The Art of Lettering in Bollywood Movie Posters

India has a diverse visual culture and languages. Cinema art, especially the publicity materials used in Bollywood are one of the significant parts of this visual culture. Publicity in print media is evident since the beginning. It started with text-based newspaper advertisements shortly followed by posters and banners full of visuals. Other popular publicity materials were lobby cards, show cards, Muhurat cards and song synopsis booklets. Film posters have dominated the whole timeline from the beginning. It is a composition of static image and text which gives the firsthand visual experience of the movie to the viewers. In the beginning, when there was limitation of using visuals, lettering art flourished and dominated across publicity materials. To design these materials, especially the posters, in most of the cases, lettering experts were involved to create persuasive titles. Film titles were designed manually. Because of this, unlike the conventional lettering, artists have experimented with ornamentation, shadow, outline and 3D lettering to create more impact. This talk will cover an overview of evolution of lettering art in movie publicity materials especially the movie posters through a visual documentation and will discuss its significance with respect to Indian visual culture.