Page 201 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

198 ART AND CRAFTS

the few advertising agencies set up in East
Pakistan in the 50s and 60s had played an
important role in the graphic design of
Bangladesh. Among these, Evergreen
Publicity, Kamart, Eastland Advertising,
Greenways Publicity and later, Star
Advertising, Nikku Advertising and
Nabangkur Publicity are important ones. All
kinds of publishing work from press layout for
newspapers to packaging design of cosmetic
products and publicity for films were done
successfully from these organizations. Among
these, Evergreen and Kamart were especially renowned for advertisement of films.
During the Pakistani regime, among people involved in advertisement in newspaper
Quamrul Hassan (1921-1988), Qayyum Chowdhury (1934- ), Khwaja Shafique
Ahmed (1925-1972), A.Z. Pasha, Abdus Sabur Khan, Subhash Dutta (1930- ) are
noteworthy. A few important advertisements from this era are those of Habib Bank and
different products of the Tibet Company etc.
After partition, high-quality blocks for advertisements were made from Kolkata until
the first half of the 50s. Later a block company named ‘Eastern Process’ was
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established in Madan Mohan Basak Lane of Old Dhaka. Most of the advertisements
were done in line block (fig. 4.8). In this regard artist Quamrul Hassan’s statement
should be considered. He said, ‘We could not make good advertisements because we
did not have all the equipments for designing as we have today.’ [Trans.] He gave
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an example, ‘Say, I make a design the way I want to but the block is needed for
printing. We did not have blocks manufactured here in those days. We had to go to
Kolkata. The block-man here would follow my design and produce a plate by
etching on the zinc plate. Thus, whatever I had done in my design would have a very
different result.’ [Trans]
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After the Liberation War in
Bangladesh, advertisements
designed for newspapers
developed gradually. Usually
for any newspaper
advertisement the design
fig. 4.5 (top) Film needs to be altered to the
advertisement, preferred size and in
published in Weekly accordance to the design of
Chabuk, 6 March 1935
the newspaper. Since 1972,
fig. 4.6 (bottom) An advertisements prepared by
advertisement advertising agencies are in