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Characters On The Silver Screen | 06/06/2007

I get the impression that the forced use of metaphors and symbolism often gets in the way of good design. Take for example the poster for Fast Food Nation. A baby in stars’n’stripes nappies trying to grab two gigantic burgers which symbolise breasts… I honestly don’t know what to think. It all seems a bit convoluted to me, and the end result doesn't look very good. The variant on the right is even less interesting. It’s a crying shame the design is so bland compared to the witty tagline. And the combination Helvetica Condensed/Arial Rounded is as unimaginative as the rest of the poster. Nah, give me Supersize Me any day.

It’s bizarre how sometimes there are discrepancies between different international versions of certain movie posters. For Goya’s Ghost the typeface of the movie title changes from one poster to another – on the left Schneidler Capitals (digitised as Shango) with that peculiar capital Y, and on the right Augustea… Unopened. ;) I seriously doubt this has anything to do with national preferences for certain type designs, so why change it then? The left arm of the capital Y almost bumping into the O on the right-hand poster proves that it often is worth getting professional help for customising type.

The poster for A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints looks really good, an excellent design with nicely weathered type and high contrast photography. I like the composition of the type so well it almost makes me forget it is set in Helvetica. An American gothic would’ve been a lot more appropriate.

An interesting series of posters are the ones for Black Snake Moan. They have been designed to resemble the trade dress of comic books (specifically Marvel Comics) and succeed very well at that. Obviously a lot of attention went into details like the fold creases and worn edges. The type treatment is a nice surprise. Helvetica Black was outlined and then roughly filled with casual brush strokes, a technique I hadn’t seen before.

Now this is a series seriously kicks booty! The posters for Grindhouse are a blast. They mimic vintage grindhouse movie posters very convincingly and perfectly keep in tune with both the concept and the image quality of the movies they advertise. Frankly, they look like they came straight out of a vintage second-hand shop. The weathered yellowy paper, the texture and colour scheme of the pictures, the choice of type, it all fits to a tee. Of course a lot of ATF Franklin Gothic, some Aachen, Eurostile and show card lettering. House Industries have some very nice designs in that specific style that can be ordered offline from FontShop BeNeLux

All I want to say about the poster for Faith’s Corner is that the godawful type treatment and its positioning on the poster is simply ludicrous. The picture is decent base material, but combining it with squooshed™ Frutiger in white with a thick red border isn’t exactly a display of good taste or design sense. A missed opportunity.

I must say I quite like the simplicity of the poster of French movie U.V. In this instance the symmetrical, centred approach works like a charm. One can almost taste the sweltering atmosphere as both women stare at you, a mysterious figure behind them. The movie title looks like it’s set in V.A.G. Rounded; alternative candidates are Bryant, Ulissa Rounded and DIN 17 amongst others.

Zodiac has two posters, one being a conventional night shot of a yellow cab under a street lantern – quite predictable and not very original. Far more interesting is the white poster featuring a grid of hand-drawn symbols and signs that were used by the Zodiac killer. The rhythm of the signs and the juxtaposition of the grid with the small human figure work very well. All type is set in Futura.

12.06.2007 - 00.51.44

Posted by Unzipper 5 comments Share on Facebook/Twitter

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This installation of the movie poster series seems to feature quite a lot of 'genre' excercises, like all of the Tarantino posters and the Black Snake Moan. It might be interesting to make a feature on these different genres in movie posters. Or is this just my sense of organisation going out of control? ;-)

15.06.2007 - 10.18.56

Posted by Butch

Butch, you think too much. :P But kidding aside, that may indeed be an interesting approach.

15.06.2007 - 10.26.38

Posted by Yves Peters a.k.a. Unzipper

Unfortunately you are right. But speaking from my heart instead of my brains this time I must say I very much like the UV poster. It's composition is perfect, the symmetry/assymmmetry works like a charm, and the cold font fits very well to the 'warm yet dead cool' atmosphere of the poster. Very nice!

15.06.2007 - 11.31.16

Posted by Butch

Another rounded sans serif to add to the list of UV options is the new FF Speak.

17.06.2007 - 12.02.03

Posted by Stephen

So copying the "vintage grindhouse" look is a blast, but copying the current movie poster clichés or overusing Trajan is not. I'm not sure that I see the difference. Both require very little talent, and even less originality. But that pretty much sums up the entire body of tarantino's work anyhow. Copy copy copy. Then make sure your audience is too young to remember the original. Insta-genius! Ok, complaining over. Yes, Faith's Corner looks like something the IT Guy whipped up in GIMP. Hmmm.. There's not much here to praise. I guess the white Zodiac poster is clever. :)

12.02.2009 - 22.25.16

Posted by JP

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