For this first mini assignment tackling my personal likes and dislikes when it comes to design, I decided to focus on something that I personally go out of my way to view and consume on a regular basis. Film and film poster design!
Choose 02 designs that you like:
Parasite.
The first piece I would like to focus on is a poster done by Canadian artist Marie Bergeron for the Korean film Parasite. (2019) This particular poster was made to advertise the film to foreign French audiences and is the official artwork used for that release in both poster and box-set form. For me, this design is wonderful. The muted palette pairs beautifully with the bleak world that the film sets up for the protagonist. The illustrative method sets up a structure using the architecture of the film in a way that photographs or still images would not be able to convey, so I find that the choice to utilize drawn structures was a smart choice. Additionally, illustration parallels the commentary of a societally invented class structure that marginalizes and ostracizes those who live at the bottom, while the top rungs of society seem to always stay dry even when the rain hits them first.
Parabellum
The third film in the John Wick trilogy has what I would consider some of the most fun poster design I’ve seen in a long time when it comes to the retired imagery of a man standing in the centre of a frame facing right and looking directly at the audience. I have to give the designer Billy Bogiatzoglou props for his ability to reconstruct a tired idea and make it visually appealing. The use of central imagery in this poster is a wonderful play on religious imagery tied together with objects from the films run. These concepts work together to draw your eye throughout the entirety of the composition. What I think works the best in this poster would be how the designer takes the colours indicated in the film and pulls them into the poster itself. The use of swords and other weapons pointing towards the figure along with the imagery of angelic figures of death convey the central focus of the film. I really like the hierarchy, and the use of an actual frame inside of a frame! It’s visually interesting.
Choose 01 design that you dislike:
For this poster, I chose a design that, for me, simply misses the mark by a hair. There are a lot of moments when I look at posters for film and tv and I think: there is nothing redeemable about this. However, for me, this is not one of those designs. It would have been very easy to just go out and grab a design that is a standard movie poster ‘this is my face with text all over it’ and complain, but what may be an even more egregious offence is a poster that has a really cool concept, but the design around that concept just fell… flat.
The poster for Penny Dreadful, an American tv show was conceptualized and realized by Spanish poster art designer Pablo Matilla. The centre subject is a person who, because of their pose and the angle of the photo taken, looks to be a skull. For a show that highlights death, this concept is one that is pretty incredible. However, the design of the poster itself falls short for me. Cool imagery is only half of what makes poster design work. The typeface used feels lacklustre against the black background, and the placement of the names on the side, along with the size and shape of the typography overall is hard to read. Because of the composition including the logos, the image feels like it is out of centre in a way that doesn’t feel intentional. Though I think a portion of this problem can be attributed to where Matilla has chosen to put the weight in the image. By having the bright red draw your eye almost away from image, making the title, along with the logo the focus instead of the primary image itself.
Mellvetica 