STUDIO ARTH
Design and branding for a startup thrift store
Complete brand design and social media assets for the first Indian-wear Thrift Store to introduce buying pre-owned Indian apparel in Mumbai.
ROLE
Social Media & Visual Designer
Art Direction, Research, Visual design, Pitching
Overview
Fashion in India is fast and occasion-based. Most people buy ornate, heavy Indian wear for festivals and weddings and worn only once. They eventually find their way in the garbage bin after 6-8 years. Studio Arth was born out of a personal desire to reduce pollution caused by one-time wear fashion and add a second life to these beautiful handmade and picked clothes.
Challenge
Culturally, second-had isn’t a popular choice and has its stigmas. But today, the younger generation is always looking for a new outfit at a great price. The modern mindset here was vital and our window of opportunity. We needed to look young yet Indian as the products are primarily Indian, thrifted but refined as the clothes were discounted but still over ₹2000 and nature-inspired to denote conscious and environmentally friendly.
Solution
The finesse of Indian art and the subtle colour palette from nature has inspired me. I wanted the logo to have a Sanskrit ‘A’ denoting Arth, i.e. ‘Meaning’ in Hindi. We decided to make the branding for the contemporary young Indian who is conscious yet fashionable.
Design
I combined earthy shades with tertiary colours to represent the brand; We aimed to convey professionalism and minimalism with a hint of sophistication.
For typography, I utilised a bold and clunky typeface, Lust Display, for marketing headers. I used the font Avenir for both titles and body text within the body copy and social media posts. The combination of serif and san-serif supports a cleaner, more modern feel than other stores that utilise graffiti-style typography.
I designed Studio Arth’s Instagram and Facebook posts with a more experimental feel, tying in our modern and playful aesthetic to create a unique marketing language. We added zig-zag lines and freeform shapes as accents and to develop visual symphony.
#E5E3DD
#D1694C
#434444
#799A98
#C98B61
#90352B
Colour Palette
