Designing a poster for 'Mughlai Wrap', an academic course at National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad on making a rap song and a music video highlighting the Mughal heritage of India.
The idea of the course was to debunk the idea of Mughals being termed as “outsiders” because India is a land of assimilation and a melting pot. And what cooler way to do it than make a rap video about it.
Thus, the thought process behind the poster was giving a hint of the Mughal heritage, while providing context for the course - the end product being developing a rap video.
After a basic brainstorming of ideas with the faculty, and a few rough sketches, two sets of designs were chosen - a turntable (for the hip-hop roots) on Mughalai pattern, or a Mic and a Spoon in a Mughlai Window. The Mughals had significant contributions to what is currently known as Indian cuisine, and thus the spoon would convey the same.
Once the portrait composition with the Mughal window was finalised (which also looks more elegant probably, in line with Mughal miniature paintings), a number of colour schemes were pondered upon, with a selection of royal but vibrant colours.
A cross spoon-mic variation was preferred, as it would appear a bit more dynamic than the simple straight spoon & mic, and indicate a mish-mash of the two.
After picking up the nearly brick red scheme, a few text placement variations were tried out.
Which finally yielded to this, which was used as the course poster.
Watch the video done as part of the course here.