| Ray as Ad Designer |
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The gestures are realistic, yet Ray's design echoes Indian temple sculptures, achieved by thick white lines on heavy figures painted in solid black |
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It may seem a bit curious that Satyajit Ray, known as an all-time great of the world cinema, never wanted to be a filmmaker when he was at school and college, though he had been hooked on Hollywood productions since his childhood. He was eighteen when he finished college, and his mother felt it was too early for him to look for a job. She suggested he “should be a student of painting in (Rabindranath) Tagore's university in Santiniketan”. |
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Instead of glamourisning the brand, Ray designed a small shop. This way Ray started infusing local charm in campaigns even in British India |
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Ray accepted the idea, for he had already resolved to become a commercial artist, and felt that “a grounding in Indian art” would help him in achieving his ambition. The prospect of becoming a painter had no appeal for him.
Ray studied Oriental art in Santiniketan for three years, beginning 1940. The course was for five years, but he dropped out midway through, because he felt he had learned enough of Oriental art necessary to find him a job as a commercial artist. He told his teacher Nandalal Bose that he “hoped to become a commercial artist and he (Bose) wished me luck”.
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Ray created a circle by using five tea-motifs :
2 leaves and a bud |
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Back home in Kolkata, Ray saw the Bengali manager of a British advertising agency who asked him “to visualize a series of six ads for an imaginary product”. Ray did sketches for six ads for a perfume and illustrated them with brush drawings “to go with the copy”. These were probably the first ads that Ray designed, and these works got him a job at a monthly pay of Rs. 65 (less than the Indian equivalent of one pound now) with an assurance from the firm's British managing director of there being no ceiling if he could prove his worth.
It did not take Ray long to prove his worth. He was promoted to art director in a few years. Ray stayed with the company till some time after his emergence as an extraordinary filmmaker. During his career as a commercial artist, Ray designed some exceptionally good artworks, which made him a leading name in the advertising community in India. Of them, the Paludrine series (having the caption Sunday is Paludrine Day ) that he did in 1949 for ICI, a paint manufacturing company, is still fondly remembered.
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Ray introduced a great deal of calligraphic elements into advertising. He also brought an Indian mood and flavour to his designs which found expression in such works as he did for Lipton tea company in 1950 and C.K. Sen & Co. Ltd., which produced the then famous hair oil Jabakusum and allied products, three years later. As K.G. Subramanyan wrote, “The focus of his interests now was less on commodity promotion than with fashioning a language of communication with cultural resonance.”
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Five steps of making tea are expressed by a many pointed star |
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What can be cooked with this cooking medium are drawn in thin white lines on the brand name printed in solid black |
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The job of doing ads was a delight, but not without its share of disappointment, especially when he had to go by unacceptable suggestions from the clients. “If you had really sat down and thought about what you were doing, you would have found it a dismaying thought,” Ray said to his biographer Andrew Robinson. “Partly because the clients were generally so stupid. You'd produce an artwork which was admirable, you'd know it was good, and they'd come out with little criticisms that were so stupid that you would want to give up immediately.”
How does one evaluate Ray's place as an ad-designer? “His (Ray's) contributions to the development of advertising imagery in India,” Robinson, “was very distinctive, but hard to define. Like all the best |
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Revealing details: a crawling baby, a white cat and a black slate on the floor. A typical sunday morning of a rich Bengali family |
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graphic designers, he combined visual flair with a feel for the meaning of words and their nuances……He brought to his work a fascination with typography, both Bengali and English, which he shared with his father and grandfather.” |
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