Designing Drama

3rd Year Communication Design students at the Beaconhouse National University in Lahore have explored minimal, to-the-point alternatives to the traditional heavily adorned poster design approach that is popular in Pakistan. Although our dramas don’t have much practical use for promotional posters since their only point of sale is TV itself, this is nevertheless an interesting exercise to explore how the essence of an entertainment product can be effectively captured with a minimal set of graphics. For perspective, here‘s a look at our usual visual aesthetic that is a riot of colors, layers and elements. You might also have come across another project that also set out to give the minimal treatment to our movie posters some time back.

From instructor Saad Khan:

This was basically a print design project for 3rd year Communication Design students at BNU and the main idea behind this whole exercise was that being a designer students should be able to simplify designs rather then complicating stuff as during the class discussion most of the students were of the opinion that our local visual culture is very much crowded especially the Lollywood billboards as there is no conceptualization behind them and they are all about violence, nudity and images of each and every character in the movie or drama.

So this is kind of their take on some of the popular Lollywood and Pakistani dramas as you can see the following posters are not action packed with photo-manipulated images, instead they take the most meaningful idea, concept, or memory from the movie/drama.

Our favorite from the collection is the Guest House poster that actually captures iconic elements of the show in simple graphics. Also, adapting the actual typography from the show is a great touch. The Siyaasi Kalian poster is also very emotive. Where most posters iconify well-known aspects of the shows, the one for ‘Ghar Kab Ao Ge’ explores a different approach altogether and plays on the name with a witty graphic.