If you grew up with these things
Come and see them again. Show your parents. Ask them what they remember.
Work in progress — Virasat is still being built. Some items don’t have pictures yet, and some details may be wrong. New things are added all the time.
हमारे बारे में
About Virasat
India’s everyday design, collected in one place.
Why I made this
Virasat is a passion project. It started when I found ciggies.app — a beautiful online museum of cigarette packs — and thought: India has a whole world like this, and nobody has put it together.
The Parle-G girl. Hand-painted shop signs. Matchbox labels with tigers, gods and bicycles. Film posters painted by hand. Lambrettas, Ambassadors and Chetaks. A tin of Dalda in every kitchen.
Most of it is scattered across old newspapers, family cupboards and forgotten corners of the internet. Some of it is already gone. Virasat brings it together in one place, so it isn’t lost.
Who it’s for
If you’re a designer
This is a goldmine. More than a hundred years of real Indian lettering, colours, mascots and layouts, all in one place. That’s why there’s an Inspo board: pick what you like and build a moodboard for your next project.
If you just love old things
Open the canvas, drag around and get lost.
Help build the archive
Virasat gets better with every picture. Any help is welcome:
- Photos or scans of old ads, packets, tins, labels, posters, signboards or tickets
- Better pictures of things already here
- Corrections — a wrong year, a wrong name, a missing story
- Ideas for things that should be in the archive
Please send only pictures you took yourself or that are free to use, and tell me where they came from. If you want, I’ll credit you by name.
Get in touch
Found a mistake? Open an issue on GitHub.
Support
Virasat is free and has no ads, and it will stay ad-free forever. If you like it, you can help me keep building it.
Support Virasat