The Logo Designing for Speaking Archaeologically by Aditi Joshi

It was close to the end of 2015 when Tarannum and I get a text from Shriya. Seeing our knack for art, we were offered the ginormous task of making the official logos for Speaking Archaeologically. Each one of us had to make three drafts out of which only one would be finalised as the SA logo. To make things easier for us, the panel offered to exempt us from the upcoming tasks, to aid us focus on the logos. Now this is where the pact of secrecy came into existence. So, Shriya informs the volunteers that their partners (the tasks being partnership ones) Tarannum and Aditi would not be taking part in the upcoming essays as we were involved in a "Special Task". Now all this made us sound important and gave us the edge over the others except that after a while it became absolutely crushing to keep the secret, specially for me!

Now every single volunteer wanted to know about this so called "Special Task" that Tarannum and I were busy in. The worst of all occurred whenever I would converse with Anmol and the topic would pop up. Anmol being her amazing self did not poke much into the subject and let things be. Now being my typical self, it nearly killed me keeping this thing from her.

Anyhow, the days passed and we busied ourselves into the task. However, what initially appeared to be a very simple task, now started to look like a mammoth challenge. Apparently, there are only a limited number of designs that can be taken up to make a logo. It looked like a crisis at one point and finally Tarannum and I decided to sit together at her place and come up with ideas. We did doodle for a while and then the music, coffee and sandwiches consumed the remaining of our time. It was only when the dusk started falling that it dawned upon us that we had not been very productive in our endeavour. That was, however, the least of our worries! We had to send in our first draft that very day before midnight, so we just scramble and opened various sites and pictures related to archaeology and try to pen down our ideas through the lead strokes. 

The result was fairly satisfactory. We could now breathe normally again. Time had come for me to leave, despite Tarannum's family asking me to stay over. So, while driving back I start musing over the whole task and realise that we might have to wrack our brains more if we were to please the panel.

Thankfully,  the panel did like our ideas and  urged us for better ones. So, with our first drafts turned over, we wondered how to get on with a second one (there are a few things you can do in a such a situation). Not losing out to the limited ideas we were faced with, we started consulting each other for more creative ventures.

Logo designed by Tarannum.

Finally, Tarannum comes up with this beautiful idea, wherein, she placed all the artefacts inside an eggnog like structure and painted the entire structure in a brick red hue. It looked absolutely gorgeous and was instantly finalised by the panel. Well, she is one talented person we have in Speaking Archaeologically Volunteers Team!

Now the time came for me to send in my logo, except that I was still wondering how to go about it. It then happened that while I was flipping across the Speaking Archaeologically page that I decided to make one out of the initials of the organisation.

Logo designed by me

The next day I sat for an hour in the college library and inserted inside the ballooned "S" and "A", all the tools, equipment that spoke of the field. Sending in this rough sketch, I waited for the panel to respond. They did like it and asked Tarannum and me to finalise the selected logos for the showdown.

Now during all this, Athira, a lovable fellow volunteer, could not hide her curiosity regarding our task and it was hard to avoid her questions and demands regarding the nature of our task. Well, we did keep mum keeping in mind out "sacred oath" to Shriya.

The final date of submission came and almost at once, the Panel decided to go with the logo created by Tarannum as the Official Logo for Speaking Archaeologically, whereas my logo went on to be the Official Logo for the Volunteers Page.

As soon as this was announced, the first thing I did was to call Anmol and I just talked on and on about the whole task. Boy, it was a great relief! We all now sit and await the next task that the Panel has to give us on the Eve of the First Anniversary of Speaking Archaeologically.