15 July,2023 08:24 AM IST | Mumbai | Tanishka D’Lyma
Artwork, acrylic on paper, from the Brand Guides series
It isn't often that we notice graphic design on shop name boards, signages and products, yet we are always in need of graphic designers - whether a trained professional or the informal and self-taught amateur set up at photocopy shops. In design gallery 47-A's next exhibition titled Everyday India, typographer and graphic designer Zeenat Kulavoor, visual artist Sameer Kulavoor and their team at visual design studio Bombay Duck Designs, examine the sheer multiplicity and practices of graphic design across Indian regions and spaces which often get overlooked.
The exhibition comprises four bodies of work. The first is the Illustrated Specimens, a series of over 300 digital illustrations that cover a wide range of homegrown products and services seen in gullies and high streets. Browsing through the series, we spot known package designs like the iconic Surma packaging with the kohled eye motif or the model washing her face on the Bufin paper soap strips. What's intriguing are the unknown yet familiar designs that help identify the product instead of the brand, like paan masala packets and orange ice-lollies.
We might not usually observe signage beyond comprehending its communication. The Brand Guides, a series of digital collages, breaks down common design practices and signage systems. Sameer explains, "We tend to grow desensitised to graphic design and read it only as a sign - like looking for a yellow and black sign when we need a photocopy shop. That's become informal branding for the shop that is ingrained in our psyche. Through the series, we bring out these patterns that have emerged within brand categories, like the [eye motif for the] Surma packaging."
The exhibition is one that can be easily carried on outside the gallery, where the artists' presentations can be recalled to observe and understand design patterns in everyday settings. Such as Storefronts and Signages, a painted series of six original clusters of shops and name boards that explores the different design languages that co-exist within an urban landscape. Observing the contemporary designs on vinyl paintings juxtaposed with shop names engraved in wood or metal, the duo notes that along with styles or deducing information about the shop owner or neighbourhood, a sense of time can also be recorded through these signages.
This is not a Mumbai-themed show, the artists remind us, but one that reflects graphic design across Indian avenues and products from hyper-localised designs that are unique to a region, such as Bengaluru's flamboyantly painted movie posters to contemporary practices that imbibe global aesthetics. "It captures the multiplicity that we see around us in India," Zeenat notes. The series will also be documented in a book with work from contributing writers Khorshed Deboo, Kay Khoo and Anusha Narayanan, and Kaiwan Mehta.
On July 16 to August 13; 11 am to 7 pm (Tuesday to Sunday)
At 47-A, Khotachi Wadi, Girgaum.
Free
