At ZohoDay in Austin last month, they had a souvenir for every attendee, a cube shown in the video above. So, I asked to interview Raffic Aslam, Creative Director at Zoho for the backstory. He shared details of the design and the speed of production to make sure it made it through customs from India to Austin.
Here are some excerpts
“At the ZohoDay in 2019, we had hand drawn portraits of all the analysts (see video below). We wanted to do something handmade again for the attendees, but in 3D which also reflected the spirit of Austin and Texas. We thought about mural art with flavors of Austin on a cowboy hat. We tried it using Plaster of Paris and wood. Neither worked out.
Then one of my team members, Deepika suggested we do something in metallic fiber with a stone/rock feel. That involved creating a clay model, then creating a cast, then making a mold of that in the fiber.
I was simultaneously working on a recruitment campaign involving 4 roles - developers, designers, sales executives and customer support reps. Each of those had a cube and other icons and that inspired the shift of the form to physical cube.
The 4 visible sides (the top has a Zoho logo) of the cube represent the following
Each weighs about 200 grams (7 ounces), and we added a wooden stand. The whole thing took about 3 weeks – including the shipping to Austin, so we delivered it in a tight timeline. At the end of the video are the three main contributors to the project – Arun Kumar, the sketch artist; Deepika, the clay modeler and Vignesh, the sculptor.
We are replicating this idea for all other events with customized themes. So the one for Europe will have its architecture, its food etc.”
Then I asked Raffic to share more of his team’s creative work. Here are some of them:
The wrench souvenir created for a Zoho Creator event in 2014
The wall painting when they opened their Dubai office in 2020. It blends Arab and Indian cultures.
The print in their Cape Town, S. Africa office. Due to COVID travel restrictions, they could not travel and paint the wall so they improvised with a print and shipped it over.
Covers they have designed for their notebooks. Every has the artist name on the back cover. The digital versions are available on the page here.
Here are the analyst "hedcuts" they had created for the 2019 Zoho Day.
Just amazing!!
That’s because last week Amtrak quietly unveiled the first deliveries from a previous order with Siemens dating back to 2017. While some interior modifications may occur, this is essentially the same product that will roll out throughout the country over the next decade.
The Points Guy has a detailed review here on the Amtrak Venture class coach
A pop-up store at a mall caught my eye. They had a whole variety of electric tricycles for personal and business use. The salesperson rattled off a bunch of attractive features
The personal and business use cases are limitless and they cost way less than BEVs to buy and operate. Many of them look like an Italian designer rethought the tuk tuk you see on Asian roads.
The Driven says there are already 1.5 million electric trikes on Indian roads and another 1.35 million in China. As we rethink our carbon footprints and lifestyles, I have a feeling we will see more of them on Western roads
I got an Amazon delivery which highlighted its lighter packaging and led me to its sustainability page
“Amazon customers want right-sized, recyclable packaging that minimizes waste and ensures damage-free delivery. We work to reinvent and simplify our sustainable packaging options using a science-based approach that combines lab testing, machine learning, materials science, and manufacturing partnerships to scale sustainable change across the packaging supply chain.”
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