The Da Vinci of poster design

Hailing from a family of painters, Vinci Raj was named after the renowned artist Leonardo da Vinci. Starting his career with painting alongside his father and uncle, Vinci always intended to be an artist from childhood. He says “Basically I’m a painter; I switched to ad designs due to the evolution of digital era. I have worked with all the leading ad agencies and quit the job since I wanted to direct a movie.”

Vinci Raj, poster designer of the movie ‘Darbar’ shares his rebound to movie industry after encountering a car crash which led to a short-term memory loss.

Vinci was awarded for his ad campaign “Talk them Dead” at the Cannes 2010 and “The Good Road” at Spike Asia 2014. Unfortunately, after that, Vinci met with an accident and suffered a short-term memory loss.

 “I was jobless”, he recalls. “I completely lost my memory of the design process; I had to depend on tutorials for everything. Since my left eye was injured, I was also not able to read anything till now”.

“With my family’s support, I managed to bounce back and working with director Ranjith in films like Kabali and Kaala was a career boost in my life,” he adds.

Talking about his favourite movie poster, Vinci explains “Attakathi posters will be my all-time favourite. Since it was my debut with the movies, I have immense love for that film.”

“Stars definitely make a difference to the posters. The percentage of their picture size depends on their stardom, whatever the idea may be,” he explains about the influence of stars in his posters. “Posters are the face of the movie; it pulls the people to the theatres. It is a marketing strategy and is really healthy for the movie industry.”

 “My job is to bring the people to theatres and the movie will do the rest. And I don’t like to mislead the audience; I always create posters based on the story,” he explains.

Speaking about the process Vinci says, “Do it from your heart, everything will fall on your table.”

Sharing a tip with youngsters, Vinci adds, “Try to scribble on the paper first and then work with the software. Poster designing depends only on creativity; first put your ideas in place.”

When asked about the experience with Superstar Rajinikanth in Darbar, Vinci says, “I directed the poster shoot with him, I wanted the Mooondru Mugam Rajinikanth back since he is playing a cop in the movie. The sunglasses, police uniform, guns and the caution tag in the poster depict a dangerous approach.”

“Working with me, Thalaivar was polite and humble as always,” he concludes.