Supriya Narayanan, Founder & Creative Director of The 8th Archer, designs creative directions that bridge India, Korea, and global markets, focusing on brand strategy and identity systems.
She views branding not simply as a product of logos, visual identity, or design assets, but as the foundational infrastructure that keeps a business grounded and aligned as it grows. While a logo and design may be the first things people notice, she emphasizes that what genuinely sustains a brand over time is the underlying system of positioning, communication, customer experience, culture, and decision-making.
In this interview, we spoke with Supriya about why branding must be understood as infrastructure, the essential contexts brands easily lose when navigating between Indian, Korean, and global markets, and the fundamental questions founders must clarify before investing in identity or packaging.
Q1. You describe branding as infrastructure. What does that mean beyond logo, visual identity, or design?
When you look at a building, it’s the façade that first catches your eye. What keeps the building standing, however, is the foundation, the structural columns and the engineering behind it, all working together as one interconnected system. Brands are no different. A logo, visual identity or design is often the first thing people notice about a brand. They’re important, but they’re only the visible expression of a much larger system. Branding is the interconnected system that allows every part of a business to work together with clarity and consistency. Positioning, communication, customer experience, culture, visual identity and
decision-making all play different roles. Individually, each serves a different purpose. Together, they create a brand that people can consistently understand, trust and experience. This is why I like to think of branding as infrastructure, not simply as identity. It isn’t just about creating recognisable assets. It’s about creating a system that keeps every moving part aligned as the business grows. When that system is strong, every decision, interaction and experience reinforces the same brand rather than pulling it in different directions. When people admire a beautiful building, they rarely think about the infrastructure that makes it
possible. Branding deserves to be understood in exactly the same way. After all, while the visible parts create recognition, it’s the invisible system behind them that determines whether something simply exists or endures.
Q2. When a brand expands across markets such as India, Korea, and global audiences, what usually gets lost in translation?
Global expansion is often measured by the number of markets a brand enters. I see it a little differently. It’s better measured by how relevant the brand becomes once it’s there. Entering a market is one thing. Becoming part of it is another. When you enter a new market, the product may remain exactly the same, but the context around it changes completely. Culture, consumer needs, behaviour, climate, purchasing habits and everyday routines all influence how people perceive value. Unless a brand understands that shift, it risks being understood, but never genuinely connecting with the people it’s trying to serve.
Let’s take something as simple as a dry shampoo. Saying it’s a best-selling product in Korea may create curiosity and build credibility. But credibility alone rarely drives purchase. What matters more is helping people understand why that product is valuable to them. When that same dry shampoo enters India, its value should be communicated differently. For someone living in Mumbai, its value may lie in helping them refresh their hair between long commutes in hot and humid weather. In another city, the very same product may become relevant for an entirely different reason. The product hasn’t changed. What changes is the way its value is communicated so it reflects the lives, needs and priorities of the people it’s trying to serve and earns a place in their minds for the right reasons. That’s what often gets lost in translation. Not the brand itself, but its relevance to the people it’s trying to serve. The strongest global brands don’t change who they are. They change how they communicate their value so it resonates with the people they’re trying to serve.
Q3. For founders building ambitious brands, what should be clarified before they invest in identity, packaging, or brand systems?
Before founders invest in identity, packaging or brand systems, they should first be clear about the business they’re trying to build and how far they want it to go. Identity should follow ambition, not precede it. One of the first things I like to understand in my initial conversations with founders is exactly that. How far do they want this brand to go? The answer shapes every branding decision that follows. Whether we’re thinking about naming, brand architecture, visual identity or systems, they shouldn’t just support the next product launch. They should support future categories, new markets and long-term growth.
The reason for doing this isn’t simply because expansion is the goal. It’s because good branding should save founders from having to constantly reinvent, revisit or rebrand their business as it evolves. Instead, it should be designed with enough clarity and flexibility to evolve alongside the company. To me, the strongest branding isn’t created for today’s business. It’s created for the business a founder hopes to build. When that ambition is clear from the beginning, branding becomes something a company grows into, rather than grows out of. It simply has the room to grow into what it was always meant to become.
For Supriya, good branding is not about beautifully packaging a brand for where it stands today.
It is about designing a structural system in advance, considering how far the brand will expand into new markets, how it will grow into future categories, and how it will be remembered by its customers. Even if a product remains the same, the way people perceive its value completely changes once the market shifts. Therefore, what matters for a global brand is not merely entering more markets, but the ability to re-communicate its core value within the specific lives, needs, and contexts of each market. Ultimately, a brand that endures is not one that constantly reinvents itself, but one designed from the very beginning with the structural room to grow.
