Savitribai Phule Institute
Logo

A national identity for India's premier women and child development institute.

The National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development (NIPCCD) was being renamed in honor of Savitribai Phule, India's first female teacher, who broke caste and gender barriers through education in 19th century Maharashtra. The renaming marked a renewed commitment to the institute's mission of empowering women and children across India. In collaboration with MyGov, the institute opened a nationwide logo design contest. The brief asked for a visual identity that could carry this mission and this legacy.

The contest received over 545 entries. This was my submission.

A logo that carries a century of legacy.

The brief had four non-negotiable requirements. The logo had to incorporate the institute's full name. It had to reflect Savitribai Phule's legacy of women's empowerment and child welfare. It had to be simple, scalable, and adaptable across digital and print contexts. And it had to work in both color and black and white. The fifth unstated requirement, the one that mattered most, was that it had to feel worthy of the woman it honored.

A woman and child, rising.

The mark depicts two figures, a woman and a child, rendered as a single continuous form. The woman's arc rises upward and curves protectively over the child. The child's form rises within that arc, reaching upward. The two shapes share a visual boundary but are distinct. Together they read as a single symbol of mutual uplift.

The watchful eye element, derived from the negative space between the two forms, was a deliberate second reading. At distance the logo reads as two figures. At close range, the negative space between them reveals two eyes looking forward. The institute's role is not just to support but to observe, to be present, to see the people it serves.

Color and form as meaning.

The color palette was not chosen for aesthetic preference. Maroon is the color most associated with Savitribai Phule's own visual representations: the sarees, the portraits, the archival material through which she is remembered in Maharashtra and across India. Using it was an act of continuity rather than invention. The cream background references the tradition of khadi and handloom, materials central to the social reform movement Savitribai Phule was part of.

The typography uses a clean, government-legible typeface for the institution name. It is readable at the scale of a letterhead and at the scale of a building hoarding. The mark itself requires no text to communicate. The two are designed to function independently.

Grid, ratio, and geometric discipline.

The mark was constructed on a strict geometric grid. The woman's arc follows a circle at a radius that creates a golden-proportion relationship with the child's arc. The two circles are offset such that the negative space between them is precisely symmetric. The eye shapes are identical in width and angle on both sides. This symmetry is invisible at casual reading distance but felt as stability.

The scalability requirement was tested across twelve sizes, from 12px favicon to 3-meter banner. The mark holds at every scale because the geometric relationships are absolute rather than optical. No optical corrections were applied. The geometry is clean enough that it does not require them.

See the complete submission on Behance.

This portfolio page covers the concept, color identity, and construction process for the logo. The full submission documentation including all scale tests, usage guidelines, the black and white variant, and the Hindi language version is published on Behance.