Services Delivered: Creative direction and visual identity, graphic assets, photography
Context and Audience
Phool Gully (“Flower Street” or “Flower Market” in Hindi) is a contemporary gifting brand rooted in the spirit of India’s vibrant flower markets. Inspired by Mumbai’s iconic Dadar Phool Gully, the brand reimagines the heritage of India’s floral diversity through a contemporary lens.
The challenge was to create a brand that could speak to a diverse, discerning audience: from Indian expats seeking a nostalgic connection to home, to gifting-conscious urban consumers new to Indian culture. The goal: translate the richness, colour, and energy of India’s flowe markets into a sincere, culturally-rooted and contemporary brand that feels both rooted and refined.
Packaging and Outdoor Identity
“Phool Gully” needed to capture the cultural richness and colourful chaos unique to Indian streets while making it accessible and desirable to an urban audience seeking a refined, contemporary experience.
Content & Social Media: Street Photography and Illustrations
I crafted a visual family of watercolour illustrations* to capture the vibrancy, texture, and diversity of Dadar’s iconic flower market. Each illustration highlights an individual flower’s unique color, texture and cultural significance making it visually memorable. This family of flowers turns the packaging into a collectible of its own kind, with each design showcasing a different bloom and its name in both Hindi (Devanagari) and English scripts.
To compliment this, orignial street photography from Dadar’s Phool Gully helped capture the energy, colour and chaos of India’s flower markets. This imagery anchors the brand’s digital presence and social content, creating a vivid and immersive visual identity.
*Illustrations generated via Ideogram’s Generative AI
A note on the Word-mark & Typography
The word-mark, फूल Gully, blends Hindi and English to reflect its ethos of bringing India’s local spirit to a global, contemporary audience. The word ‘Phool’ is written in Devanagari script (“फूल”), grounding the brand in its cultural and linguistic heritage, while the English word ‘Gully’ completes the name in a modern, global context. This intentional pairing celebrates the intersection of tradition and modernity, making the brand accessible to diverse audiences while staying true to its Indian roots.
Flanking the wordmark, ‘EST. 2023’ and ‘400028’ (Dadar’s postal code) anchor the brand in both time and place.
Typography plays a key role in shaping tone: The Seasons, an elegant serif, is used for headings, while Rajdhani, a geometric sans often seen in Indian street signage, adds structure and familiarity. Together, these choices build a visual identity that feels both rooted and refined, honouring tradition while speaking to a contemporary, and discerning audience.
