Gurugaman bus design represents Gurugram’s ‘cyber spirit’, say officials
Work on designing the buses started in December 2017 and the logo, showing two progressive lines of dark blue and light blue, signify earth and sky, respectively.
The collage of cyber and social media icons on the face of the Gurugaman buses represent the ‘cyber spirit’ of Gurugram, say officials who came up with it.
The chief executive officer (CEO) of the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA), V Umashankar, said the collage also makes the buses look lively. The design was conceptualised by Umashankar and prepared by Abhimanyu Abrol, a city-based architect who graduated from IIT, Kharagpur, in 2015.
Work on designing the buses started in December 2017 and the logo, showing two progressive lines of dark blue and light blue, signify earth and sky, respectively.
“We discussed that buses have to be appealing, and so, the colour and design were considered as such. The logo signifies that the buses will cover the whole city in both directions. The front side has a lot of cyber and social media icons that capture the spirit of the IT City that Gurugram is,” said Umashankar.
He said as the concessionaire of the service has advertising rights on the sides, they could only design the front and the back.
“We started with over 75 icons and narrowed it to nearly two dozen for the final design. The icons are a cyber collage, representing the hi-tech, futuristic vision of Gurugram as the city of robotics, networks, artificial intelligence and more,” said Abrol, 26, who is working with a leading British architecture company in Gurugram.
Abrol said that when Umashankar approached him about the project, he immediately agreed to offer his services free of charge.
“I enlisted the support of a colleague Purushottam Rawke. It was a privilege to be a part of the branding the bus service from the fresh perspective of this generation’s youth. We wanted it to reflect Gurugram’s modern cyber positioning and its upwardly mobile youthful population,” said Abrol.
The main work started in May and there were over half a dozen brainstorming sessions over a period of one month, before the design evolved.
“We had to check copyright issues and some other formalities, before the design was finalised. All the buses will carry the same design on the front. For AC buses, we will have the same colour but make it distinctive,” said Umashankar.
