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It was in 2009 we ventured into the open source community, Drupal. As newcomers, we were excited to be a part of this dynamic community. All these years we have received immense amount of love from the community. In return, we wanted to create something that would show our dedication towards it. A design that would communicate our indigenous identity. An idea that would shout QED42. It is said that honest emotions are well presented in your mother tongue. And we chose Drupal illustrated in Devanagari script as our USP. That was the beginning of the glorious era of द्रुपल.
There are some ideas that you are not really sure about whether they would work out or not, well this was the exact opposite of that. Everyone in the team was immediately on board.
Version 1.0
The story behind this is interesting. This maiden attempt was inspired by unconventional truck art. Here are some images that served as an inspiration.
The final design featured simplified truck art aesthetics. Bold colors and graphic lines found in truck art were incorporated into our design. The overlapping colors and outlines highlighted our design.
We launched this T-shirt at Drupalcon Asia and the reaction we received, reaffirmed our faith in the design. People across different platforms were curious about our design and it was a huge hit!
Version 2.0
For the second edition, we had to come up with something grander. And what could be grander than our very own country; welcome to India! The land of colors. This design boldly speaks about the country. We wanted to incorporate the vivid diversity of India. Playful forms and vivacious colors that reflect our Indian culture.
We chose different symbols that would clearly convey our identity. Lotus [National Flower] is an important part of our heritage and is used on multiple occasions..The peacock long considered as the magical bird of Orient was also featured in our design. Elephant the central figure of Indian mythology can also be seen in this version of our devnagari Drupal. We also explored different printing techniques this time. We experimented with gradients and embossing and the result turned out to be really great.
150 T-shirts were distributed and demanded like hotcakes on the very first day of Drupalcon Nashville. Everyone absolutely loved the design and it was all over the social media channels in no time! This boosted our confidence.
Version 3.0
For our third version, we decided to go a little contemporary. These are a couple of images that we gathered to get us going.
The final design was the result of experimentation with 3D lettering and a range of textures. We explored how we could add complementary elements to make the graphic more appealing. This version was released in Drupalcon Seattle.
We are as excited about version 4.0 as you are. Our designers are busy discussing the next big idea. Stay tuned for more updates!
Riddhi Juyal has been of great help in putting our story of Drupal Hindi T-shirt in words for this blog.