Umrao Jaan movie poster
Contributed by Matthijs Sluiter on Apr 18th, 2021. Artwork published in
circa 1981
.
Source: www.instagram.com License: All Rights Reserved.
From Jahan Singh Bakshi’s poster collection Posterphilia:
Here’s a Bulgarian poster for Muzaffar Ali’s UMRAO JAAN (1981, India), one of her most iconic films and performances. Collected by Jahan Singh Bakshi
The poster reuses the main image of one of the original release posters, paired with a custom Cyrillic lettering that is clearly based on Davida.
6 Comments on “Umrao Jaan movie poster”
Nice! That’s the second example for Cyrillic Davida, see the cover of the Zlatniyat Orfey album from 1973, also from Bulgaria.
…and interesting to see that most glyphs that are featured in both uses – notably A, Д, Н – are designed differently.
Right! The different А’s are easily explained: Davida came with two forms for the (Latin) A. What’s really curious is the Н here. For some reason, the designer didn’t simply repurpose the Latin H. It rather looks like an F and an I, minus the top bar. Once they started tinkering, they must have gotten carried away.
So good to note that I started this Cyrillic Davida ball rolling with my Zlatniyat Orfey font use submission!
Hi! I have scanned another Cyrillic interpretation of Davida from Grigori Klikushkin’s Type for Graphic Designers book issued in Minsk in 1979. The author is uncredited in the book, but I suppose that it could be Klikushkin himself.
Wonderful! Thanks, Alex. This is a genuine attempt at a Cyrillic design, while the two Uses both show repurposed Latin letterforms (and parts thereof). At least that’s what it looks like to me.