Movie Posters (Final Project!)

For our last assignment in Visual Communications 1 (*sniff sniff*) we were to create movie posters in three different genres; romance, thriller, and comedy.  First step, as always, research!

 

We took note of the similarities between genres so that we could use them when we create our own posters.  I saw that most horror film posters are dark, the text is usually not very clean cut (appears to be disintegrating or dripping) and the poster may or may not have a touch of color somewhere (usually read, to represent blood).  The Comedy posters on the other hand have lots of color, actors with strange expressions, and the font tends to be rounder and larger.  Romances have a common thread in that they usually have lighter colors, the actors, if present, are looking at each other, and the titles are in a more script like font. 

            Now I started my own sketching and brainstorming.  The title of the film was to be the same for each movie - “Stockholm Drive”.  We were also only allowed to use photos that we had taken ourselves.  I immediately thought of a collection of photos wherein I took pictures of streets very low to the ground.  With these in mind I started sketching. 

 

While I was doing this I also started to think up taglines.  Of course, none of those taglines made it into the actual posters because once I got on the computer most of my ideas changed.  It started with the comedy. I wanted to do a “why did the chicken cross the road” parody without actually having the chicken crossing the road.  So I used a picture of a chicken I had taken in Hawaii and one of the low road shots and combined them to form a chicken silhouette.

 

 

From there I found a font (Hobo std) that was round, but not too childish and laid it out so that it would get bigger on either end of the word ‘Stockholm’.   Underneath the chicken I used the tagline “the age old question will be answered” trying to be snarky about the ‘why did the chicken cross the road’ question.  Finally I needed a background that was brightly colored and contrasting to the yellow from the road lines.  I found a picture taken at the air show where the sky was bright blue with just a little bit of cloud. 

 

Finally I used the colors from the road to make the title look like a road and added the color to the tagline as well finishing with this result.  

  But the poster still felt a little empty, so I made two copies of the cicada and shrunk them down a little.  I then stumbled upon the idea of the cicadas (being the hungry hoard of insects that they are) eating the words on the poster so I broke of the “th” from the “July15th” and fed it to the cicada in the bottom right hand corner.  Took “The infestation” and fed it to the one if the upper left hand corner and then pulled out the “o” from Stockholm and fed it to the large one in the middle.  This gave the text some interest and told you a little about the movie at the same time. 

 

Finally the Romance poster.  This was the toughest one for me.  I knew I wanted white somewhere but when I had a white background it seemed far too empty.  I found pictures from some vacations and put white frames around them then placed them at angles around the poster.   Then I pulled up a larger picture of Hawaii from the top of Diamond Head with a nice view of the beach and ocean and decided to use it for my background.  When I placed the type over it I initially made it white, but it didn’t look right, so I moved the type into one of the smaller pictures where the background was darker.  The font I used was ‘Mistrel’ because it had a hand written and script feel.  I placed it at an angle within the picture so that it looked like the title was written on the photo.  I then needed a place to put the tag line and the date so I faded out the bottom of the picture and placed it there. The tagline plays off the scattered pictures saying “The picture perfect place for love”  (cheesy, I know, but the alliteration helps).  Resulting in this final poster.        

 

Paula Scher (Project 5)

For our fifth project we were to pay homage to a famous graphic designer by designing a logo for their name and using it in a bio poster.  The designer I chose was Paula Scher and the first step was research.  I found a large amount of her work (above) and learned that she was a leader in the retro design movement with her different approach to typography.  I was attracted to her design because it had a very clean feel even though the way she places her type is all over the place.
So I started to sketch ideas before I went to the computer.  What I wanted to do was somehow contain her name.  Also there needed to be strange angles somewhere.  These are some of the initial sketches.  

I then went to the computer and put down some solid ideas. (below)  They were printed out and put on the “war wall” and I got feedback from the rest of the class on what was working and what was not.   

After some more ideas I finally chose a logo (last one in the one above).  It combined the container style used in her “Ballet Tech” poster and the angles that come up in a lot of her works.  Also, the font I used (Eurostile) is a san serif font because she used san serif fonts in a lot of her work.  

On to the bio poster!  First up was a lot more research.  Prof. Davis let me borrow a few of her books (Megg’s History of Graphic Design by Philip B. Meggs; Women of Design by Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit; Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide by Johanna Drucher and Emily McVarish.) and I pulled out all the information about Scher and her influence on the Graphic design community.  Then I had to narrow that information down.  I ended up including her education, employment, clients and what she works with for the basic information as well as a paragraph about her design influence.  Finally I used a few of her own quotes from an interview that I thought really illustrated her character and her outlook on design. 

            Now it’s time to lay it out on the poster.  We had to use a picture of the designer, but in an interesting way, so that was the first thing I did.  I found a picture of her and cut her out and placed her in the corner of the poster.  I didn’t like how it looked though so I put it through live trace just to see what it would look like and it came out looking really interesting.  So I made her blue and the background yellow, a color scheme seen in some of her works.  Then I added the logo and put it in the center of the poster.  The rest of the information came after that and in keeping with the angles that she used I tried to align the information with the angles of the logo.  The final step was to bold the important things, add some more blue, and make sure that all the text was aligned correctly and I ended up with the final product below.