Until the 1950s, most Indian films were shot on nitrate-based stock, a highly flammable material valued for the silver in its emulsion. In the early decades of Indian cinema, there were no national film archives, no mandate to preserve prints, and little sense that these reels would one day carry historical value. Films were seen as temporary entertainment, made to be screened, circulated, and replaced by the next release. And so, old reels were sold by weight, melted down to extract silver, and reused in unrelated industrial processes. As a result, many silent and early sound films didn’t survive as viewable prints. What remained from that era was the paper ephemera — posters, stills, and promotional material that outlived the films they advertised.

We lost India’s first sound film, Alam Ara (1931), for the same reason. No known print of it exists today. What we do have, instead, is a paper trail that helps fill some of the gaps the film left behind. Song booklets, posters, lobby cards, publicity stills, and newspaper advertisements show us how the film introduced itself to audiences, what its stars looked like, how its songs were imagined visually, and even how its titles were lettered. Film historians and archivists rely heavily on these materials to piece together the look and public life of films that can no longer be screened. In many cases, they are the only way to understand how a lost film was remembered in its own time, turning posters and publicity material into historical evidence in their own right.

For decades, the film poster was how people first encountered cinema in India. In a country with low literacy rates in the early 20th century, posters functioned as a shared visual language on the street. From the hand-painted lithographs associated with Baburao Painter in the 1920s to the cut-and-paste collage aesthetics that became common in the 1970s, posters shaped how audiences understood what kind of film they were about to see. They carried cues about genre, stars, music, and helped films enter everyday conversation before most people ever sat down in a theatre.

Today, the artform has shifted to a largely digital medium, but the responsibility remains the same. The poster artist must still distil a two-hour narrative into a single, arresting image that can stop a scrolling thumb or turn a head in traffic. To understand how this anticipation is built today, we spoke to three of India’s most prolific film poster designers, who walked us through their process, philosophy, and the realities of creating the face of a film.

If you have walked past a cinema hall in India in the last two decades, you have almost certainly stopped to look at Raj Khatri’s work. As the Creative Head at Marching Ants, his portfolio is a timeline of modern Indian pop culture. Raj has been designing poster art for well over two decades and is credited with official campaign imagery for more than 180 films and OTT projects, making him one of Indian cinema’s most experienced poster artists today. His work spans major releases such as Jodhaa Akbar, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, Kahaani, Andhadhun, and Baahubali, among others.

Raj traces his pull towards visual storytelling back to the corridors of his boarding school, where he’d regularly check the newspapers for the black-and-white theatre listings. They became his first filter for cinema, offering what he describes as “a sneak peek into the world” that helped him decide which films were worth his time.

As he grew older, that curiosity widened through books and everyday objects. Comic books were part of the mix, but it was the Hardy Boys Case Files — darker, edgier, and wrapped in cinematic hardbound covers that really stayed with him. He admits borrowing the books less to read them and more to study the artwork, drawn to their dramatic, action-packed compositions. Around him, visual cues came from unexpected places: toy packaging with exaggerated illustrations, geography textbooks filled with aerial views of trucks and helicopters, even classroom diagrams that he remembers reading like movie stills.

This, combined with album covers during his college days from the surreal work of Nirvana, Metallica, Megadeth, Pantera, Iron Maiden, Slayer, and then new age metal like Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, System of a Down, each of which the artist recalls as having a unique ‘political mythology’, formed the bedrock of his aesthetic sensibility.

When he finally sat down in front of a computer in the early 2000s to teach himself Photoshop, the internet was still a luxury. To practice, he would rent Video CDs (VCDs), take screenshots of movie scenes, and build his own image libraries to create mock posters. "Most of them were very hideous and kiddish when I look at them right now," he admits, "but that's how I started."

That nascent experimentation eventually led to a career defined by a deep respect for the physical presence of a poster. For Raj, a trailer might be a digital introduction, but the poster is what he calls the "first foot in the door" for most people. It is the most tangible connection an audience has with a film. "For a generation like mine... it was a religion to put up posters on your walls," he shares. He worries about the modern shift away from this tactile relationship with physical media, but remains a believer in the power of the medium. The artist vividly remembers the summer of 2005, seeing his first-ever official poster for the horror film Naina, starring Urmila Matondkar, looming large over the city. "I was really ecstatic and emotional seeing my film on the billboard," he shares.

Raj sees movie posters as one of the few commercial spaces where different artistic disciplines naturally come together ‘under a creative blanket’;  whether it's 3D artists, illustrators, photographers, typographers, people working with photo manipulation, or even those who are primarily storytellers and idea-builders. Over the years, he’s consciously built new skills to handle different styles and visual approaches, treating each project as a chance to try something new.

Today, his process is far more structured, though it retains that early intuitive spark. It usually begins in one of two ways: either with a script narration before the film is shot, or by watching the rough cut of the film itself. The latter, he insists, is the best brief. Watching the film allows him to understand the "milieu, the setup, the totality"; absorbing the visual language firsthand. He creates pages of notes, picking out key events and moments that can be frozen in time.

From there, Raj usually employs one of three distinct methodologies to construct the creative. The first is the Protagonist’s Point of View, where the visual centres entirely on the hero’s journey. The second is the Kitchen Sink Method, a classic ensemble style where the artist creates a "visual collage with all the characters... creating a rhythmic and balanced composition."

The third, and perhaps most artistically satisfying, is Metaphorical Encapsulation — creating an image that may not literally exist in the film but perfectly captures its soul. He cites his work on Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani as a prime example. In the film, Vidya Balan’s character is searching for her husband during the chaos of Durga Puja. Raj’s poster depicted her amidst the procession, but framed in a way that she appeared to be an avatar of the goddess herself. 

Alongside the joy of watching a project come to fruition is also the sheer grunt work involved. When a photoshoot isn't possible, Raj has to rely on the ‘image library’ — a dump of thousands of continuity stills taken on set. Out of lakhs of photos, maybe 10% to 15% are usable, and they are often shot flatly simply for continuity. He has to "reverse engineer" these functional shots into a high-concept piece of art.

Yet, when the collaboration clicks, the results are iconic. With Sriram Raghavan’s Andhadhun, Raj initially pitched a realistic concept set in a room. But Raghavan, a lover of vintage posters himself, pushed for something more graphic. So Raj pivoted to a "pulp novel" aesthetic using primary colours — Red, Blue, and Yellow. "That worked wonders... it gave it that iconic style," he recalls. Similarly, for the film Manto, where no shoot was available, and he only had a dark still of Nawazuddin Siddiqui, he used Urdu scriptures to create a sense of ‘distortion and chaos’ on the protagonist's face, turning a limitation into a defining artistic choice and using language as a subtle nod to the protagonist’s identity as a writer. 

After more than 20 years in the industry, Raj continues to be a student of the game, studying Korean, Japanese, European, independent, and classic films, alongside graphic novels, art books, and contemporary artists across disciplines. He repeatedly returns to the work of poster legends like Frank McCarthy, Robert McGinnis, Drew Struzan, Bob Peak, Saul Bass, John Alvin, Bill Gold, Roger Kastel, and Renato Casaro, often digging into their sketches, interviews, and archival material to understand how ideas were signified into singular images.

Down South, Vinci Raj, who was originally a painter, came to cinema bringing a fine-art eye for composition into his striking digital campaigns for many iconic films. Based in Bangalore but spiritually tethered to Chennai, Vinci has spearheaded a visual shift in Tamil cinema, creating the defining imagery for films like Kaala, Darbar,  Sarpatta Parambarai, and Soodhu Kavvum.

"To be honest, I wasn’t shaped by any specific visual traditions," he says. Instead of sticking to a known style, he focuses on finding the most effective way to communicate a film’s idea. He treats the poster as a tool to build a brand, believing that the more time a viewer spends with the image, the deeper their connection to the movie becomes.

When he starts a project, his approach depends on the story, the emotions the film wants to communicate, and the art direction — whether that means leaning into illustration, typography, or photography. He has a clear set of conscious priorities: ensuring every poster is politically correct, maintains a clear idea, and has high recall value so it stays in the viewer's mind. Subconsciously, he is driven by a desire for his work to act as a spark for other artists and future designers. "I aim for a level of originality and depth that sets my work apart," he explains.

His process begins with a conversation about the script, then moves into a phase of rough scribbles, layouts, and visual research, which he compiles into a presentation for the director. Once a concept is approved, he switches into director mode for the execution.

On the shoot day, he organizes the props and directs the entire team — photographer, art director, makeup artist, and costume designer to turn his layouts into actual photographs. Depending on the project's needs, he might also use 3D models or illustrations. Everything eventually lands in post-production, where he layers the visuals and typography together until the poster feels complete and impactful.

When it comes to working with filmmakers, he listens to their vision but isn't afraid to push back if an idea feels stale or "done before." Because of his reputation, directors usually trust his creative process, but he maintains a hard line on his integrity. "If we still cannot agree on a direction that will work for the film, then I prefer not to continue with that project," he states. Fortunately, he mentions that because his ideas are usually very clear, he rarely faces that kind of friction.

Jahan Singh Bakshi is a marketing strategist and designer whose work defines the visual identity of modern Indian indie cinema. He is best known for spearheading the creative campaigns for critically acclaimed films like Masaan, Lipstick Under My Burkha, and Newton, crafting posters that break away from standard star-led photography to offer something more atmospheric and thematic. Beyond his professional portfolio, Jahan is a dedicated archivist of film history; he runs the popular ‘Posterphilia’ project, a curated platform where he documents and analyzes the evolution of film poster art, unearthing rare and forgotten designs from decades past, and interacts with a community of designers who keep pushing the form in exciting ways.

"I’m not formally trained in design," he admits, "so both my learning and my practice have always been instinctive. I don’t think in terms of specific graphic movements or pop-art references," he explains. "Most of my inspiration comes from cinema itself and from the rich, diverse traditions of global film poster art."

This eclectic taste manifests in his own work through a preference for the absurd. "There are perhaps certain things I’m naturally drawn to: tart, black humour and small touches of surrealism or magic realism," Jahan shares. "Whenever a film gives me room to play with those, I lean into those instincts - because they allow for unexpected, slightly off-kilter imagery or occasionally, a clever or cheeky tagline," which Jahan is a fan of. When employed smartly, he insists that a great line can elevate a poster, helping to layer and (re)contextualize a visual.

“My process is intuitive,” he notes. “I respond first to the film’s themes and tone, and I let its images and textures wash over me. Then I begin to sculpt the idea, chipping away until it takes shape and feels right visually. My aim is to stay as authentic to the film as possible while finding a striking, evocative way to distil it into a single frame. A lot of what I do is guided by mood; the best of my posters are little tone poems, where feeling guides form.” Ultimately, Jahan is a cinephile first, carrying that love for film into everything he chooses to do.

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