This Project Made Me Grow Up
(Undertaken as Creative Director at Sane Difference)
When SCALE reached out, we knew we were entering a challenging, high-impact space: the point where government, funders, and non-profits converge.
And in our very first meeting, their clarity and drive made us see just how bold their vision truly was.
Governments in India spend nearly ₹25.7 lakh crore on social sectors every year, which is about 8% of the GDP. Philanthropy and CSR, while smaller, are becoming powerful complements to that effort. SCALE’s goal was to bring all of this together and to create an environment where nonprofits, funders, and government leaders could actually work in sync to create impact at the population level.
Now that's generational.
The first brainstorm was great. Everyone was sharp, excited, ideas flying. Then the next day, when we sat down to build on it, we realised no one had taken notes out of excitement. We’d lost some of our best thoughts. That was on me.
It was a stupid mistake, but also a good lesson. From the next round on, everything was captured no matter how small, how half-baked, how irrelevant it felt in the moment. Because in this kind of work, you don’t know what will connect later. Sometimes the throwaway line ends up holding the whole thing together.
By the time we started exploring routes, two ideas stood out.
Route 1 was the Orchestrator. It came from the idea of SCALE being the missing middle, drawing together scattered forces into a singular, purposeful arc. The integral sign, which symbolises individual components being combined to create something more effective than the simple sum of their individual contribution. It showed collective momentum and the grandness of the vision.
Route 2 was the Catalyst. More kinetic. It imagined SCALE as the spark that triggers a chain reaction, moving the system from 1 to n, accelerating change, amplifying momentum. It had energy and urgency, but it also risked feeling restless.
Both routes said something true. But when we stepped back, we realised SCALE wasn’t just about sparking motion, it was about sustaining it. That’s when Integration became the natural choice.
This was also one of my first full identity projects. And it made me realize that coming up with good ideas is easy. Knowing which ones are the good ideas takes experience. :)
