Poster Design

[Cwilk]

Okay, so I had nothing better to do (is what I should be saying, but that's not the truth). Anyways, I got bored. I have other work to do, but didn't want to do it. So I designed a poster for a movie that I have nothing to do with. It truly was done just for the sake of creativity.

[kelvyn12]

good....but what made you pick this film to do a poster on?

[Cwilk]

I'm a fan of Colin Firth. He's an amazing actor.

[Mailno]

love the large font what is it?

[Cwilk]

If you're referring to "When Did You Last See Your Father"....it is ITC Serif Gothic.

[Lyrics]

Your composition is very lost. Remove the text for starters, and examine the graphic elements. I find the piece fairly derivative, look for ways to infuse the design with life. Would i notice that poster if i were flipping through a catalog of hundreds, or walking down a poster hall? No. It looks like you've been resourceful with your assets but i'd recommend to use a camera and collect your own assets. You'll have high resolution assets across all items, matching style, and the choice of your framing for each asset.

I think you should view this above work as a starting point, a sketch. Speaking of sketching, did you do anything on paper before moving to the computer?

Best of luck. Cheers

[Cwilk]

You say some big words for someone so young in the design world. Could you expand more because you don't really explain? Saying the composition is lost doesn't help me out.

Having been able to work side-by-side with the art director for Bill Graham and also a best friend who was a poster artist for UA for many years, I've been fortunate to learn a lot about poster design. A movie poster should tell a story about that movie, not be over creative. Over creativity makes the message that the movie is telling become lost in the design if there is too much dissonance. Dissonance seems to be the derivative thing happening in many poster designs for movies in this day and age... while some movies invite that kind of design, others do not need it.

As for it being a starting point, the poster was actually just thrown together in about half an hour because I got bored one day. It's not a paid work and it's obviously not meant to be a poster for any catalog, so there wouldn't be any thumbs.

On the other hand, it is nice to see that someone has taught you about thumbs. Most new designers get lazy and don't do them. I'll be very impressed if you are familiar with rubys and stat cameras too.

I honestly do appreciate your comments, but for future in critiqueing any work, it's best to use layman's terms and it's very important to know about the project that someone is working on or has done. That means reading a book or watching a movie to get the feel for what a creative piece entails. Too many people critique without really giving valuable information also. A good example would be: love the font, hate the font....would change the color, try another photo in this spot, ...anyways, you understand what I mean.

Thanks again.

[Lyrics]

While I'm not willing to watch the movie simply to inform my comments here (it's doubtful there's been a "critique" on this forum in the robust sense that it ideally implies) there's a valid perspective to be offered. I find there is value in having a comment or critique from someone totally unfamiliar with the context of a work. It would be foolish to only seek responses from people that understand your context (which is totally reverse to one of the biggest movements in design around the world today, design from the end-user's perspective. A movie poster also faces an end-user).

One of the poster's strengths in my opinion is the ability to create something iconc, something instantaneous, to lodge emotion mood and space into one frame. Ultimatly, something so powerful it burns into the viewer's psychi. That's not what is happening in your creative half hour of work. At a half hour it is a start though (as i suspected). As a couple overt points i'll say: The fade-blending of assets appears plastic and cheap, the placement of text feels lost because it creates excessively complex geometry that exacerbates the assets' weak composition; The title's placement comes across as being used to "patch" (hide) the conversion of assets at the center.

While i appreciate the multi-lingual nature of any forum, and even daily living as globalization makes it's presence felt more and more, people of an industry need to be able to speak that industry. I use various terms, analogies, and concepts to explain ideas or reasoning in a way that other educated/skillful designers - or creative types for that matter - should understand. With that said, there is a truly inherent challenge in written critiques that face-to-face transcends. If you're first language is not english I appreciate your effort to come on board to an english forum and share here.

I'm currently working on a film poster myself. It's a short movie 100% done in Montreal. If i create a thread for the posting my process i hope you chime in. I also hope you continue posting updates to the creative work in this thread. Lastly i TOTALLY know what you mean about lack of useful information in forum "critiques", the inspiration behind my comment before. A good critique can take a huge amount of energy which a lot of people aren't willing to do often.

I'm not familiar with rubys or stat, i wikipedia'd the later, interesting! I hope it's more clear why i think your composition is too loose, lacks a sense concreteness, is lost.

Best

[Cwilk]

Thanks for the clarification Lyrics. My first language is English (and very well I might add...I'm also a writer.) I wrote technical publications for the Air Force for 10 years—very boring—so I've tried for many years to adjust my speech and to also write somewhat normal.

Now that I write articles for magazines and newspapers periodically, I have found it important to be more on the same level as my readers.

I usually don't post work on the forum and not expect feedback, but the poster was in fact just that—I just felt like posting it for no reason and didn't expect comments.

Posters are fun to design. I actually recieved a national award for a poster design I did back in 2003 and we do poster design quite regularly. Two friends (the ones I mentioned that design posters), have designed posters for many years. Peter Barsotti is an amazing designer/art director. In his day, he worked with quite a bit of big bands like the Grateful Dead. We started doing design for him (posters, t-shirts and other things) back in 2004 and we quickly became friends (I got to design Eddie Money's t-shirt for one of his concerts). Peter just recently gave me a book that features many of the great Fillmore posters from San Francisco.

One of my closest friends (Stuart Martin), worked as an art director for United Artists. He created the original Willy Wonka poster and also designed posters for lots of other famous movies. He's in his 60s now, so a lot of the movies I've never even seen.

Both Peter and Stuart are goldmines and they have gotten us connections that most small design firms only dream of. It sounds as though you've gotten yourself in a great situation too. Are you in school or working full-time? You remind me of my son; I can feel your energy through your posts and it feels very positive.

Anyways, sorry for rambling, but I look forward to seeing your work.

[Toon]

Also an awful lot of energy in Lyrics designs, have you seen his poster work, I'm a big fan.