‘Loka cinema charithrathil, putuma onnumillatha randamatthey Malayala chalachitram’ goes the interesting tagline of the much-touted Alphonse Puthren’s upcoming film ‘Premam’. However the first look poster of the film which was released in the social media platform a few days ago was a whiff of freshness. The aesthetically sketched out Malayalam typographic fonts were arranged so as to look like a flying butterfly. At first glance, the contour of the fluttering beauty captivates you but on a closer look, one can easily read through the title ‘Premam’. And all the credit for the art work goes to Tuney John.
The poster which is garnering rave reviews took one year to metamorphose into the present form.
“The works for Premam started in last February, when Alphonse decided on the title. More than 20 something posters were designed but we weren’t satisfied,” says Tuney who did Alphone’s debut film Neram’s posters too. “It was during October after watching some initial shots of the film that a spark of designing the title like a butterfly hit me. And moreover the word is a common and cliched one, it was a challenge to design with an entirely different and catchy style. Even the colour scheme for the butterfly was nailed after trying out many colours and I wanted to give a retro feel in the background and hence the bluish green colour of the 90s era,” he says.
This is Tuney’s second Malayalam poster, but this Kochiite has been making strides in Kollywood. A much sought-after designer, he has created posters for more than 90 films in Tamil. His first being Venkat Prabhu’s ‘Saroja’.
Ask him how it all began, he says, “I didn’t plan anything. While studying in Bharat Matha College, Thrikkakara, our batch conducted an inter-college fest, for which I did all the designing work. Everyone appreciated them and said I had the potential to become a good designer. Further I studied in SAE College in Chennai, from where I became friends with Alphonse, Rajesh Murugeshan and Sabareesh Varma (Neram’s music director and singer respectively). Initially, I worked with some agencies and did some freelancing too.” Tuney now has his own ad agency ‘24am’ in Chennai.
Does he have a criteria for creating motifs for the posters? He says, “For each film it is different. Some directors such as Alphonse and Karthik Subbaraj (Pizza and Jigarthanda) send the whole script but some may not like to reveal their stories and just narrate some instances and based on them I design the posters.” Suriya-starrer ‘Anjaan’, Vijay’s ‘Jilla’, Karthik’s ‘Madras’, Siddharth’s ‘Jigarthanda’, Ko and Simbu’s ‘Vinnaithandi Varuvaya’ are some of his noticeable works.
Ask him which poster was most challenging for him, he says, “Though every work is a challenge, bringing all the main characters in ‘Neram’s’ poster was tough. And also ‘Premam’ is my favourite. I didn’t expect the poster to go viral and win a lot of praise and applause.” Tuney is now busy with designing the posters of upcoming Suriya movie ‘Mass’ and Vijay’s ‘Puli’.
“While designing posters, if we have a good idea and concept, the poster is most likely to click. When hundreds of corporate advertisements are mushrooming on the roads every day it is hard to compete with them. But with a stunning perfect colour combination and an interesting idea we can hold people’s attention on our creatives too,” feels Tuney.