Lenskart is an e-commerce eyewear company founded by Peyush Bansal in 2010, with the headquarters in New Delhi, India. They are the country’s leading online shopping portal for eyewear – with products ranging from a large selection of eyeglasses and sunglasses, to contact lenses, cases, etc. Despite starting off as a solely online business, Lenskart has more recently grown extremely quickly in retail, expanding from 450 stores in 2017, to 600 in 2018. The brand itself lacked a visual vocabulary to support all these new points of communication. They approached us in late 2017, to come up with a strong brand language to support their existing logo – and so we began our most large-scale rebrand to date.
Lenskart came into a market in which eyewear was considered only to be a medical solution. Gradually, over a period of time, they changed the face of their product in the market, making their own customer base of people who suddenly started to see eyewear as a fashion accessory. They were essentially the pioneers that brought the concept of e-commerce eyeware companies to India, thereby gathering a loyal base of recurring customers – a list that keeps growing every day. Today they are one of the most successful brand stories in the country, bringing in A-list celebrities like Katrina Kaif as Brand Ambassadors, and launching new product ranges and offers almost every day.
We began our work by building the brand language – taking the three most commonly identifiable frame shapes – a square, a circle, and a triangle – and editing them, to make them slightly more abstract forms. These three shapes would then go on to be the base structure for the language, being utilized to make patterns, blown up as elements with text, and in the packaging as the shapes themselves. Taking this forward, we made abstract forms to represent each of the 8 different kinds of frame categories on offer, as an icon-based system for identification and labeling.
The font family we chose for Lenskart is Rajdhani. This beautiful sans-serif font has modularized letterforms and supports both Devanagari and Latin writing systems. The squared and condensed appearance may be interpreted as technical or even futuristic, and our brand language uses the font in its many weights interspersed with the shapes, creating very interesting units of text.
The brand did not have much of an existing brand language to adapt from, so it was upto us to decide on a suitable colour palette. Keeping in mind that the vision and aim of the company is futuristic, and that the brand story is heavily technology-based (the products are assembled by robots to remove the possibility of human error), we decided to go with a bright palette, appearing together in pairs, in gradient form. We felt that this was the closest our language could come to match the existing LensKart logo, and that the bold colours would really position the brand where they want to be – a leader in their field, and therefor trustworthy and certified; while managing to keep their ‘cool’ and youthful image alive, to appeal to newer generations of customers. The impact of seeing multiple gradients, with various combinations of the brand’s colours, is aimed at emphasizing that the brand offers a multitude of choices, whether in style, shape, weight, or lens quality.
One of the brand’s primary tag lines launched with the re-brand, is “Are you ready to look ‘spec;tacular?” – a pun that was conceived during a fun discussion about the brand, and was eventually appropriated by the company, and used widely in their packaging, as well as advertising. We feel that the line is bold and honest, while maintaining a modern touch to it with the added pun.
To implement our brand language, we began with the cases, boxes, and a few other elements that add to the customer’s experience. The cases were carefully selected and designed to go with the brand’s image, and to make sure LensKart spectacles and their cases will always be distinguishable. The cases are minimally designed, using the three main shapes from our brand language, and with a witty one-liner inside, to keep with the brand’s overall image. Next was the boxes that these cases will be enclosed in. We created vibrant yet clean looking layouts, which are pleasing to the eye while managing to convey a decent amount of information. The colour palette we had previously chosen for the brand was taken forward in these boxes, establishing them further to the customer.
After the initial phase of packaging, we got into slightly smaller touchpoints – a foldout leaflet, and a small cloth to be packaged inside the box with every order; as well as a paper carry bag with the new brand language.
After finishing off with the basic packaging collaterals, we moved on to the in-store work – which was quite a large operation, as this would mean effectively presenting our new language to Lenskart’s humungous customer base for the first time. We worked on in-store-slanters, various posters, standees, shelf-talkers, and finally, the uniforms worn by Lenskart store-employees. The brand language helps to immediately make a space look more lively, and now conveys the intended ‘fun yet practical’ image for Lenskart.
We made a series of web-banners for the brand, which will appear on the Lenskart website. We are also going to be re-vamping the Lenskart website.
After completing the Lesnkart re-brand, we moved on to thier sub-brands; both existing, as well as new ones that have since launched. Beginning with Lesnkart Blu, we created new identities for Lenskart Gold and Air, amongst others. You can see the sub-brands we have worked on here.
