Brands
Clean sweep for style as Specta and Gauri Khan surface a tough truth
MUMBAI: “The designer in me prefers beauty; the mother in me prefers safety.” With one evocative line, Gauri Khan slices straight into the modern Indian homeowner’s dilemma and Specta, the engineered quartz brand, serves it up with a sparkling side of design and conscience. Specta’s latest campaign, fronted by the celebrated interior designer and entrepreneur, poses a deceptively simple question: are your kitchen countertops just pretty to look at, or are they also safe enough to eat off? In an age when style and sanitation are often seen as strange bedfellows, Specta’s quartz surfaces promise to bridge that gap with panache.
In the campaign film, Khan’s voiceover articulates the dual identities of many homeowners aesthetes and caregivers alike and challenges the idea that one must choose between elegance and everyday hygiene. Specta, with its NSF-certified, non-porous, germ- and toxin-free surfaces, makes a compelling case for having it both ways.
“This campaign is about stirring the pot,” said Specta Quartz Surfaces founder Ankit Jain. “We use kitchen surfaces more than we realise and more roughly than we’d like to admit. Yet, the conversation around what’s safe to touch our food, and our families, is largely silent. We wanted to change that.”
Designed with Indian kitchens in mind from oil splatters to hot pots and the occasional atta massacre, Specta’s engineered quartz promises durability without compromising on design. The surfaces have been tailored for both performance and polish, making them fit for fast-paced homes and fastidious designers alike.
The campaign also follows Specta’s continued collaboration with Gauri Khan, including the ‘Gauri Picks’ collection that debuted at the AD Design Show 2024. It reaffirms the brand’s ambition to disrupt the surface segment one hygienic, high-fashion countertop at a time.
So, the next time someone compliments your chic kitchen the only question worth asking might just be: “But can you eat off it?”
Brands
Godrej clarifies ‘GI’ identifier after logo similarity debate
Says GI is not a logo, will not replace Godrej signature across products.
MUMBAI: In a branding storm where shapes did the talking, Godrej is now spelling things out. Godrej Industries Group (GIG) has issued a clarification on its newly introduced ‘GI’ identifier, addressing questions around its purpose and design following a wave of online criticism. At the centre of the debate were two concerns: whether the new mark replaces the long-standing Godrej logo, and whether its geometric design mirrors other corporate identities.
The company has drawn a clear line. The Godrej signature logo, it said, remains unchanged and continues to be the sole logo across all consumer-facing products and services. The ‘GI’ mark, by contrast, is not a logo but a corporate group identifier intended for use alongside the Godrej signature or company name, and aimed at stakeholders such as investors, media and talent rather than consumers.
The need for such a distinction stems from the 2024 restructuring of the broader Godrej Group into two separate business entities. With both continuing to operate under the same Godrej name and signature, the identifier is positioned as a way to differentiate the Godrej Industries Group at a corporate level.
The rollout, however, triggered a broader conversation on design originality. Critics pointed to similarities between the GI mark’s geometric composition and logos used by companies globally, raising questions about distinctiveness.
Responding to this, GIG said its intellectual property and legal review found that such overlaps are common in minimalist, geometry-led design systems. Basic forms such as circles and rectangles appear across dozens of brand identities worldwide, the company noted.
It added that the identifier emerged from an extensive design process and was chosen for its simplicity, allowing it to sit alongside the Godrej signature without competing visually. While acknowledging that elemental shapes may appear less distinctive in isolation, the group emphasised that the mark is part of a broader identity system that includes a custom typeface, sonic branding and other proprietary elements.
Following legal and ethical assessments, the company said it found no impediment to using the identifier, reiterating that the GI mark is a corporate tool not a consumer-facing symbol.
In short, the logo isn’t changing but the conversation around it certainly has.
