The TellyPort Card, or Telly Card, is the country’s first prepaid inter-city bus card that works on a contactless payment system. Taking advantage of smart card technology, it eliminates the hassle of queueing and purchasing tickets. Passengers can now do away with fishing out money from pockets or bags by simply tapping their cards on a device. Future phases will also see it used as a stored-value card for retail purchases and as payment in establishments such as bookstores.

Since ticket booths and vending machines will be located in crowded areas, our foremost consideration was to create a mark that is bold and easily spotted from a distance. We followed the convention of using single characters in transportation identity systems to meet this objective. The Telly Card ‘T’, however, is made distinct by the addition of three bars. These reference the shape of a card, radio waves, and speed and direction and also reworks the Wi-fi and contactless smart reader symbols.

The identity had to be versatile enough for marketing campaigns and for use on a variety of materials and collateral. The three bars accomplish this when extracted, its symbolism broadening to represent other concepts such as shopping or books. They can also be used as a form of punctuation for copy. Further, the tagline “Takes You There” and its iterations add to the identity’s flexibility.