Think about ‘The Dirty Picture’ film poster, Vidya Balan standing with a seductive look wearing a radiant red-colored revealing blouse while Tushar Kapoor and Naseeruddin Shah try to get intimate with her from one side and Emran Hashmi gives a couldn’t-care-less expression from the other side. And then there’s another kind of poster with two omlettes startegically placed on a blue background with the name of the film that gives out the idea quite well, in a manner that’s crisp, clear and witty! Diverging from the conventional loud, colorful, bold, larger than life and image-manipulated posters of Bollywood movies, here’s something completely new to look out for. The amalgamation of minimalism and Bollywood has produced the much-talked-about ‘Minimal Bollywood Poster’ by Akshar Pathak, a new kind of design inculcated into Bollywood posters that concentrates on just the bare essentials. Synonymous to simplicity, minimalism expresses in as less elements as possible.
Pathak reflects his minimal interpretations of Bollywood films poster. Residing in the capital, he has been a speaker at TED and has also designed a few things for director Mira Nair. This one-of-a-kind artwork has been shared on social networking websites and has been widely recognized and appreciated. In conversation with Delhi-based graphic designer, Akshar Pathak, the brain behind ‘Minimal Bollywood Poster’, delving deep into the Minimal Bollywood Poster phenomenon.
Pathak is currently working with Zomato as a Brand Associate. His work is “more on the lines of humour than graphic designing”. Graduating from NIFT, New Delhi, Pathak had no idea what life had in store for him! It all came from the idea when he stumbled upon minimalist poster designs by Ibraheem Youssef for Quentin Tarantino’s films. “No one in India had really explored this style of design for movie posters, so I thought I’d give it a shot and that’s how it all began”, said Pathak. Interestingly, Minimal Bollywood Poster had started as a fluke. Pathak had created some posters only to put them up on the internet but things took a turn and these posters went viral and completely transformed his life. Pathak was associated with Tweetard. Twitter is a space where one can find the funniest and wittiest things ranging from politics to lame jokes but they last merely for a day or lesser. “The whole project was about hand-picking those tweets and converting them into graphic form and form a whole gallery full of those”, said Pathak.
Currently, he has been working on a project called “Aage, Peeche, Upar, Cliché”, where he will be basically having a series of posters depicting all the cliches in Bollywood that have been recycled for ages now. Going commercial is not on the cards, for he is designing these posters only for fun and because he has a passion for them.
Check some more minimal bollywood posters, for more click here.
Note: This interview was conducted for T2, The Telegraph.
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