OUGD603 Extended Practice Tryptic Research Alternative Movie Posters and Visual Condesing

As visual research only I brought together a pinterest board of alternative movie posters. I have chosen alternative movie posters in particular because of their ability to condense visual information in an inventive and concise manner.

I chose a few of my favourites to analyse for inspiration and guidance. The over arching theme that I found was colour limitations and simplicity in conjunction worked beautifully.

This poster for the Grand Budapest Hotel has a very cohesive colour approach with a tinted grey scale image at the centre to cease incremental colour change. This pink colour choice comes from the film its self, in which many pastel colours define the atmosphere. One problem with the functionality of this poster is that the character shown is not really major at all and for those that have not seen the film it is a bit miss leading. However, there is very good use of shape to dictate the draw of the eye to the title. The tower of passels draws the eye first because they are tonally the darkest and sharpest part of the image. The eye then moves across to her face and down her arm to the title of the film. This is something particularly relevant to typographic design when the order of reading is so important to communication

The limited colour pallet of this design give it such a strong and eye catching visual. This is something that I want to implement within my own design. The colour usage also allows a clever negative space illustration of the reaching zombie hands. This cohesive image in the centre of the poster has a concise confidence to it that is very pleasant to look at. Another consideration for my own design.

The emotional role that the colour choices play here is easy to see and are instantly read by the eye before anything else is recognised. The colours are also in a vertical slightly striped gradient that has faded areas that mimic a light glare. Again this associates the colours with sunlight and sun sets, our own emotional connections come with this associations. 

Again colour limitation aids this design in its strength. The designer has clearly thought about the fact that the dominant theme of this film is the contrast between the familiar American rural locations and the high tech sci-fi locations of outer space. The connection between the two is clearly communicated by this visual in a clever and concise way. THe condensing of the core visuals is something that I need to think about in terms of my own designs.