Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster × Psychedelic Poster

1970s Hindi film titles already flirted with psychedelic lettering; fuse the two for swirling, glowing title logos.

From the research on Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster

Mix them and make something Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster Psychedelic Poster

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Psychedelic Poster, their arrangement from Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster, the finish from Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster Psychedelic Poster

Type from Psychedelic Poster: Hand-lettering
Experimental & distorted
Colour from Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster: Full polychrome
Complementary clash
Form from Psychedelic Poster: Whiplash line
Abundant decoration
Composition from Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster: Collage & layering
Extreme scale contrast
Surface from Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster: Painterly brushwork

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Psychedelic Poster

Square

Federant, standing in for Arnold Böcklin

Text · Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster

The painted publicity of Bombay's Hindi film industry, at its height from the 1940s to the 1980s. Studio artists painted portrait-led montages that were printed by lithography and offset as posters, booklets and press ads, while hoarding painters enlarged them by hand onto giant cinema billboards. Floating star heads, melodramatic colour and bold hand-drawn title logos were its signature until digital photo printing displaced it in the 1990s.

Archivo; Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster used Hand-drawn 3D title logos and Extruded and drop-shadowed display capitals

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster, with a counter-accent from Psychedelic Poster. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster Psychedelic Poster

#1a1418 ground · 36%
#ffd23f ink · 14%
#f28c1c accent · 18%
#b3121b accent · 14%
#e4007c accent · 10%
#1b6fa8 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #1a1418;
  --ink: #ffd23f;
  --accent-1: #f28c1c;
  --accent-2: #b3121b;
  --accent-3: #e4007c;
  --accent-4: #1b6fa8;
  --font-display: "Federant", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

The two styles

A colourful painted-style film poster combines three large portraits with an embracing couple, horsemen, a steam train, snowy mountains, a helicopter, a hilltop fortress and a waterfall. Huge yellow-and-red Devanagari lettering spans the lower portion above a waterfront procession with elephants and boats.

1940–1999 · South Asia Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster The painted publicity of Bombay's Hindi film industry, at its height from the 1940s to the 1980s. Studio artists painted portrait-led montages that were printed by lithography and offset as posters, booklets and press ads, while hoarding painters enlarged them by hand onto giant cinema billboards. Floating star heads, melodramatic colour and bold hand-drawn title logos were its signature until digital photo printing displaced it in the 1990s.

A vividly coloured psychedelic illustration shows a giant mushroom with an eye beneath its cap, surrounded by smaller mushrooms, flowing rainbow bands, and stars. A sun and crescent moon with faces flank the central mushroom beneath large, wavy lettering reading “TRIPTIDE.”

1965–1973 · North America, Western Europe Psychedelic Poster The concert-poster language of the 1960s counterculture, born in San Francisco's Fillmore and Avalon ballrooms and echoed in London's underground press. Hand-drawn letters melt and swell to fill whole shapes, Art Nouveau and Vienna Secession curves are revived at hallucinatory intensity, and vibrating complementary or fluorescent colours make reading a slow, immersive act.

More combinations

With Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster

All 16 combinations with Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster

With Psychedelic Poster

All 19 combinations with Psychedelic Poster

Every style combination