- One week.
Project:
- Create the promotional poster for a movie, real or imagined.
- The artwork must be completely original, and must include new photo(s) you have taken specifically for this project, or your illustrations based on those photos.
Objectives:
- Create the appropriate sense of mood from your decisions about color, style, text and imagery (Communicate what type of movie this is and what it's about through visuals.).
- Improve your skills with digital photography.
- Integrate photos into an Illustrator-based design.
- Apply your understanding of visual hierarchy to bring attention to the most important information in the poster.
- Apply an understanding of the Graphic Design principles of contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity
- Communicate an idea through selection of appropriately expressive type.
- Create a visual personality through the title art and other elements
Parameters:
- Created in: Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator
- Size: At least Letter size (8.5 x 11”), up to 11 x 17”
- Final File format: Illustrator EPS (Start project in Photoshop as PSD.)
- Use original photographs (that you take specifically for this assignment), or vector-drawings based on those photographs
- NO photographs by someone else, clip art, or "borrowing" from famous images of the movie or musical
- Shoot your own photographs from student models, and use those as a drawing reference.
- All type must be converted to outline before turning it in
Text:
- “Director’s Name” Presents:
- Movie Title
- Actors
- Tagline
- Rating
- Other: Studio Name, Other Actors, Screenwriter, Producer, Director, etc.
Grading Criteria:
- Design / Visual Impact
- Inventiveness / Creativity
- Expressiveness / Communication
- Technical Quality / Craftsmanship (including quality of photography)
These are the tools we use to measure your success:
Resources:
- In preparation for your own theatrical poster designs, here's a link to 50 great movie poster designs.
To Start:
- Collect images of effective promotional graphics for movies. Ask yourself: what makes them work so well?
- Collect information and visual references that relate to the subject(s) of the movie.
- Thumbnails and rough drafts (especially of figures. What poses will you need?)
- Take photos of student models to use in the poster or as visual reference for your drawings.
Take AT LEAST TEN GREAT PHOTOS
- Well framed
- Well composed
- Close up
- Focused
- Good exposure -- good contrast and wide range of values
- Good, rich color
Helpful Resources:
Movie posters may prove inspirational. There are two books of movie posters (of movies from the 1960s and 1970s) in Mr. Ratkevich's Portfolio classroom, Room 215.
Ask yourself these questions for your final execution:
- Is the concept clear?
- It is visually unique and interesting? Does it have visual impact?
- Does it give the viewer a sense of what the movie is about?
- Does it give the viewer a sense of the genre: comedy, drama, action, thriller, horror, etc.
- Is the text clear and READABLE?
- Is the spacing between letters, words, and lines comfortable, or jammed, tight, too far apart, etc?
- Have you used VISUAL HIERARCHY to bring attention to the most important element first, the next most important element next, etc.?
- Is the spacing CONSISTENT?
- Have you ALIGNED the text?
- Is the typography EXPRESSIVE?
- Have you visually EMPHASIZED the more important words and phrases?
- Have you designed the entire PICTURE PLANE?
- Is it a unified, cohesive DESIGN (Is it visually impressive when you see it from a distance?).
- Does it apply both VARIETY and UNITY? (For example, different fonts, sizes, etc, but all used more than once throughout the design)
- Does the color scheme (more than two or three colors) convey a sense of mood appropriate for the content of the movie?
- Have you experimented with styles and arrangements?
- Have you considered and tried out different elements and techniques for the background? (textures, design elements, gradients, etc.)
- Are you ABSOLUTELY sure this is the very best you can do with what you know about design?