How To Design A Movie Poster - With An Example

Written by Jacob Cass on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 – 12:41 am

Posters

In this University project we had to learn how to design a movie poster. We had to consider the role of imaging in a graphic design context and the task involved the conceptualisation, design and production of an original cinematic film poster.

The Brief

In this fictional example our brief was to create a poster for a film that is being re released for a contemporary audience. eg. recreate King Kong for a modern audience in a refreshed manner.

We were given a list of 8 famous movie directors and we could choose any of them to base our poster on. Once we had chosen the director we then had to choose a movie that they had directed and then we had to create a modern day poster for the movie.

We had to use photography as the prominent piece of the design and we could not base the design on existing movie posters.

Research

When you first encounter a brief the first thing you should do is research. I researched the eight directors to find a style and a movie that I wanted to create a poster for.

I ended up coming down to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic movie “Suspicion“. A very short synopsis of this romantic physiological thriller is below.

Johnny Aysgarth is a handsome playboy who lives by borrrowing money from his friends. He meets and marries shy Lina Mclaidlaw, but after their honeymoon, the girl finds out Johnny’s true character and becomes suspicious of his behavior. Lina starts believing her husband is a murderer and she fears that she could be his next victim.

I then researched into the film category which in this case was film noir. I read through the plot on Wikipedia highlighting important facts / figures / items as I went along and I gathered the frames below from the original trailer for the movie on YouTube as well as the original posters released for the movie which I found on imdb. You can see all of this in the image below.

I also researched on what current movie posters looked like today and this site was a huge resource for me. Be careful clicking on the link because it is a big load.

Suspicion Film 1941

Brainstorming

After a lot of research it was now time to start brainstorming up different concepts and poster designs for the movie. You can see some of my sketches and brainstorming below. Scratch that, not even worth scanning, I didn’t realise how bad they were.

Anyway this is a good time to get creative. I actually have written two articles on how to be creative and how to boost your creativity so you may want to check them out.

Remember the key poster design points that I outlined in this poster design tips post.

A poster should be:

  • Aesthetic - It should get attention so the message is delivered.
  • Focused - It should focus and communicate on a single message.
  • Ordered - The sequence should be well-ordered and obvious.

You should also remember a poster is going to printed in a relatively large format so anything you do should be done using a high resolution. ie. Use a high resolution setting on your camera or scanner when digitising your concepts. A good starting point is at least 150ppi.

You should also consider other factors of the poster design such as the film title, classification, leading cast, distributors, directors, producers etc. The best way to find out what should be on a poster is by looking at other poster designs.

Creation

After you believe you have an idea of where you want to go then this is the time to bring it to life. Go out and take the photos you need, get the material you need and begin creating the poster.

Remember to experiment and play around with your original ideas as you can always improve on your original ideas.

Concept Behind My Poster

Glowing Milk

For my poster, the idea I came down to was using the “infamous glowing cup” that was featured in the movie (illuminated by a hidden light to make it seem surreal) as seen above. There is a story behind this cup which I will tell you know…

The movie as you guessed is based around suspicion and Lina, the wife of Johnny gets so suspicious of him that quoted from the plot synopsis “She cannot even stay in the same room at night with him, and when he brings a simple glass of milk to her before bed, Lina is filled with dread. She fears that Johnnie now plots to poison her, and collect the money from her life insurance.” - In simple terms, she is so suspicious she can’t even trust a glass of milk from her husband.

It is actually quite interesting because in the original novel she knows the milk is poisoned (and it was) and she gulps it down knowingly however in the 1941 movie, the milk is left untouched and there is an alternate ending (a car chase) which leaves viewers thinking whether or not Johhny was innocent or not proving how important this glass of milk is to the central theme of the movie.

Anyway, after reading about this glowing milk I just had to incorporate it into the poster some how so I focused around this point in my brainstorming and came up with the idea of showing Johnny just about to walk up the stairs to give her the poisoned milk - I wonder what he would be thinking?

I purposely made the glass of milk very white and even gave it a slight glow. I made the actual scene black and white and grainy to depict the original black and white film noir style and to give a mysterious look. The red colour was to used to portray murder which is a constant theme throughout the movie.

Resources Used

Resources

Above you can see the original shots that I used for creation of the poster, one featuring my lovely hand that was flipped for the poster and the other pic, a nice staircase. The rest was up to Photoshop. It was shot with a 7.1mp Olympus 720SW Handycam on the Macro setting. The staircase is actually curling around like in the original 1941 movie which is another small detail that you might have picked up on?

The fonts I used were Blue Highway Condensed for the title, the oh-so-famous movie font (Trajan), for the cast titles and the classic Steeltongs for the condensed type at the bottom.

The edges of the border were done using Photoshop brushes and masking. The movie logos seen at the very bottom of the poster were grabbed from Brands Of The World.

Final Poster

Let’s see how my poster sums up to the tips I mentioned above.

  • A poster should be Aesthetic - It should get attention so the message is delivered.
    The bright contrasting red and unusual white glass figure draws attention into the poster.
  • A poster should be Focused - It should focus and communicate on a single message.
    The black and white style portrays the film noir style of the film as well as portraying a mysterious feel to the poster overall - the image leaves you wondering what is going to happen.
  • A poster should be Ordered - The sequence should be well-ordered and obvious.
    A large heading and a large image draw your eye into the image and there is a clear hierarchy of information. There is a balance between the word suspicion and the glass of milk which makes you think they are related, ie. What is suspicious about the milk? The next thing you would probably read would be either the “A film by Alfred Hitchcock” or the bottom tag line which both are red. The key parts of the poster are all in red which helps help give the reader a hierarchy of information.

And there we have it, that is how to make a movie poster. As always, harsh constructive criticism is welcome, it is due in 2 weeks so I have time to improve things. Oh and the movie is due to release early 2009. (Just kidding, but I wish it was.)

Update: Top 100 Posters of all time. A great resource. I am thinking maybe the Casablanca (#12) font could work for my poster. My favourite is #77 the A.I Cover and #7 just because it is so cheeky.

Suspicion Movie Poster

Revision

After receiving some great feedback from the comments below, here are some revised versions.

Suspicion Posters

Milk Photo above is All Rights Reserved of OhSillyMonkey.

Below you can see the revisions from the original.

  • Changed typefaces to Futura.
  • Darkened the whole poster, removing more of the greyscale.
  • Moved stairs further up in the poster
  • Added glow to milk
  • Moved title to bottom of poster
  • Added suit sleeve + white shirt onto the arm.

Suspicion Revised

2nd Revision

After receiving some more great feedback from the comments below, here are some revised versions and a mock up.

Suspicion Ver 2

Quick Mock Up

MockUp

Another Version

Milk Poster 2

3rd Revision

Suspicion Movie Poster

What do you think of the revised versions?


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How I Designed 3 CD Jackets Just by Listening To Music

Written by Jacob Cass on Saturday, May 10, 2008 – 7:18 pm

CD\'s designed by Jacob Cass

Music shares many common ideas and themes with the visual arts. For example, repetition, rhythm, harmony, tone, shape, space, scale, line, texture and colour are terms common to both the musical and visual language and this project was focused around these points.

In this University Project we had to listen to music, draw an abstract response then create 2 CD covers from what we heard and below is how I went about doing it… This is how to design a CD cover just by listening to music. I would advise to scroll down and look at the final designs before reading the article.

Oh and before you correct me, I actually did 3 CD covers because I enjoyed it so much instead of the 2 requested. You may have even noticed me putting them up in my portfolio last week.

Part One

The project was divided into two parts and in the first part we had to listen to 4 contrasting pieces of music. We had to take an A4 page and draw a simple visual language of what we heard. We could do this only by using the basic elements of line, shape and colour and it had to be a non representational, abstract design and we could only use the 6 spectrum colours (red orange yellow green blue purple).

We had to aim for a contrast between the drawings and let your subconscious tell you what shapes and colours represent each type of music. Kinda cool in a creepy kind of way.

Below you can see my 4 visual responses after listening to the music.

  1. The first was a slow, smooth, soft, calm watery type song.
  2. The second was a upbeat funky song.
  3. The third was a hard rough death metal rock song and the
  4. Fourth was an electronic digital sounding song.

Part Two

We then had to discuss our results with our peers… All 120 responses from 30 students were pinned to a board and compared. We then had to choose which of our own drawings provided the most contrast and you can see number 1 and number 3 had the most contrast so I used these two (I later chose to do number 4 as well). We then had to use these drawings above to develop them into CD covers and the final designs had to strongly reflect the initial graphic responses.

After brainstorming many different ideas, I decided that whatever I was going to do, it was going to be in 3D probably due to the fact that I enjoyed my Vodka Bottle project in Cinema 4D so much - that is the beauty of University, you get so much creative freedom!

I then came across this post called 50 Essential Photoshop Text Tutorials and I saw in there a tutorial link to design in 3D (Nik Ainley style). I knew that I wanted to do something like that and I got inspiration from his two pieces that are shown below.

Nik Ainley

After a bit more brainstorming I came to the concept of using one word to describe the type of music that the band played. I would then use that word as the main piece on the front cover. I chose the word Smooth for the calm music and the word Rough for the heavy metal music and the word Digital for the electronic music.

I then went out and got myself a copy of Xara3D (USD$45) which I tell you is VERY easy to use for a 3D program. It took a total of 10 minutes to figure out without any tutorials, just playing with the buttons.

I then pumped out the 3D letters into Photoshop and then did about 80% of the designing in Photoshop and 20% in illustrator for the vectorised pieces. Below you can see the design process I used to create the first CD cover.

Design Process

You will notice the visual consistency between the three CD covers as we were required to have this between both designs, there were meant to be all from the same publisher. We also had to have all legal requirements on the CD jackets.

The album title was given to us and for the smooth song it was called Mad World, the rock one was called Attitude and the electronic one was called Equinoxe. The first Smooth cover took a day to complete and the attitude one took about half as long as I was more familiar with what to do and the digital one took about 3 hours.

Below are the final designs, try to compare them to my visual responses up above.

You will notice in the Smooth design, I have used the colours blue and green with an ocean type feel (check out the Jellyfish).

In the Rough design you will notice I have used angry red colours in a grungy chaotic mess that reflects my original musical response. The text was purposely made hard to read to reflect the chaotic nature of the music.

In the Digital one I have used an in-your-face, high energy, bright coloured design which reflects my original music response. You will notice the circles on the back cover, kind of popping as like in my original drawing.

Front Cover

CD

Back Cover

Inside Cover

CD Mock Up

Smooth MockUp

Front Cover

CD

Back Cover

Inside Cover

Mock Up

Smooth MockUp

Front Cover

Digital CD Cover

Digital CD Cover

CD Cover

Digital CD

Back Cover

Digital Back CD Cover

Inside Cover

Digital Inside Cover

MockUp

Digital CD Cover Mockup

Constructive criticism is welcome as always, please be as harsh as possible. I won’t hate you, I am here to learn! What is your favourite? You can read more of about my University work by visiting the university category page.

PS. Sorry about the delay between my last post, I have just moved house and everything is a bit chaotic.


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The Best Graphic Design Articles from 34 Top Design Blogs as Chosen By The Authors Themselves

Written by Jacob Cass on Monday, April 21, 2008 – 10:27 pm

Best Graphic Design Articles

I went around to the top graphic design blogs on the net and asked their authors to choose their best or most popular graphic design article that they have ever written and here are the results. I present to you…The Best Ever Graphic Design Articles as chosen by the authors themselves.

They are in no particular order but I have organised them into categories.

  • Graphic Design
  • Web Design
  • Picture Based Posts
  • Tutorials
  • Other
  • Thought Provoking Articles

Graphic Design

Colour

Logos

Web Design

Logos

Logos

Picture Based Posts

Logos

Tutorials

Logos

Other

Logos

Thought Provoking Articles

Logos

Best Graphic Design Blogs

Here is the list of all the graphic design blogs who partipated. Thank You!

I know there are many many more great blogs out there so please leave a comment with a link to the best blog article you have ever written - it doesn’t have to be related to design.


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A Comparative Study of Logo Design between the 70s and 90s.

Written by Jacob Cass on Friday, April 18, 2008 – 6:24 pm

Logo Evolution

This was an essay I wrote one year ago for a University class. I do recommend printing it as it is 2000 words long. Click here for a printable version. Read more »


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Design Process for my Vodka Premix Bottle

Written by Jacob Cass on Sunday, April 13, 2008 – 2:38 pm

Vodka Bottles

Another university project completed and this time two weeks early. We had to create a Vodka premix bottle and label design for ‘Wedgetail Distillery’ using Cinema 4D and the Creative Suite. Here is how I went about doing it.

The scenario we were given (in short)

Wedgetail Distillery, makers of premium vodka produtcts have asked you to design the new bottle and labels for their pre-mixed vodka and citrus drink. It is a mid priced product (about $65 for a case of 24) and they are aiming for the 18 to 35 years market. It must have all the Australian legal requirements (which we had to research). It can have up to 4 colours including special or spots or CMYK if you wish. It must feature an eagle somewhere.

You must complete a 3D render of your bottle in Cinema 4D and the final presentation must be A4 in size and it must be targeted towards the client to sell your design concept.

Design Process

Research

I first redefined the problem then I researched bottle designs by going into my local bottle store and I also borrowed packaging books from the university library. I also researched the legal requirements for Australian packaging and alcohol. Who ever thought I was going to be researching Vodka?

Bottle OutlineBottle Design Sketches

This was where we had to design the outline of the bottle. We could have any shape or texture or material we wanted, there were no restrictions.

I kept to the typical glass bottle design as I wanted to make it look realistic as possible however I did add some cool bevelled effects to the bottom of the glass bottle.

You can see to the left the shape of the bottle I designed.

Label Design Sketches & Vectorisation

After I had the bottle design done I could now start on the design of the label. I did a lot of sketches here and then once I had the general idea of how I wanted the design to look I started vectorising my ideas.

Vodka Labels

You can see the vector outline of my original label to the left and then the final label designs below. The fonts I used were Mesquite Std Medium (for Wedgetail), Adobe Garamond Pro Bold (for Citrus), Edwardian Script ITC Regular (for Premium Vodka).

The colours I used were Pantone 877C (Metallic), Pantone 8404C (Metallic), Pantone 1795 C (Solid Uncoated), Pantone Process Black U.

Final Vodka Labels

3D Rendering

After the labels were completed we had to render the 3D bottle in Cinema 4D from our original bottle designs (this was a big learning curve, let me tell you!). After we had rendered the 3D bottle then we had to bring the labels into Cinema 4D and wrap them around the 3D Bottle.

Below you can see a screenshot from Cinema 4D of me doing all of this.

Cinema 4D

Presentation

After I had completed all the renderings it was time for me to make them presentable. In Photoshop I experimented with different backgrounds and effects to see what was the best. Below you can see just some of the experimentations of different background effects.

I added the lemons into the composition to for scale and to add a bit of contrast to the image and to emphasise the citrus flavour of the vodka premix drink. I created smoke using the clouds filter and then used a light feathering on the clouds and then I added a zoom effect to make it look like a kind of back light coming out of the bottle.

Experimentation

Final Composition

Below is the final A4 composition that I printed out on Semi Gloss photo paper and to be honest it looks so much better in print. What do you guys think?

If you want to check out more of my university work go here.

Wedgetail Vodka Bottle

As an added extra, just because I liked this project so much I did a little mock up of the 6 pack box.

6 Pack

Comments are always appreciated.


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