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Commercial artists find going tough

Staff Reporter

Contestants switch to digitally printed flexi banners

Photo: Lingaraj Panda

FADING OUT?: Artists at work in Berhampur.

BERHAMPUR: Come elections, commercial artists are the most sought-after. Irrespective of party affiliation, contestants make a beeline to them either for making hand-written cloth banners, wall writings or hand-drawn billboards. And this is the time when the artists, too, earn some decent income.

But artists are now a worried lot, thanks to the digital era. Cloth banners are replaced by `flexi' banners and hoardings printed digitally in plastic sheets.

Contestants of even the panchyat elections have switched over to flexi banners and hoardings though they are a bit costly, says Jagannath Patro, an artist who owns a banner and signboard- making unit in the city.

The demand for cloth banners has gone down by 50 per cent in comparison to last panchyat polls, he says. A small flexi banner costs some Rs. 250 while a hand-written cloth banner of the same size costs Rs. 80.

"Artists earn some profit only through cloth banners and not through commissions they get by arranging flexi banners printed at modern printing presses in Berhampur or Visakhapatnam," he says.

Lasting option

"The desire to have own photograph along with those of the party leaders is one of the main reasons for politicians opting for flexi banners," says Rama Tanti, another commercial artist.

Not just that. Cloth banners do not last long unlike flexi banners.

Mr. Patro says the trend is such that during the next municipal elections no cloth banner will be used. And to keep pace with the changing times, he has started learning computer graphics.

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