Taking it to the limit

In 1946, as India battled the death throes of a fading empire and the country’s profound fissures gave way to its looming partition, a middle-aged, semi-literate man, driven by the poverty that engulfed him, gave British rule in India one of its final blows. Over 70 years after Ramkrishna Dalmia bought out Bennet, Coleman & Co. and the Times Group for Rs. two crores, the Times of India’s principle online counterpart, Indiatimes, introduces its most radical rebrand to date.

Evoking the spirit of independent thinking, New Delhi-based creative agency, Animal, centralised the publication’s acronym, transforming the outlet’s longstanding identity from Indiatimes to ‘it.’ Alongside a reimagined logo, the rebrand aims to traverse the status quo of content creation, applying a can-do ethos to a range of touchpoints, from ‘invent it’ to ‘explore it.’

The new Zona Pro typeface harks back to the advent of 1920s sans-serif geometrics, with vivid colours appropriating the publication’s content outlook, loosening the chains of censorship and repositioning the publication’s footing as a frontrunner in content creation. Yet since its 1998 inception, Indiatimes has catered to the online community through ecommerce and vertical properties.

The recent rebrand marks the publication’s choice to focus on wider digital, bolstering social media and wider lifestyle-related networking through a growing news cycle matched by login specifications and account personalisation. Unifying the rebrand across various digital platforms, the imagery aims to spurn the corporate identity of the longstanding publication and, in turn, open new avenues of creativity for digital within India’s growing economy.

Commenting on the rebrand, a spokesman for Animal, says, “The brand came to us with a simple proposition - 'Let’s be relevant. Also, let’s be cool.' Our way forward became obvious - to set up a platform without the frills and fluff of conventional media. And the first task was snipping away at the name: discarding the unnecessary bit. Indiatimes is now it.”