Tushar Menon
Anjana Nair
Dushyant Shekhawat
Karanjeet Kaur
Vikram Bhalla
A Time Machine With Better Typography
Tata Central Archives | Editorial Identity · Publication Design · Copy Editing
A little history about Tata Group’s history
The Tata Group has more than 150 years of history behind its name. Keeping track of it all is no small undertaking.
Thankfully, the Tata Central Archives (TCA) has been collecting and preserving the Group’s history since 1991. Since 2002, its newsletter, Sands of Time, has shared stories from that extensive collection.
The publication had plenty of history. Its design, however, was in need of a glow-up.
When Tata Sons approached us to refresh Sands of Time, the idea was to bring it into the present without losing what made it familiar. This was easier said than done. The publication had been around for over two decades, and the team behind it was understandably attached to how things had always been done.
Finding the font of youth
Redesigning an established publication is a little like renovating an old house. You want to make it better without getting rid of everything that gives it character. So rather than treating Sands of Time as a series of individual newsletters, we approached it as a branding challenge – our favourite kind of exercise.
First came the visual and editorial guidelines. Typography, grids, image treatments, hierarchy, and the finer details that would give every subsequent edition a consistent identity.
We wanted something timeless rather than fashionable. A design that respected the publication’s history but wouldn’t look out of place in 2026.
The result was a restrained editorial system that gave the stories and archival material more room to breathe. Clean typography, generous white space, and recurring sepia-toned sections helped organise the information while retaining continuity and history.
Cropping is a thing of the past
Here’s something you should know about working with historical archives. People get very attached to their photographs. And rightly so.
Every edition of Sands of Time came with a substantial collection of archival images, documents, captions, and stories. The client also gave one firm instruction: no cropping photographs.
Not exactly music to a designer’s ears. For Anjana, our lead designer on the project, this turned every issue into an exercise in composition. Photographs of wildly different proportions had to coexist with substantial amounts of text, all within an established grid.
Some spreads needed careful balancing. Others needed to give a particularly interesting photograph an entire page, or even two. The challenge was to keep each edition visually interesting without losing the consistency we’d worked so hard to establish.
Think of it as making a zine, except the material comes from one of India’s most significant corporate archives, and the photographs are strictly off-limits to the crop tool.
A tale of many Tatas
One edition takes us through 120 years of the Taj Mahal Hotel, complete with architectural drawings, photographs of old Bombay, and stories about the people who shaped one of India’s most recognisable landmarks.
Another explores the history of Voltas, from its antecedents as a pharmaceutical distribution company to its role in pioneering engineering projects that helped build modern India. Yet another turns its attention to the construction of Bombay House, the iconic HQ of the Tata Group that is now a Mumbai landmark.
The subjects change considerably, but the editorial identity stays familiar. TCA’s team does the historical research, original text, and archival material. We handle editing, design, and layout, working out how to give each story the space and attention it deserves.
It’s a useful reminder that consistency doesn’t have to mean repetition.
Paper beats pixels. We said what we said.
We’re often told that nobody reads anymore. Or that print is on its way out. Or that everything worth publishing should probably be on a screen.
Thankfully, some clients aren’t interested in that argument. The Tata Group still values printed publications, and we’ve been fortunate enough to work on several of them.
Sands of Time has been a particularly interesting exercise in finding new ways to work with an established format. There was plenty of back and forth, some long review cycles, and a fair amount of patience to get the first redesign over the line.
But the refreshed publication eventually won over the TCA team, who invited us back to design a few more editions.
For all the convenience of digital design, there’s still something rather satisfying about seeing months of layouts, edits, and tiny adjustments come together as a finished publication you can hold in your hands.
Print is a labour of love. Editorial, doubly so. And we’re quite happy to keep making room for both.
Bigger ideas. Finer details.
TWO is where the wide view and fine line converge. Things that are often made to compete actually become stronger together.
That’s our bedrock.