in India is likely to grow by more than four times to Rs.3800 crore by 2016. Of this paid applications contribute over 50 per cent. Indian Council for Research on International. Economic relations (ICRIER)  estimates the total worth of Indian app economy at Rs. 900 crore with immense potential to grow further. An average of 17 apps are downloaded in India per user, out of which 4 are paid apps, compared to global  average of 26 apps of which 5 are paid apps. India is among the top three countries by the number of app downloads. Interestingly, 80 per cent of apps being downloaded in India are global apps. There is lack of India-specific apps. There are over 3 lac Mobile apps developers in the country. InMobi has that released an engaging mobile advertising delivery platform competing with Facebook and Google. Some companies develop iOS apps.

Features of a Logo

Shabbir Chunawalla

A logo should satisfy the following points :

  1. It should be simple, and yet rich.
  2. It should be recognisable, and yet unusual.
  3. It should be memorable, and yet apt.
  4. It should be contemporary, and yet timeless.

A logo remains just a design on paper but becomes effective only when  an organisation backs it up and supports it. A truly effective logo is associated with many positive qualities such as warmth, care, sophistication, naturalness, power and so on.

Lack of Disruptive Innovation in India

Shabbir Chunawalla

Narayan Murthy recently lamented before an audience at Indian Institute of Science, Bamgalore  that India has failed to produce a breakthrough innovation in the last 60 years. There are several reasons for this. Innovative ideas do require the government support. A product such as Simputer, a simple computer for rural India was not encouraged by government funding or government buying. It was pioneered by Swami Manohar and his associates. It incorporated accelerometer that enables you to flick the device and move pages, zoom or invert the screen. It had handwriting email capability. It was net-linked. All these features were later adopted for smartphones. Indian researchers are averse to working on long gestation period projects, as the risk is more. In India, industry and other rich people do not come forward for philanthropic funding. Science college professors do not commercialise their ideas. India lacks academic entrepreneurship. India’s research was primarily aimned at import substitution. We focused on frugal engineering and affordable technology. This prempts good returns. Cipla did a great job in providing anti-AIDS drugs to Africans at affordable prices. Pharma here produced generics of patented molecules by tweaking a process. India could succeed in producing cheap generics. Big pharma companies in the world spend billions of dollars in R&D. Our top 25 pharma companies together spend just $ 1 billion a year on R&D. VCs are not ready to wait for a decade for an idea to succeed. They want projects to succeed quickly, with shorter lead times, e.g. IT industry. Indian academic institutions have not given weightage to research, and have rather used publishing in the journals as the criterion for promotion. India after independence has not a single Nobel laureate or Wolf Prize winner or a Millennium Technology Prize awardee. Our scientists do not become fellows of the Royal Society or Associates of National Academy of  Sciences, US.