Ranbir Kapoor is known as not only one of the biggest stars but also one of the most talented artistes in the country. The actor expanded his horizon earlier this year by launching his own lifestyle brand called ARKS. Now, here’s the man who associated with Ranbir to design his brand, including its logo. Well-known designer Sidhant Gandhi did the honours and he got talking to Bollywood Hungama exclusively about his experience with Ranbir and his career.
EXCLUSIVE: Meet Sidhant Gandhi, the man who designed Ranbir Kapoor’s luxury brand: “Ranbir is a very calm and peaceful person, that’s what he wanted in the brand”
While describing his experience with Ranbir as “amazing”, Sidhant, who is professionally known as TooSid, said, “As soon as that project came, first the fanboy moment struck. It was like a big star is giving you full control to take his brand creatively anywhere. Ranbir was very decisive about what he wanted and what he didn’t. A lot of times we over-engineer one design and we try and put everything in one design. The brief for me was to make something that’s non-disruptive because he himself is a very calm and peaceful person; that’s what he wanted in the brand and the brand to resonate that.”
Sidhant revealed that he and Ranbir did 2-3 rounds of different logos. “We also did some 2-3 rounds of brainstorming sessions,” he said. “Anyone who comes to me with a brief, I go all out. I give them as many options as possible. By the time it was the third design, we had this meeting. He (Ranbir) looked at the logo and he was like, ‘I love this, let’s lock this’.”
When asked how he felt Ranbir was at a personal level, Sidhant Gandhi said that he was rooted. “I had creative discussions with him,” he said. “It wasn’t about beating around the bush or talking different things. It was like we are creating something great. It was like bouncing off ideas. One day, we sat for 2-3 hours. It was more about understanding how he sees the world. He is very decisive. When a person exactly knows what he wants, it makes life easier. He was not like ‘Isme maza nahin aa raha hai’. He was very sure of either this is working or not working.”
But that’s not all as far as Sidhant’s major projects are concerned. He has even designed the poster of Rana Daggubati and Dulquer Salmaan’s upcoming movie Kaantha. He said, “Rana and I worked very closely together for the last 5-6 years. We co-founded a company. Since then, we have been creating content. Last year, we did The Rana Daggubati Show. If you see that show, you will see more new art coming to the mainstream screen.”
Sidhant pointed out that there is no scope for laziness when it comes to designing a movie poster as 100 to 200 people work on a single film. “If it’s not amazing, it won’t go through,” he said. “With Kaantha it was amazing because their brief to me was that the film is like one of the best of their careers. So, even the posters need to be one of the best of their careers. Our thing was like, let us see what we can make and then choose the best. You also need to look if it is looking like any other film poster. Because of the competition and the volume of stuff that is coming out, that becomes a challenge more than anything.”
Sharing Rana’s quality that impressed him, Sidhant said, “Generally, stars are like, ‘Mera face poora dikhna chahiye’. But in this it was more like, ‘Is it going with the film?’.”
Sidhant believes that designing a movie poster is a bit more challenging than designing a brand logo as there is nothing subjective in it. “When you are designing a brand logo, you are designing it for so many people that half of them will love and half of them will hate it. But in a film poster, you want everyone to love it. You have to say one story with the visual. But in a brand, you want to say 1000 stories with one visual. The difference between doing a branded piece of artwork and doing a film poster is that the film poster stays forever. If I tell you a TATA ad, you will remember hundreds of TATA ads. But if I mention Sholay poster, there is only one iconic poster that will come to your head.”
As far as Sidhant’s journey is designing is concerned, it started way back when he was in 9th or 10th standard. “My brother was doing graphic designing and animation course,” he recalled. “We had one computer. We didn’t have a lot of games on it but we had Photoshop 5. That’s when I picked up designing. When I was in 11th grade, I had my own freelance clients. Not big time clients. I then dropped out of school. Since then, it has been a hustle. I just randomly realized that people required graphic designing.”
Sharing more about his initial days, he added, “It initially gave me a means for pocket money. But later I started a T-shirt company where I hand-painted T-shirts and sell them. Then we realized that selling T-shirts is not a scale level business model. Then we got into interior design and production design. Then we got into proper design management for companies. Then I started doing jobs. In 4-5 years, I changed 11 jobs. For some, I was doing interior design, for some graphic design and for some we were making ads. At that time, there were not too many jobs for graphic designers, like it is today. Also, people wouldn’t pay that much attention to design but then as social media grew up, it became forefront for every company.”
Sidhant has some professional goals for himself in the future. “I definitely want to introduce more animated content in India in general. In the last 4-5 years, I have been trying to develop my own series, shows and different titles. I have been creating these furry characters, if you look at my Instagram,” he said.
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