Anisha Babbar is a professional dancer and choreographer from the Bay Area known for her intricate Bollywood-fusion dance routines and viral social media presence. In 2019, Anisha expanded her personal brand and dance business to offer weekly YouTube videos, in person dance classes, tutorials, special workshops, and national tours. In an effort to develop her personal style and portfolio, Anisha and I worked together to design her new brand and revamp her existing content.
As a dancer Anisha has spent years developing a high level of technique, with detailed, fast paced movements, layers of stage presence, and big production value. As someone who has observed Anisha develop her artistry through the Desi dance circuit, my impressions of her choreography style was always something glamorous and full of bold feminine energy, so naturally our initial inspirations started from her signature vibes.
Balancing her roots in Bollywood with something modern, I was inspired by the images of iconic Bollywood item songs, sparkles, gold accents mixed with pink gradients, the movement of athletic wear campaigns, and editorial photography.
Above is the moodboard we started with.
As part of Anisha’s branding we worked on the following deliverables:
- Brand identity and company concepts
- Designated color scheme and fonts
- Short and long form logos
- Website design
- Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram graphics
- Class and tour flyers/ promotional materials
- Personal merchandise
- Professional branding photoshoot
One of the key focal points of Anisha’s branding was the logo design. We designed both a long form logo that placed an emphasis on merging typography styles and a short form logo that we used as a quick symbol of Anisha’s artistry.
Our inspiration behind the full logo was the concept of “fusion culture” and the idea of creating a single unique style out of many different dance forms. We used a brush script font to represent the fluidity in Anisha’s use of lyrical and jazz dance forms and a thick, outline font to represent the hard-hitting moves from her hip hop and contemporary Bollywood routines.
We also had a goal to create an emblem that Anisha’s audience would easily recognize and would serve as a quick visual snapshot of Anisha’s brand that people will remember when viewing her videos and social media content. For this component, I made use of varying gold and watercolor textures in gradient pink tones. I also condensed “Anisha Babbar Choreography” into an easy to remember “ABC”. Finally, I framed all the elements in a border with the watercolor strokes bleeding out to showcase Anisha’s passion for breaking boundaries and innovation.
One of the most fun parts of revamping Anisha’s brand was promoting her new identity through a professional shoot. In collaboration with photographer @dollyave and stylist, Sonam Naidu, I proposed the idea of creating 5 fashion looks inspired by her new color scheme and logos. This shoot was a great way to show the range in Anisha’s stage presence and showcase how performance brings out many different personalities. Our idea was to also highlight feminism through fierce, sporty, street, casual, and glamorous looks.
The final element of this project was creating templates to promote Anisha’s many classes and events. For each class type we used a specific color palette that was different for each event but still similar to the Anisha Babbar branding colors. For special series like the “BollyDolls” classes we used edgy, dark tones, while reoccurring events like her Los Angeles workshops utilized a bright, white color scheme, so students could easily know what’s next on her teaching schedule just by the look of the graphics.
