Tushar Menon
Arjun Rajkishore
Nafisa Joseph
Jigna Padiar
Melanie Andrade
Neha Mathrani
Vikram Bhalla
The past, without a pedestal
Brand Identity · Illustration · Brand Collateral
A little less 'look, don't touch'
Art and antique galleries have a reputation for being rather intimidating. The sort of places where you feel you should know the difference between Art Deco and Art Nouveau before you're allowed through the door.
The Story Goes On wanted to change that. Its collection ranged from vintage televisions to century-old rocking chairs, each with a history worth knowing. The ambition was to make art and antiques approachable to a younger audience, without stripping away the things that made these objects special.
But what made these objects special wasn’t their age, it was provenance. Their value came from the people who made them, owned them, used them, and passed them on. Every scratch, blemish, and missing screw had a story to tell.
Some false starts lead to good ideas
Our first instinct was to explore a few familiar antiques-inspired directions. Vintage references, traditional aesthetics, the usual suspects. We presented two directions. The client rejected both.
In hindsight, fair enough.
We'd been trying to make an old-fashioned category look contemporary, when what we really needed was to treat The Story Goes On as a modern brand that happened to give objects that had endured the test of time, a new lease of life.
That change in perspective gave us the identity. Clean typography, a fresh colour palette, and a playful logomark where the 'y' in 'story' extended into an arrow, pointing towards whatever came next.
Which, as it turned out, gave us quite a lot to work with.
One little arrow, many stories
That arrow became the starting point for a whole library of what we called 'Icon Stories'. Little visual narratives built from custom illustrations of objects, materials, periods, and just about anything else we could connect to an antique.
A typewriter, for instance, could lead to paper, a letter, or an entirely different story. The system was designed to keep growing, just like the collection.
We carried the idea across stationery, packaging, and digital communication. Our writers got equally invested, developing product stories, educational articles, and social content that made the world of art and antiques a lot more accessible.
It was an unusually expansive project, and one we remember rather fondly. Not least because it reminded us that sometimes the most useful thing you can do with a creative brief is question your first answer.
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.
FOOTER PLACEHOLDER
This will come in later