Mumbai Dabba Project
Young Ones ADC, Shortlist — 20252024
Steel lunchboxes, trains, bicycles. The familiar rhythm of Mumbai’s Dabbawala System becomes more than a delivery chain—it becomes a gallery in motion. The Mumbai Dabba Project reimagines the city’s iconic lunchboxes as vessels for art, carrying the work of local artists through the streets and across neighborhoods. What was once a utilitarian system now transforms into a living exhibition, turning Mumbai itself into the gallery.
How do you brand a project that is at once everyday and extraordinary? The challenge was to honor the authenticity of the Dabbawala tradition while capturing the energy and visual pulse of the city. The identity had to reflect both the system’s functional grit and the creative vitality it now carries.
The design process began by observing the cues embedded in the Dabbawala network: the cylindrical geometry of the lunchbox, the handwritten delivery codes, and the kinetic motion of trains and bicycles. These familiar markers became the foundation of the identity system, grounding it in cultural truth while opening space for artistic reinterpretation.
Visually, the brand balances structure and play. The graphic elements abstract the system’s cues into a dynamic visual language. The result is an identity that moves like the dabbas themselves, circulating through the city, connecting people, and carrying stories from one place to another.
Brand Identity
Motion
Website
DURATION
2 Weeks
Ramyatara Mullapudi DESIGNER
Scott Thorpe MENTOR
My role spanned research, visual identity, motion explorations, and print and digital applications. I translated the movement and visual cues of the Dabbawala network into a contemporary identity system that reimagines everyday infrastructure as a platform for storytelling.
A brand system that honors tradition while amplifying artistic expression.
An identity bold enough to travel across a bustling city, yet flexible enough to hold diverse voices and artworks. At its core, the system positions the dabbas not just as containers of food, but as cultural carriers. Everyday objects elevated into moving canvases.
Rooted in rhythm, stacked from the everyday.
A color palette drawn from food and city life, turmeric yellows, chili reds, and herb greens, grounds the system in Mumbai’s sensory landscape. The geometric structure and the color palette balance the industrial grit of the delivery system with the vibrancy of the meals and streets it animates.
Motion mirrors the energy of the dabbawala system: cycling, stacking, and shifting through the city. Patterns derived from the core symbol extend into posters, merchandise, and digital platforms, creating a rhythmic movement that captures the city’s restless pulse.
Reimagining lived infrastructure as living identity.
As a design school project, the work offered space to experiment with translating cultural observation into brand systems, motion, and visual applications. It sharpened my approach to building identities that balance authenticity with adaptability, and showed how design can move fluidly between physical, digital, and experiential contexts.