Everything we design has a purpose and a reason behind it. Most of the time, that story never leaves the studio. People see the decor, smile, take a photo and move on. This time we're writing it down.
We put together the Diwali set-up at Vestas Chennai overnight (that story is here). This one is about the thinking. Before a single file went to print, we picked one word to build the whole thing around.
One word: wind
Vestas makes wind turbines. Their people spend their working lives turning moving air into clean power. So we didn't want a Diwali that could hang in any office in the city. We wanted one that could only belong to Vestas.
Diwali is a festival of light. Vestas is a company of wind. The design lives where the two meet. That gave us our line for the backdrop and the danglers: Where the wind carries the light.
The diya at the heart of the turbine
Look closely at the dangler and the turbine has a diya at its hub. The blades turn around the flame, with little motion strokes to show they're spinning. Around it sits a ring of flame petals, part diya glow, part sunburst. Rangoli medallions frame the corners, and Happy Diwali rises on a diagonal, as if a gust just caught it.
A dangler hangs in the air and turns, so it has two faces. One side is warm cream with Vestas blue, carrying Where the wind carries the light. Turn it over and it flips to deep Vestas blue, with a second line: Every light has a story. Ours begins with the wind. We kept the Vestas logo and their blue front and centre, so the festival felt like theirs, not ours.
Crackers, without the smoke
Then came the photo props. Diwali means crackers, so every one of the 30 props is cut in the shape of one: rockets, bombs with lit fuses, anaar flowerpots, spinning chakris, sparkler bursts and Lakshmi vedis. Each gets its own bold festival colour, the way a cracker box does.
But this is a clean energy company, so the jokes run on wind. Powered by wind. Fuelled by mithai. 100% renewable joy. Zero emissions. Full emotions. Sweet tooth at full RPM. Team Turbine. Q4 target: maximum mithai. I'm a BIG fan of Diwali. And our favourite: The only day we don't want wind, because nobody wants a breeze near the diyas.
One wind, many languages
Vestas Chennai brings together people from all over India, and the floor doesn't speak one language. So the props don't either. They speak Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam and English.
One line runs through all four Indian languages, written the way people actually say it at home: current from the wind, light from the heart. In Tamil it's kaathula current, manasula velicham. In Hindi, hawa se bijli, dil se roshni. Telugu and Malayalam get their own versions too. Every prop also carries a small signature: a turbine mark, a Diwali greeting in one of the four languages, and the Vestas name. One prop puts all four greetings side by side, under the line that sums up the whole idea: One wind. Many languages. Same light.
Some props are pure local flavour. A Tamil prop asks the Diwali morning question every Chennai family asks, Ganga snanam aacha?, had your oil bath yet? The answer: Turbines oiled too! In Malayalam, you're a non-stop string of crackers. In Telugu, a flowerpot. In Hindi, 100% noise, 0% smoke.
Pick up a prop and you're saying where you're from. Stand together for the photo and you're saying where you belong.
Why the story matters
We've worked with Vestas for five years. In that time we've learned what they care about: clean energy, their people, and a culture that holds many languages under one roof. Good design should carry those things without anyone having to explain them. Wind in every joke. Their blue on every dangler. Every language on the floor.
Decor fills a room. A story fills it with meaning.
That's how we design every celebration, whether it's a Diwali on the floor or a townhall in a blade factory. Find the one idea that belongs only to you, then build everything around it. Want to know how all of this went up in a single night? Read Diwali at Vestas, overnight.
Want a festival that looks and sounds like your company? We design every celebration around your brand and your people, from office festival set-ups to the year-round Joy Calendar. Tell us your story.
