Posters on demand

Films, music, art u2013 smartart.in prints your favourite posters and delivers them to your doorstep

Imagine Audrey Hepburn in her famous little black dress propped up against your wall, The Beatles laughing heartily in your passageway or Cristiano Ronaldo curving one in at the start of your stairway. Now you can book your poster online via an Indian website.

is hosted by Bandra resident Derek Alfonso, with a collection of over 15,000 licensed posters of movies, sports, art, music and photography printed and shipped to your doorstep.

The idea came to Alfonso and his wife while they were looking for posters to decorate their daughter's room and could not find anything they really liked. So Alfonso decided to go about putting together a bank of licensed posters not only for children but for adults as well. And what better place to do it than the World Wide Web?

"We figured it would be easier. You won't find a street of galleries to store all the posters. You can sit in the comfort of your home, within a space you like and go online anytime. It is also difficult to physically look through 15,000 posters," he laughs.u00a0u00a0

It took nearly two years of research to put the website up and running. Alfonso says, "There is a lot of unlicensed stuff on the web that we wanted to avoid. There are many houses that have been in this business for a long time and have a range of great artists. Their copyrights are set." He also found great supply chains in Europe and North America to deliver.u00a0u00a0

The website is deliberately simple. He says, "Go by subject. (Movies, pop culture, music, museum, abstract). You could pick posters to match the colour scheme of your room or choose by artist, price or size. You could even make a set of three-four posters." Once that is done, you add to the cart and move to the billing section. Whole lists of billing options are available except direct cash or cheque to the shipping company when they deliver. Expect delivery in 12-15 days. No registration here because Alfonso says they don't want to force people to visit but make them come back because they want another poster.

If you thought the name was a little unusual Alfonso has an explanation for that too. "We wanted to make art affordable to everyone. Art on demand. You pick it because it stirs emotions in you and triggers off a memory." He knows that not everyone would like to keep an art work up on their walls forever and most would like to replace it with another, better piece.

A highlight is his limited edition collection, which is prints of works of art that are not commonly seen and are autographed by the artists themselves. Alfonso also has a rare collection of posters like that of the Phantom of the Opera. He says the most popular ones are posters of movies like Pulp Fiction, Godfather and Casablanca. Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix and Linkin Park are also popular choices. Famous names like model turned interior designer Fleur Xavier, photographer Farrokh Chothia and filmmaker Amol Gupte have their own selections that adorn their walls.

For big businesses Smartart even custom makes wall designs and then the company can decide if the budding artist can reproduce the work or if it's the sole ownership of the company. Alfonso also plans on diversifying into other art forms like framing of the posters and eventually having artists on board who make special creations.

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