Style combination · Pairs well

Indian Pop-Kitsch Design × Pop Art Graphics

Open summed up Playclan's tees as 'Indian pop art on a T-shirt' and Nida Mahmood invoked Warhol's principle of drawing attention to something 'basic and in-your-face'; borrow Pop's repeated grid of one commodity (a row of chai glasses or tea packets) to give a desi icon gallery weight.

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

Mix them and make something Indian Pop-Kitsch Design Pop Art Graphics

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Indian Pop-Kitsch Design, their arrangement from Indian Pop-Kitsch Design, the finish from Pop Art Graphics. 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 Pop-Kitsch Design (Desi Kitsch) Pop Art Graphics

Type from Indian Pop-Kitsch Design: Hand-lettering
Ornamented display
Colour from Pop Art Graphics: Primary triad
Flat fields
Form from Indian Pop-Kitsch Design: Stylised figuration
Folk & sacred symbols
Composition from Indian Pop-Kitsch Design: Isolated object
All-over field
Surface from Pop Art Graphics: Halftone & Ben-Day dots
Hard offset shadow

The type

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

Display · Indian Pop-Kitsch Design

Okay

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 · Pop Art Graphics

Pop turned the commercial imagery of post-war consumer culture (comics, packaging, celebrity photographs and advertising) into both its subject and its method. Images are appropriated, enlarged, flattened and repeated; colour is bright and unmodulated; and the printing process itself, from Ben-Day dots to off-register silkscreen, is left visible as a sign of mass production.

Archivo; Pop Art Graphics used Comic-book hand lettering and Franklin Gothic

The colours

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

Indian Pop-Kitsch Design (Desi Kitsch) Pop Art Graphics

#fbf8f0 ground · 36%
#111111 ink · 14%
#ffd400 accent · 18%
#f26522 accent · 14%
#e10600 accent · 10%
#ec1e79 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #fbf8f0;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #ffd400;
  --accent-2: #f26522;
  --accent-3: #e10600;
  --accent-4: #ec1e79;
  --font-display: "Yatra One", cursive;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

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

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'.

A retro comic-style woman with curled dark hair, a pink headscarf and red nails holds an open bottle of dark fizzy drink. Large yellow “ZING!” lettering fills the top above bright starbursts, bubbles and red, yellow and blue halftone textures.

1955–1975 · North America, Western Europe Pop Art Graphics Pop turned the commercial imagery of post-war consumer culture (comics, packaging, celebrity photographs and advertising) into both its subject and its method. Images are appropriated, enlarged, flattened and repeated; colour is bright and unmodulated; and the printing process itself, from Ben-Day dots to off-register silkscreen, is left visible as a sign of mass production.