Designing Film Posters
| March 26, 2007

Most film posters look quite mundane. The formula seems simple: select an iconic scene from the film, focus on the actors and do a little airbrushing/toning, and then throw on some simple type, all in a center-balanced layout. Here is a typical example.

However, some posters add more. Rather than use basic photography or film stills they incorporate illustration which adds an artist's expressive angle. I'm thinking of those like Apocalypse Now. Or maybe when the photography is highly art-directed resulting in a poster like this for the Dreamgirls movie.

And a rare few actually seem to use design elements and typography to their advantage. The shop I found most interesting was The Creative Partnership. See the poster for Fargo or the work for United 93.

And let's not forget the classic work of Saul Bass. Here are links to more posters organized by design firm.

I happened to also see this blog post on Digg that laments the poor quality of DVD packages compared to the corresponding movie posters.

Link:  Internet Movie Poster site

Tags:  film, movie, poster