It took only a minor role in Apoorva Raagangal for Rajinikanth’s career to be launched. While memes about the Superstar come out throughout the year, the latest tribute on the Internet celebrates 39 years of the iconic actor’s career with 39 minimalist posters of his most-loved films.
Made by the team at Digitally Inspired Media, a Chennai-based digital agency, the posters feature one “punch” dialogue from the film, a representative image and the year of the film’s release. “It was a spur-of-the-moment project,” says co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Surej Salim. “Our team knew it was 39 years since the Superstar entered cinema, and we wished we could have met him and shaken hands to express our gratitude and joy. Since that couldn’t happen, we had to express our happiness in the way we knew best. That led from one idea to another and we locked on this concept,” he explains.
Raunaq Mangottil, social media manager, and M. Karthikeyan, graphic designer, collaborated with the rest of the team to bring out the posters within five hours. “We had to do some R&D on each of those movies to identify the most prominent dialogue or scene. This was made easy, thanks to YouTube. Next, we shortlisted the dialogue and a relative minimal design element to go with the overall look. From there, the team got on to the project until all posters were ready to launch,” says Surej, adding that it wasn’t very difficult to make the entire set once they got the groundwork done. The team has their favourites — Baasha , Padaiyappa , Annamalai and Yejaman — apart from the 35 others on the list.
With the posters going viral all over social media thanks to the legions of fans to whom Rajinikanth is a demigod, the team is understandably pleased. Surej says, “We did it for the fabulous contribution that Thalaivar has made to the field of cinema. The virality was a bonus.”
The series titled #39YearsOfSuperstar can be seen here.