Phool is India’s leading biomaterial start-up and its primary engagement is to recycle the flower-waste that is generated in the temples of India and is dumped into holy rivers like the Ganga. Phool repurposes this flower-waste by turning them into premium incense sticks.
The logo of Phool is a combination mark where the second ‘O’ forms a woman’s bindi. Phool employs women from marginalised sectors and from local villages. The bindi acts as an index and pays a homage to these women. It does put forward a beautiful metaphor, however, I think that a logo symbol would do more justice to PHOOL’s business. This analysis will argue that Phool.co should adopt a symbol in the logo instead of an index.
The bindi symbol encapsulates the personal struggles of the women employed by Phool. However, as their consumer, I fail to understand whether Phool is a B2B company selling incense products or an NGO working for the rehabilitation of women previously involved in manual scavenging and other menial, daily wage jobs. Currently, PHOOL’s logo seems to be stepping on two stones at a time. It tries to justify its decision of being a luxury incense brand while also recognising the social aspects of these women. This creates a communication barrier for PHOOL driving its brand identity into confusion.
Hall, S. (2012, p. 32) states that I need to know what a symbol stands for before I begin to associate it with a particular object or feeling in order to understand its meaning. In some cases, the connection between the symbol and its reference in the logo is not crystal clear. The bindi symbol requires me to put in extra cognitive effort to understand the brand’s offerings. I need to know about the origin story of Phool before I decide to decide to buy their products and until then, I am left staring at their beautiful packaging wondering what lies inside it.
The brand story pushes me to buy Phool’s products once but when I receive the moral gratification, I do not have any more incentives to repeat my order. I connect the logo to the women at Phool rather than developing a sincere connection with the products.
Crow, D. (2010, p. 31) helps me recognise the strength of an indexical sign which provides a direct link of relationship between sign and the object, logo and the brand. In Phool’s case, I could instantly recognise flower being an index to Phool’s unique flower-cycling technology. A flower helps me pave a logical way to understand that Phool (meaning flower in Hindi) is a company that sells incense products made out of fragrant flowers.
According to me, the flower encompasses the innocence of women at Phool and the sacredness of Phool’s mission. I cannot imagine a plain, boring, conventional icon of an incense stick being able to address a number of such creative problems at one go. Chandler, D. (2007, p. 42) writes in his book that indexical signs direct attention to their object through an inherent connection. While iconicity is defined by similarity, indexicality is defined by a direct, contextual relationship. This supports my design decision of using flower as an indexical sign to emphasise on Phool’s flower-cycling process and help it distinguish itself from other incense brands.
It complements the name of the brand. This form also slightly resembles the side-profile of Lord Ganapati’s face ultimately tying back my design to Phool’s idea of spirituality and the act of praying in temples.
References
Hall, S. (2012, p. 32) THIS MEANS THIS THIS MEANS THAT. 2nd edition. Great Britain: Laurence King Publishing.
Crow, D. (2010, p. 31) Visible Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics in the Visual Arts. 2nd edition. London: Ava Publishing.
Chandler, D. (2007, p. 42) Semiotics: The Basics. 2nd Edition. USA, Canada: Routledge.
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