Style combination · Contrasts

Indian Calendar × Indian Pop-Kitsch Design

Its parent: Avid Learning's press release for the 2019 NGMA Mumbai panel traced Indian kitsch to 'calendars, cinema visuals and posters of gods and goddesses'. Calendar art paints deities with glowing naturalism for worship; desi kitsch redraws Hanuman, Shiva-Parvati or a lotus as flat icons that, as Open put it in 2009, 'signal novelty and coolness more than anything really religious'.

From the research on Indian Pop-Kitsch Design (Desi Kitsch)

Mix them and make something Indian Calendar Indian Pop-Kitsch Design

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Indian Pop-Kitsch Design, their arrangement from Indian Calendar, the finish from Indian Calendar. 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.

Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art Indian Pop-Kitsch Design (Desi Kitsch)

Type from Indian Pop-Kitsch Design: Hand-lettering
Ornamented display
Colour from Indian Pop-Kitsch Design: Full polychrome
Flat fields
Form from Indian Pop-Kitsch Design: Stylised figuration
Folk & sacred symbols
Composition from Indian Calendar: Central symmetry
Single focal point
Surface from Indian Calendar: Gloss & highlights
Painterly brushwork

The type

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

Display · Indian Pop-Kitsch Design

Hello

Yatra One, standing in for Truck painters' shaded block capitals for slogans such as 'Horn OK Please', which Avid Learning's press release for the 2019 'Kitsch and the City' panel at NGMA Mumbai named among Mumbai's kitsch: 'the letters "Horn Ok Please" in block fonts'

Text · Indian Calendar

Mass-printed images of Hindu deities, epic scenes, saints, nationalist heroes and film stars, sold in bazaars and given away as business calendars, from the chromolithographs of the Calcutta Art Studio and Ravi Varma Press to Sivakasi offset. Frontal, idealised figures painted with academic naturalism glow against dreamy landscapes, in saturated colour with gold, haloes and ornate frames above the sponsor's name and calendar pad.

Archivo; Indian Calendar used Hand-drawn Devanagari display lettering and Hand-lettered Tamil and Bengali titles

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Indian Pop-Kitsch Design, with a counter-accent from Indian Calendar. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art Indian Pop-Kitsch Design (Desi Kitsch)

#ffcc00 ground · 36%
#151515 ink · 14%
#f26522 accent · 18%
#ec1e79 accent · 14%
#c8202f accent · 10%
#00a3a6 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ffcc00;
  --ink: #151515;
  --accent-1: #f26522;
  --accent-2: #ec1e79;
  --accent-3: #c8202f;
  --accent-4: #00a3a6;
  --font-display: "Yatra One", cursive;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art: These are devotional images that many viewers worship, so do not crop, distort or deface deities or place them on footwear, floors, underwear or in mocking contexts. Many original painters went uncredited; name the artist and press where known.

Indian Pop-Kitsch Design (Desi Kitsch): The style quotes living crafts and sacred images: commission, credit and pay truck, sign and hoarding painters rather than lifting their panels, and do not put deities, the Om, the Khanda or Qur'anic phrases on footwear, underwear, ashtrays or toilet jokes. Check Hindi and Punjabi puns before printing, since several hits of the trend ('KLPD', 'Bosedk') are vulgar double entendres, and keep away from divisive political figures (1469 turned down demands for Bhindranwale T-shirts). Bhagat Singh is claimed by rival political camps (the farmers' movement, Communists, Khalistanis, the AAP and other parties), so check how a portrait tee will read before printing it. Laugh with the vernacular, not at the drivers, rickshaw pullers and chai sellers whose working lives supply the icons.

The two styles

1878–present · South Asia Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art Mass-printed images of Hindu deities, epic scenes, saints, nationalist heroes and film stars, sold in bazaars and given away as business calendars, from the chromolithographs of the Calcutta Art Studio and Ravi Varma Press to Sivakasi offset. Frontal, idealised figures painted with academic naturalism glow against dreamy landscapes, in saturated colour with gold, haloes and ornate frames above the sponsor's name and calendar pad. 1997–present · South Asia Indian Pop-Kitsch Design (Desi Kitsch) Urban Indian gift and T-shirt design from the late 1990s into the 2010s that recasts the street and bazaar as ironic, affectionate icons: truck tails and 'Horn OK Please', auto-rickshaws, Ambassadors and Chetaks, cutting chai, old Bollywood stills and dialogues, Bhagat Singh in place of Che. Labels such as Happily Unmarried, Playclan, 1469 and Chumbak redrew them as flat, saturated graphics with Hinglish puns and painted-sign lettering on mugs, magnets and notebooks, 'modern yet at the same time Indian'.