COMET2.0Mumbai in Motion

Mumbai is movement — a train every few minutes, footboard commuters, a snack eaten standing up. The self-set brief: design a city collection for an Indian sneaker label that turns that energy into a shoe people would actually wear, a box worth keeping, a campaign that feels observed rather than staged, and a site that tells the story as one journey from a crowded platform to the smallest stitch.

Objective

One concept carried consistently across product, packaging, campaign and web.

Constraints

A classic, wearable silhouette; two scripts at small sizes; a site that stays fast on ordinary phones.

Success looks like

A reviewer can explain the idea in one sentence and find it in every touchpoint.

Intended audience Hypothesis

Desk research and visual reference gathering. No interviews or surveys were run.

1. 01The suburban railwayThe local train as the city's circulation: red-and-yellow rakes, footboard commuters, fast/slow indicators. India's first passenger train left Bori Bunder, where the terminus now stands, for Thane in 1853.
2. 02CSMT, the terminusF. W. Stevens' terminus (completed 1888; UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2004): Victorian Gothic Revival fused with Indian craft detail — the dome, turrets and arcades.
3. 03Postcards & ephemeraHand-tinted postcards, air-mail labels, cancellation marks and second-class tickets: framing, borders and limited ink sets.
4. 04Street letteringEnamel station boards and hand-painted stall signs: stacked bilingual names, heavy Devanagari strokes, red on cream.
5. 05Everyday cultureVada pav between trains; tennis-ball cricket on the maidans; आमची मुंबई — 'our Mumbai' in Marathi.

Competitive landscape

• Culture-led Indian labels

  What they do · Homegrown brands such as Comet and Gully Labs build on nostalgia, regional scripts and motifs, sold through limited drops — the Kerala-inspired Naadu, for example, uses boat motifs and Malayalam script.

  What it means for this brief · Proves the audience exists; the gap is one city told in depth and carried past the shoe.

• Global city editions

  What they do · Sneakers named after cities, where the city is often a name and a colourway rather than a narrative.

  What it means for this brief · Shows the format; leaves the story to the buyer.

• Souvenir merchandise

  What they do · Landmark collages on tees and totes: every icon at once.

  What it means for this brief · The trap to avoid — the reason for 'one scene per panel'.

Where this sits: one city, told as a complete system — shoe, box, campaign and site — through everyday rituals as much as monuments.

Mumbai in Motion: the city as it moves, worn on the feet that move through it.

The railway is the spine — the commute is what every Mumbaikar shares. The terminus gives the architecture, postcards give the framing, street lettering gives the voice and vada pav gives the warmth a souvenir would leave out.

1. P1Wearable firstThe silhouette stays a classic low-top court shoe. Without the graphics, it should still be a shoe someone wants.
2. P2One scene per panelEach quarter carries one composed view with one horizon line, like a picture postcard — never a collage of icons.
3. P3Two scripts, one hierarchyDevanagari is the voice (red, hand-painted); Latin capitals are the label (navy, enamel-board). Every Hindi word is proofread.
4. P4Discover, don't announceThe loudest references sit where the eye lands first; the small ones (vada pav, the postmark) reward a second look.
5. P5Honest presentationRenders are labelled as renders, proposals as proposals. Nothing claims to be manufactured, tested or for sale.

Three directions on one silhouette, each a full board. Platform Local became the hero because it is the most wearable and carries the commute; Postcard became the collector's edition and the box system; Harbour, the only all-over print, became the statement edition.

Graphic placement

Proposed materials Proposal

Upper

Cream cotton canvas, printed artwork (print method to be proven in strike-offs)

Star & heel counter

Navy suede overlays; the star sits over the artwork on both quarters

Lettering

COMET woven tongue label; MUMBAI embroidered at the heel

Laces & lining

Chai-brown cotton laces; navy lining

Outsole

Gum rubber cupsole, herringbone tread, star medallion at the pivot point

What the boards got wrong. Concept renders are not production artwork. The Platform Local sign tile reads मुबई — the anusvara is missing; it must be मुंबई. The Harbour board draws the star at two different sizes in two views. Both are logged for the production artwork rather than hidden.

Packaging system

Structure: a two-piece box — lid 340 × 220 × 40 mm carrying the poster artwork, base 334 × 214 × 120 mm in kraft with a navy interior. The dieline is shown in the Studio chapter. Material choices: canvas because it takes print like poster paper, suede for depth in the navy, gum for warmth underfoot; kraft for the base so the lid does the talking.

A launch site that doubles as the case study's centrepiece: it opens on the platform, pushes in to the shoe, then moves through the product, the box, the campaign and the studio. Information architecture:

1. 01 The city
2. 02 The reveal
3. 03 Silhouette
4. 04 Postcard
5. 05 Details
6. 06 Packaging
7. 07 Collection
8. 08 Campaign
9. 09 Studio
10. 10 Specifications

• Navigation that behavesHeader, menu, chapter rail and footer links scroll smoothly, clear the sticky header, update the URL hash and work with Back; a direct link to /#studio lands on the heading.
• Exploration, not decorationA six-angle product viewer, hotspots on the shoe and box, an edition switcher and a full-screen frame viewer with keyboard support.
• Accessible by defaultSkip-intro control, labelled controls, focus returned after the viewer closes, Esc to close, and a static opening when reduced motion is requested.
• Light where it countsStatically rendered pages, no WebGL, only transform and opacity animated, responsive images and lazy loading below the fold.

Insight

Everyone in Mumbai shares the commute; no one buys a shoe to remember a monument.

Idea

From the platform to the street. From CSMT to the Gateway. From the city to the spotlight.

Approach

The product never changes between scenes; the world around it does. Observed on the platform, controlled on the red set.

Station hoarding (3:1), feed post (4:5) and story (9:16), set in the collection's type and lockup. Layouts are built; placements are proposed.

Proposed rollout Proposal

1. 01Tease

   Station hoardings and the launch film — the platform, no product name.

2. 02Reveal

   Feed posts and red-set frames: the shoe as the hero object.

3. 03Drop

   Stories from the street, the poster box, and the site as the destination.

1. 01Real-time 3D → renders

   Version 1 built the shoe as a parametric mesh in code and projected the board art onto it. It read as a blocky toe, a slab sole and smeared artwork.

   Decision · Dropped 3D until a properly modelled shoe exists; the approved renders lead, labelled as renders.

2. 02Storyboard → campaign frame

   The illustrated platform proved the camera push into the shoe, but read as a drawing rather than a launch.

   Decision · Opened on the platform frame instead, extended to landscape for wide screens; the storyboard is kept in the Studio chapter as process.

3. 03बंदर → हार्बर

   The Harbour edition's first Hindi name, बंदर, is most often read as 'monkey'.

   Decision · Renamed हार्बर — the word Mumbaikars use for the Harbour line — across the site and the launch film.

4. 04मुबई, left visible

   The Platform Local board's sign tile drops the anusvara; it must read मुंबई.

   Decision · Logged for production artwork and shown in the Studio chapter instead of hidden.

5. 05Consistency over quantity

   Some campaign frames drew the shoe's artwork differently from the approved design.

   Decision · Removed the frame whose artwork drifted furthest; consistency of the product beats one more image.

6. 06Depth vs. length

   A ten-chapter story risks losing visitors before the end.

   Decision · Every chapter is reachable from the header, the menu and, on wide screens, the chapter rail; the campaign and studio are linked directly.