After a lull in the identity design development workstream over the last two months, December saw significant progress made on the identity. Codesign shared an updated branding presentation, which incorporated feedback received from previous discussions, as well as improvements and explorations that had been developed internally.

Identity Design

The focus of the current iteration of the identity development exercise is to create an identity that strikes an (more…)

The last edition of the Project Sammaan newsletter saw Codesign finalising and sharing the BoQs for all 14 typologies of the community toilets. That task, once complete allowed us to focus on the more pressing communications challenges, namely the character designs for the facilities’ signage and the main Project Sammaan identity itself.

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Project Sammaan is a dynamic project with multiple deliverables at any time. Currently, the team is working on the following:

Release of tenders for construction of 27 Public Toilets: The tender documents for Public Toilets were submitted in the last week of March 2013. After that, the team worked with BMC to obtain technical sanctioning and approval from the H&UD department. However, the tenders are stuck due to delays in land approvals and differences in modalities of vendor selection between the BMC and the H&UD department; the team is working with both in an effort to fast-track the process.

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It’s been an excel-sheet filled month for Codesign this August, as the finalised Bill of Quantities (BoQ)for 14 toilet typologies, including the three added this month (2-seater enhanced layer, 4-seater enhanced layer (type-A) and 8-seater enhanced layer) have been compiled and shared with Anagram Architects to facilitate the tender process.

Generating this BoQ required us to map the various signages onto the spaces within each facility, with attention paid to the hierarchical value of each signage and the relevance of it’s message to that particular location.

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As keen readers of the Project Sammaan blog and people deeply invested in the project, you already know that the signage tender for 4 community toilet typologies has just been sent out. As we work on refining the designs for the signs themselves, and creating the specifications for the remaining typologies, this seemed like a great spot to take a step back and reveal the signage program for the Project Sammaan toilet facilities.

There are four different categories of signs in the Project Sammaan facilities:

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Early on in the project, there had already been an effort to create an identity and voice for Project Sammaan, with the aim to bring together the different streams of work and thought, while giving a unified face to the project as a whole.

There are two distinct components within the framework of the larger project — one that is internal facing, representative of a collaborative consortium of stakeholders rethinking sanitation systems (i.e. Sammaan), and the second, a user-facing, sanitation system prototype borne out of the collaborative effort of Project Sammaan. The question that loomed large at the beginning of the branding stream was whether there was a need for a second brand for the user-facing sanitation system prototype. To understand this, we examined key features for both across categories of target user group, objectives, drivers/motivators and the intended role of brand identity.

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While Project Sammaan is the project’s name, the sanitation facilities we design and build will carry their own brand identity.

It’s important to brand these sanitation facilities appropriately to ensure optimal adoption rates amongst end users in the communities, a feeling of professionalism in the people who run these facilities, and brand recall amongst stakeholders in the government and other organizations working in this sector to maximize its impact.

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With the architectural design stream moving along nicely, it was time to initiate the Brand Design workstream. While Project Sammaan is the internal name for the project, the sanitation facilities we design and build will carry their own brand identity.

It’s important to brand these sanitation facilities appropriately to ensure:

1. Optimal adoption amongst end users
2. A feeling of professionalism in the people who run these toilet facilities
3. Brand recall amongst stakeholders in the government (and other organizations working in this sector) to maximize future replication of our designs in other Indian cities.