Helping Disney+ Hotstar reach the next billion
Disney+ Hotstar is India's largest premium online video streaming platform
After successfully launching in the West, Disney's popular video streaming platform Disney+ turned towards one of the largest markets in the world — India. Disney acquired one of the most popular home-grown streaming platforms in the country, Hotstar, and merged its Disney+ offering to become Disney+ Hotstar in India. From iconic Marvel movies and delightful Pixar films to thrilling regional films, Disney+ Hotstar offers a plethora of choices for every viewer.
Services
we provide
Multilingual typography for movie posters
Designed the movie titles to grab the attention of the audience and convey the tone, genre, and theme of the film. A well-chosen font can make a significant impact on the overall design of a movie poster.
Vectorizing
Created the vector images that can be easily scaled up and down without losing quality or becoming pixelated, making them ideal for the titles.
Sketching
We used sketches to communicate ideas and concepts to brainstorm and discuss ideas in a collaborative setting.
Typography effects
We used the effects to convey information, express emotion, and create a sense of atmosphere.
The
Challenges
In order to appeal to the multilingual Indian market, it was important to promote the movies that offered dubs in various Indian languages in the right way. Without offering multilingual movie posters, Disney+ Hotstar risked alienating a large chunk of their audience in India who did not understand English. Regional audiences prefer consuming content in their native languages so it was important for Disney+ Hotstar to promote their movies in these languages.
The objective was to create multilingual typography of movie titles that were originally in English into Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu. The new typography needed to retain the essence of the original titles while adhering to the nuances and needs of the regional languages spoken in India. Most importantly, the visual identity of the movie posters needed to match with the visual genre of the film. To ensure perfect recreations, Brucira collaborated with Sudeep Gandhi & Manish Patil during the typography and vectorizing stages.
Created distinctive, iconic and memorable movie titles
Once the raw content was ready, we began sketching out the movie titles in the three languages while following the rules of the language's script. In order to make the movie titles optically similar and avoid a mechanical feel, we studied the strokes and axes of each title. We adapted the basic strokes first and then converted them into letterforms.
The
Approach
First, the movie titles were accurately translated into the desired Indian language. There could be no errors at this stage. We started with a brief discussion call with the founding team at Disney+ Hotstar to understand the requirement, collate their vision and mission and align with the same.
Next, we keenly explored the aesthetics of the language — Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu which each had different linguistic sensibilities and needed to be expressed accordingly.
Each film title had different sets of characters — understanding & designing them correctly was both visually as well as linguistically important.
Meticulously perfected the light angles during the vectorizing
When it comes to languages that don't use the roman script, especially regional languages in India, each individual letter is written in a particular way — the length of the letters and their accents had specific angles, strokes, and curves that needed to be replicated correctly.
Best
Experience
Goal was to capture large regional audience for Disney+ Hotstar content by showcasing movie posters in three major Indian languages.
Created distinctive and memorable movie titles
We established the mood and atmosphere of the movie before the audience even watches it by using the title fonts that conveys a lot about the film's genre, tone, and style.
Adding effects conveyed specific themes or elements of the movie. Effects can also help to reinforce the movie's branding and marketing efforts.
The
Impact
Brucira recreated 28 movie posters in Hindi, Telugu, and Tamil across Marvel, Pixar, and Disney movies. Some of the major titles included Avengers: Civil War, Tangled, Frozen, Frozen II, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 & Vol 2, Aladdin, and more.
These multilingual movie posters acted as the required doorway for the regional audiences and gave them access to international content in their preferred language. This resulted in a considerable increase in the potential viewer market for Disney+ Hotstar.
I can't say enough good things about Brucira. They were great partners, really drove the creative direction and successfully delivered the posters which garnered love from millions of users. We enjoyed the sprint progress with them. Highly recommend if you're looking for a design partner.
Gaurav Joshi
Head of Design, Disney+ Hotstar
