The trucks in India are laboriously hand-painted using a mix of both words and images. For the Horn Please exhibition—my final thesis show at the University of Florida—I designed and screen-printed two designs with popular phrases related to the truck industry of India. Both the posters were double-sided prints and the frames were handcrafted in the woodshop. The frames were hinged to the wall on one side and swung forward to facilitate viewing the poster from both sides.
Buri Nazar Waale Tera Muh Kaala: One of the most popular slogans found on the back of Indian trucks Buri Nazar Waale, Tera Muh Kaala is actually a renowned phrase that’s known to be used for warding off evil in India’s national language—Hindi. The phrase is basically a warning to the people who are jealous, that if they look slyly at your success, their faces would be blackened with their own devious intentions. This slogan is used as a totem of good luck.
Child Beer Available Here: This signage, often seen at various beer shops along the highways of India, is a rather funny phenomenon of a wrongly spelled phrase becoming a traditional way of conveying the message. The signage was originally intended to say Chilled Beer Available Here.
