‘Everyday India’- The exhibition displays hand-drawn ‘Storefronts & Signages’ by Bombay Duck Designs
For those who thrive on the multiplicity of metros and delicious microscopic details of the city of the dreams, the show at 47-A, in Khotachiwadi presents a delightful array of illustrated Indian printed and painted graphic design samples of storefronts and signages put together by artist and designer Sameer Kulavoor.
Brands and logos play a signiicant part in forming our visual and cognitive language without us realising it. From nostalgia to remembrance of good times the graphic designs of various forms, sizes and colours that we come across in our daily lives can be overwhelming to our senses.
As per Co-founders of Bombay Duck Designs, designer Sameer and Zeenat Kulavoor, the independent design studio in Mumbai put together an illustrated documentation of Indian printed and painted graphic design samples and signages across the decades in an exhibition titled ‘Everyday India’ (on till August 27) at 47-A, in Khotachiwadi.
Become a Premium Member to access our exclusive contents: https://authindia.com/premium-community-membership/ Divided into four parts — ‘Storefronts & Signages’, ‘Illustrated Specimens’, ‘Brand Guides’ and ‘OH FLIP!’, a series of five flip books — the show opens with six hand-drawn artworks that illustrate fictional shop fronts boasting a crammed cluster of signages haphazardly placed together to create layers of cultures and languages.
Acccording to Sameer, India is a collage of many distinct parts and we wanted to bring that idea to the fore,these are paired against a series of five digital collage art prints that look at informal rules that influence the design for a particular product or service.
“An Indian photocopy shop has a peculiar black-and-yellow branding with a prominent use of bold and repetitive typography. If a signage was in a blue-and-white colour scheme, one wouldn’t trust the shop,” explains Zeenat. “Similarly, surma’s packaging would be unrecognisable without the motif of an eye. These brand categories and their unique visual languages are deeply embedded into the psyche of the common man and woman.”
The intricacy of the show is highlighted across 320 illustrated specimens of branding and packaging, ranging from bus tickets and Parle-G biscuit wrappers to album covers, tetra packs and tin boxes.
The specimens they picked like of the Indian photocopy, old copy of Chacha Chaudhary comics or a pack of Phantom Sweet Cigarettes or laughing out loud at the functional idiosyncrasies were designed by all kinds of designers from rural and urban areas, formal as well as informal.
“The point was to make sure that this is a true representation of the plurality and multiculturalism of our country and doesn’t become just another exercise in kitschy and exotic Indian vernacular graphic design, ” says Zeenat.
Besides this the flipbook format gives the viewer a sense of being in motion — through a cab window or on a bike, or even while brisk walking or running — while looking at these signs because, as Zeenat describes, “In urban India one is always on the move and these signs have to do their job in a very brief moment of time.”‘Everyday India’- The exhbition displays hand-drawn ‘Storefronts & Signages’ by Bombay Duck Designs.
The show’s documentation collaborates with contributions in the form of essays by writers Khorshed Deboo and Anusha Narayanan, designer Kay Khoo and theorist Kaiwan Mehta.
The show’s documentation collaborates with contributions in the form of essays by writers Khorshed Deboo and Anusha Narayanan, designer Kay Khoo and theorist Kaiwan Mehta.
As per Sameer, the multiplicity of Indian society is manifested in our graphic design. With aggressive nationalism, majoritarianism and imposition of ‘single identity’, there may be a risk of losing our diversity, and that will reflect in everything culturally, including design.
