Founder director and principal designer of Elephant Design Ashwini Deshpande shares with Tania Roy the success story of her firm which has just stepped into its 25th year

Ashwini Deshpande’s dream is to do the sports identity for the Olympics (if the Games come to India in the future). A tall order, but going by her credentials you will be more than assured that Ashwini and her hardworking team at Elephant Design can do the job and be good at it.
A strategic design and brand consultancy firm, Elephant has been creating effective brand and product experiences for clients like Britannia, Hindustan Lever, Nirlep, Procter & Gamble, Pepsico India, Reliance, Tata Sky, VIP Industries, Venky’s, Daimler India Commercial Vehicles, Kolkata Knight Riders and many others. On May 1, 2013, the design firm stepped into its 25th year, and with each year, the Elephant gets bigger and mightier!

Ask the founder director and principal designer of Elephant, Ashwini her success mantra and she quickly replies, “You just have to be earnest”.

Human-centred design

The Elephant Design story (which Ashwini will share in her upcoming book) is particularly intriguing against the backdrop of the ’80s India when there were hardly any big multi-disciplinary design firms. “Product and graphic designers mostly worked in advertising agencies. But the six of us from National Institute of Design (NID), including my husband Ashish and I, knew that if we had to do design and make a difference, we had to have our own space,” says Ashwini. Three of the six founding members continue to work with Elephant.

Design is all about team work, so each designer at Elephant brings his or her own creative pieces and puts together the jigsaw puzzle. “Design is about finding a solution to a problem in a creative way, so team work is very important,” points out Ashwini who specialised in corporate communication and branded environments from NID and did her internship with Lintas.

Elephant, today, is a 60-member strong team in Pune, and has offices in Delhi, Singapore, and is expanding to Europe as well. “Europe is gradually adopting frugal design, which has always been our firm’s policy. We believe in growing with what we have, so recycling and repurposing is core to our design. We also do a lot of consultancy for industries on design-thinking methodologies, which centres around the user, which is why designers are called user’s advocates,” adds Ashwini.

Awards and accolades

This March, Elephant Design won the Global Rebrand (USA) award for building, recovering and energising Venky’s brand.
“Rebranding is more challenging because you can’t completely do away with the brand’s legacy, and at the same time you have to energise and rejuvenate it. Rebranding takes much more conviction from the design team,” she says.

Venky’s processed food was not doing so well, so Elephant created an experiential place, called it the Venky’s Express, which increased its sales exponentially. Today, Venky’s Express is all over the country.

Ashwini and her team have also done the rebranding for Vita Marie biscuits which focussed on the user, primarily women. Thanks to Elephant, Lacto Calomine has graduated from the pink and purple bottle to the refreshing white, green and yellow bottles and has a range of products like facewash, anti-ageing cream and sunscreens now.

Equal opportunities

There are equal numbers of men and women working at Elephant. “People believe women are more creative, but I think gender does not make a difference in this profession. That said, women are better at people’s skills, I feel. They tend to avoid confrontations. So they are good at dealing with employees, users, clients, vendors and others,” shares Ashwini and adds that she’s always had equal opportunities in life and has faced no gender discrimination whatsoever.

About working as a husband-wife team, Ashwini says she enjoys the perks of a collaborative effort. “I met my husband at NID and ever since we have been working together,” says Ashwini, who is also mother to a 19 year old. “As a child, my son was very cooperative. When he was five months of age, he started going to the creche, but I never had any problems with him. I had a good support system too, my parents and in-laws were very helpful. But my son also knew that my work was very important for me. When he was young, all he wanted to know was how long I would be away and in my absence who would take care of him,” she adds.

sharing skills

Ashwini firmly believes in giving back to her profession. So her Saturdays are devoted to workshops for school kids and corporates. “Sakal NIE has given us access to schools where we introduce IXth standard students to design. We also have workshops for management professionals. The objective is to create greater design awareness,” says Ashwini.