Publicity designer creates retro film posters to reconnect with classics

Chennai

On June 11, he started an interesting poster series called Ninaivugalai Thedi where he created posters from retro Tamil movies and shared it on his social media. “My intention was to translate the soul of the film into a poster. always wanted to make retro movie posters in different styles. But because of work, it got delayed. Now, I have a lot of free time and decided to do a series. The first poster I created was Balu Mahendra’s Moondram Pirai (1982) and my tenth poster was Salangai Oli (1983) directed by K Viswanath. That is the first film I watched from a theatre. This was more like a time travel for me,” says Gopi.

Famous for designing promotional content for movies like OK Kanmani, Kaatru Veliyidai, Vikram Vedha, Dhruva Natchathira, Mersal, Raja Rani, Kaththi, and Vivegam, Gopi says that working on a commissioned work and doing something out of our own interests are different. “For commissioned works, we have to work according to the briefs given by the films’ makers. But for independent works like this, we can explore a lot. I can do posters like art. I have explored various styles for Ninaivugalai Thedi poster series. For example, 16 Vayathinile poster looks like a line drawing whereas, Puthiya Paathai looks like an oil painting. And all these posters reflected the soul of the movie or its characters. All these movies were celebrated and loved during that period. But what’s even more surprising is that many from the current generation seem to enjoy those classics,” he shares.