The Next Wave
ANJ Group is one of India's leading design and build firms, delivering large scale workplaces through integrated manufacturing, technology, and execution. The firm has transformed over 110 million sft of workplaces, hospitals, educational institutions, hotels, and data centers, covering more than 3,000 projects across 60 cities. Backed by a team of over 100 architects and interior designers, a 2,500 strong skilled workforce, and a pan India presence, ANJ delivers seamless solutions with scale, precision, and speed.
In 2020, ANJ introduced The Next Wave, a campaign identity marking the firm's next chapter. Working with the ANJ brand team, I directed how the identity shows up everywhere it lives: the marks and colour system, a proprietary display face, editorial and print collateral, environmental graphics and signage, an illustration system, film, and digital surfaces. This page is an overview of that system and the rules that hold it together. The plates are a selection; the digital builds are documented in their own case studies.
An identity needs a small set of elements that stay recognisable at any size and on any surface. For The Next Wave I established that core: the ANJ mark as the constant signature, the hand drawn lockup as the campaign's voice, and a colour system built around wave yellow and navy with a restrained set of accents. The rules for how they combine, on which grounds, and where each accent is permitted are what let a large organisation apply the identity without drift.
A campaign that speaks in its own voice needs its own letterforms. I directed a proprietary display face drawn by hand and wrote the specification that governs it: 1 weight, display sizes only, fixed tracking, no recolouring, and defined pairings with a serif for editorial work and a grotesk for wayfinding and interface. The specification is the contract that keeps the face consistent across print, buildings, and screens, and lets other designers set it without me in the room.
A system proves itself by travelling. I art directed the collateral programme that carried The Next Wave into campaign editions, merchandise, and the everyday touchpoints a client handles, using 1 grid, 1 wave device, and the colour rules to keep every piece recognisably part of the same family. The plates show a selection from a much larger body of work produced over the life of the campaign.
Bringing an identity into a building means designing for fabrication as much as for the eye. I directed the environmental programme: wayfinding and door signage documented with true dimensions and bend lines so vendors could build directly from the drawings, facade graphics that carry the campaign across the elevation, the experience centre where clients meet the brand at corridor scale, and the install itself, supervised on site. The film and stills record the identity at full scale.
Print is where the identity slows down and is read. I art directed the editorial programme: brand books, brochures, and campaign publications set on the shared grid, with the display face reserved for covers and openers and the serif carrying the reading. Production was specified for the press, so the wave, the colour, and the paper behave the same way from the cover to the last page, and the same rules let the ANJ team produce new titles without redesign.
Sales communications needed a voice of their own inside the identity. I designed a 2 colour illustration system that turns everyday workplace situations into recognisable scenes, so decks, mailers, and campaign pages make the case for better workplaces in 1 hand and 1 tone. The style is defined by line weight, palette, and composition rules rather than by any single image, which is what lets other designers extend it.
The identity had to hold on screen as well as on paper and on buildings. The same type, colour, and wave logic carried into the campaign microsite and into the ANJ App, the field companion for the firm's project ERP, so the brand reads the same whether a client meets it on a billboard, in a book, or on a phone. Both digital builds are documented in their own case studies.
