End-to-end brand creation:
Built CIRCA entirely from the ground up, defining its positioning, personality, naming, visual identity, and brand system to enter India’s bridge-to-luxury watch segment.
Clear strategic positioning:
Anchored around the idea “Beyond luxury – a gateway to culture,” the brand was shaped using emotional and audience-centric frameworks to appeal to a younger, aspirational yet heritage-aware consumer.
Distinctive brand expression:
CIRCA’s inclusive, trustworthy, refined, and delightful personality guided its tone of voice, naming, and a timeless visual language spanning logo, typography, colours, and tactile print finishes.
Market-ready outcome:
The project delivered a complete brand ecosystem, including a comprehensive brand book and applications across retail, packaging, and digital, positioning CIRCA for a confident retail launch and long-term cultural relevance.
Art of Time, India’s premier luxury watch retailer, wanted to launch into the fast-growing bridge-to-luxury segment with a new, standalone brand. The mandate wasn’t just to design a logo or campaign—it was to create the brand from scratch.
From defining who CIRCA is, to deciding how it speaks, looks, and behaves, Fugu was tasked with delivering an end-to-end brand creation—ensuring it resonated with a younger, aspirational audience while carrying forward the heritage, sophistication, and trust of fine watch retail.
We began by identifying CIRCA’s purpose and position in the market:
“Beyond luxury – a gateway to culture.”
Using the Limbic® model, we mapped the emotional drivers of the target audience and aligned these to CIRCA’s core brand values. This became the strategic anchor for every creative and communication decision.
Working closely with the client, we built composite audience profiles that captured the motivations, lifestyle cues, and purchase philosophies of CIRCA’s target market.
These profiles acted as a north star for the brand’s personality, messaging, and design direction—ensuring the brand always spoke in a way that felt authentic and relevant.
We distilled CIRCA’s personality into four key traits: Inclusive, Trustworthy, Delightful, Refined.
This guided the tone of voice—approachable yet authoritative, sophisticated without being intimidating.
We created the name CIRCA—a word rich with layered meaning. In everyday language it means “around” or “approximately”; in horology, it’s a way of timestamping history (“circa 1963”). It captured both the heritage of watchmaking and the idea of personal milestones.
We translated the brand strategy into a complete visual language:
We delivered a comprehensive Brand Book covering:
CIRCA emerged as a fully formed, market-ready brand—strategically positioned, emotionally resonant, and visually distinctive.
Delivered:
Brand positioning & story
Customer profile framework
Brand personality
Brand name
Logo & identity system
Colour palette & typography
Collateral & environmental branding
Complete brand book & guidelines
With its first stores launching soon, CIRCA is set to redefine watch retail for India’s new generation of luxury buyers—turning every store visit into a curated, memorable experience and making fine timepieces part of a larger cultural narrative.
End-to-end brand creation:
Built CIRCA entirely from the ground up, defining its positioning, personality, naming, visual identity, and brand system to enter India’s bridge-to-luxury watch segment.
Clear strategic positioning:
Anchored around the idea “Beyond luxury – a gateway to culture,” the brand was shaped using emotional and audience-centric frameworks to appeal to a younger, aspirational yet heritage-aware consumer.
Distinctive brand expression:
CIRCA’s inclusive, trustworthy, refined, and delightful personality guided its tone of voice, naming, and a timeless visual language spanning logo, typography, colours, and tactile print finishes.
Market-ready outcome:
The project delivered a complete brand ecosystem, including a comprehensive brand book and applications across retail, packaging, and digital, positioning CIRCA for a confident retail launch and long-term cultural relevance.
Art of Time, India’s premier luxury watch retailer, wanted to launch into the fast-growing bridge-to-luxury segment with a new, standalone brand. The mandate wasn’t just to design a logo or campaign—it was to create the brand from scratch.
From defining who CIRCA is, to deciding how it speaks, looks, and behaves, Fugu was tasked with delivering an end-to-end brand creation—ensuring it resonated with a younger, aspirational audience while carrying forward the heritage, sophistication, and trust of fine watch retail.
We began by identifying CIRCA’s purpose and position in the market:
“Beyond luxury – a gateway to culture.”
Using the Limbic® model, we mapped the emotional drivers of the target audience and aligned these to CIRCA’s core brand values. This became the strategic anchor for every creative and communication decision.
Working closely with the client, we built composite audience profiles that captured the motivations, lifestyle cues, and purchase philosophies of CIRCA’s target market.
These profiles acted as a north star for the brand’s personality, messaging, and design direction—ensuring the brand always spoke in a way that felt authentic and relevant.
We distilled CIRCA’s personality into four key traits: Inclusive, Trustworthy, Delightful, Refined.
This guided the tone of voice—approachable yet authoritative, sophisticated without being intimidating.
We created the name CIRCA—a word rich with layered meaning. In everyday language it means “around” or “approximately”; in horology, it’s a way of timestamping history (“circa 1963”). It captured both the heritage of watchmaking and the idea of personal milestones.
We translated the brand strategy into a complete visual language:
We delivered a comprehensive Brand Book covering:
CIRCA emerged as a fully formed, market-ready brand—strategically positioned, emotionally resonant, and visually distinctive.
Delivered:
Brand positioning & story
Customer profile framework
Brand personality
Brand name
Logo & identity system
Colour palette & typography
Collateral & environmental branding
Complete brand book & guidelines
With its first stores launching soon, CIRCA is set to redefine watch retail for India’s new generation of luxury buyers—turning every store visit into a curated, memorable experience and making fine timepieces part of a larger cultural narrative.
