I would say out of all facets of art and design, my favorite would have to be the art of the poster. And since I am somewhat of a film buff, I have a huge appreciation for those illuminated one-sheets we are bombarded with when we enter/leave the theatre: the movie poster.
I think movie posters are kind of a lost art that most movie studios don’t seem to care about anymore but there are those token few that still value the craft in making a memorable poster. Being able to sell a movie solely on one sheet of paper using colors, imagery, text, and taglines isn’t as easy as it seems.
In the 70’s during the height of exploitation cinema, virtually every poster had collages of explosions, fast cars, hot chicks, dudes with guns/weapons, fight scenes, some obnoxious 3-D rendering of the movie title, along with some comic book onomatopoeia and taglines saying stuff like “Go see this now! This is the best movie ever made!”. And of course the movies themselves were total shit, but at least the posters were awesome.
These days, it’s more of the same, but instead of actual artists painting, you got horrible Photoshop collages with badly touched-up actors making them look about 15 years younger than they do, or like a completely different person altogether.
That said, there’s are about a million ways to convey your message via movie poster as well as about a million reasons why a certain poster just works or doesn’t. Whether it’s based on aesthetics, layout, typography, cleverness, a really good tagline, or a goofy looking Steve Carell standing in front of a bright orange background, all these elements come together to make a good movie poster.
Inspired by The Auteurs selection as well as Roger Ebert’s, which had some good choices, I’m going to put together my own best of the decade in movie posters. Starting now…
