A pair of flip flops is all that illustrates a poster of Fahadh Faasil-starrer Maheshinte Prathikaram . Yet, it speaks a thousand words. It’s all that’s needed for someone who saw the film to recall it’s storyline in a flash. On the other hand, it piques the curiosity of those who haven’t yet watched the film.
Similarly, the silhouette of a woman in between the tusks of an elephant immediately gives an idea of what Leela is all about, while a coconut inside a desk sends you straight back to the antics of Action Hero Biju . A rubber ball with a smiley face clutched tightly in a hand reveals clues about Dulquer Salmaan’s Kali and a genie that so resembles the actor in costume, captures the spirit of Charlie … Abracadabra! Enter the quirky world of minimal movie posters that say a lot about the films in question with just the bare essentials.
Minimalism – the idea of when less is more – is the name of the game in Mollywood of late, whether it’s storylines, acting, directing, costume design, cinematography... The trend, it seems, has spilled over to posters too, particularly post-release movie posters meant for social media.
“Minimal posters, possibly, grew out of the pop art movement, where artists draw inspiration from the world around them in bold swathes of primary colours,” says Sreejith N., creative head of design firm Old Monks.
The firm recently came up with a minimal poster for Pathemari , which featured several suitcases arranged in the shape of a coffin floating in the sea, bringing together three elements – the sea, expat life and mortality – that are important to the storyline. “At the moment, minimal posters are very much an individual medium of expression, with fans/artists driving the trend. Prior to a film’s release the priority would be to showcase the lead actors. Pathemari’s minimal poster, for example, was not commissioned but we deigned it on a lark. Usually, after its release, the cast and crew of the film share the minimal posters on their Facebook pages to generate additional publicity,” he adds.
Several accounts solely dedicated to minimal posters of Mollywood have cropped up on social media. Civil engineer-turned-artist Ashiq Majeed is one of the self-styled poster boys. He runs one of the most popular pages, Minimal Cinema Posters.
“I chanced upon a minimalist poster of The Shawshank Redemption and I was amazed by how it represented the story of the film within that simple design. It sparked my interest in the art and got me thinking of applying the concept to Malayalam cinema. Here was a fun, quirky way of expressing my creativity. I started off designing posters of Munnariyippu (a hammer splashed with blood), Traffic (a beating heart inside a police jeep) and Ee Adutha Kaalathu (a laughing Buddha on top of a wardrobe) and the like, whenever I could spare the time. Actor Murali Gopy complimented my work and shared my poster of Ee Adutha… and my designs started getting noticed,” says Ashiq, 24.
Nowadays, he’s the creative director of a Kozhikode-based software firm and his poster art is regularly feted/shared by celebrities. In fact, seeing his minimalist art for Bangalore Days , director Anjali Menon, asked him to design the mementos for the cast and crew.
“The beauty of minimal posters is that they can never be outdated. You can immediately connect with a minimal poster of an old film like Vandanam as you do with Jacobinte Swargarajyam ,” adds the artist. Another enthusiast is Manjunath M. Bhat, a designer at Infopark in Kochi, who runs the Facebook page Minimal Malayalam Posters (Mini.ma). I’m very passionate about art and the movies and minimal posters are a way of keeping me connected to both. Malayalis as a whole enjoy mind challenges and perhaps that’s why these posters are so popular. I choose concepts from the films that strike my mind. For instance, after I saw Amen , I was intrigued by how divinity and clarinet playing in the movie was interlinked and thus came up with the design for a cross, the shaft of which is a clarinet,” explains 24-year-old Manjunath. For Mumbai Police, meanwhile, all he did was superimpose the original title font on top of a rainbow flag.
Designing a minimal poster, though, is not as easy as it appears. Designers usually stick to the original title font and the colour scheme of the movie. “They are the movie’s signature and it makes sense to retain them,” explains Manjunath. “The main challenge is that we have to keep the art work as simple as possible, using some defining element or the other from the film to give a wholesome picture at one glance,” adds HR executive Arjun Das, the 26-year-old behind the Charlie the genie poster. He runs Minimal Movie Posters page. “The success of a minimal poster design is based on the speed at which it transmits the idea to the viewer. The shorter the time, the better,” says Ashiq.
Director Ashiq Abu sums it all up in his message to young Ashiq, after he saw the minimal poster of Gauri in portmanteau flick Anchu Sundarikal . “The most exciting thing for me is you saw the visual which was not shown in the film. That’s a great compliment for a filmmaker. You saw what’s not shown. That’s art.” Get the picture?
