I Krishna, Publicity Designer. I've joined as an apprentice with Eshwar living in chennai (publicity designer - most renowned designer from south) and worked with him for six years. In 1998 i've shifted to hyderabad and started working independently, and worked for over 100 films so far.

What is the role of a publicity designer in movies? Till a film releases, not many people know what’s happening with the film, in the film, the stars, the story. From a common man in the village to a movie buff in the city, the promotion that we do all helps in giving the audience the mood of the film, the flavour and an idea as to what the film is going to look like. We create the logos, posters to fulfil the audience’s curiosity.

I've involved in manual designing when i was with Eshwar and started off by cutting and pasting the stills. Every day was a learning experience. “This kind of work one needs to have an artistic bent of mind. We are given two or three months time to work on it and sometimes we got to finish it in the last minute when the film release approaches. The assignment comes late but we have to deliver the output on time. A lot of discussions take place with the producer and director before we start off with our work. Things get easier when we are granted freedom to play around with fonts, designs etc. Sometimes we are not even evaluate about the story line and we have to satisfy the clients. We use our judgement on such occasions.”

Poster or a publicity material should be in such a way that it atttracts the viewer to the theatre. We stick to certain design duties and right from every schedule we are given stills to form an opinion and that’s how we pick our idea on how to portray the hero on the poster, the weapon etc. Sometimes the producer / director tells us what he wants on the poster and we deliver it according to his choice.”

It would be better if stars co-operate and get photo shoots done so that the output becomes striking. High resolution pictures comes from outdoor shoots. Separate shoots in this connection helps. The interaction with the director and producer adds to the quality. It takes us around couple of weeks to finish the work. There were only posters before publicity but right now the vinyl/flex designs are in demand. There is more competition. Every city needs atleast 40 designs and at that rate every place in Andhra Pradesh? Maybe around 150 designs for a film is expected from us.

We keep on working if a film is heading towards 100 days and add new designs. We cannot make one design and reproduce the rest. Each design and placement differs. About the fonts, they form an "cannot be removed" impression on the people’s mind. Take for example Shiva or Gang Leader. People still remember the title design. There is no hard and fast rule, we can play around with them. Usually for an action film we use a rugged font, round ones for family movies and italicised ones for romantic films.