The Napier Bridge

The Napier Bridge has appeared in so many movies and we as viewers, would immediately go “Ahh” in our heads when it appears on screen. It is a popular and iconic landmark in Chennai and a source of real pride for the city. At Chennaigaga, we derived inspiration from the Napier Bridge right from our launch stage in 2010, and thus we created the t-shirt design captioned ‘Madras to Chennai’. 

Speaking of inspiration, here are some questions we ask ourselves in our creative exercises:

What are some possible Chennai concepts? What are some memorable Madras memory-concepts? What would everyone associate Chennai with? What’s really iconic in Chennai?

As we went to and fro at the Chennaigaga ‘Think Tank’, we thought of popular spots in Namma Chennai and one of the first happy places that popped up, was the Napier Bridge. We knew it had to feature a lot in our design collection and so, it does. We also decided to do a dedicated artwork for it only on T-shirts and the caption evolved much more easily than we could have imagined. Connecting North Madras to South Madras? The Fort St. George to Marina Beach? We asked ourselves such in our quest for the perfect caption. The more we gazed at the concept, the more the words ‘Madras to Chennai’ struck us as apt, and it would also be symbolic of the city’s journey that was, the memories that float around it, and the beautiful sight that it is. We have brought out many colours of t-shirt with this same artwork over the years. Red, blue, black, grey, green and it is now available in a cool navy blue at chennaigaga.com

As for the memories that are currently being made around it, well, that’s for future nostalgia! The Napier Bridge was built on the Cooum River at the edge of Marina Beach. It was originally built in 1869.

“Once inspired, take action.” is our takeaway from this.

We thank our long-time customer and well wisher Mr. Vaidyanathan Padmanabhan for sharing this photo with us.