Mirroring Styles

In the Footsteps of Saul Bass

Minimalist Poster Design

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When it comes to movie posters, there is a beauty in a non-cluttered, simple design. One man who had this style down to a T was Saul Bass: the creator of many Interesting posters. In honor of his accomplishments, We were tasked with making a poster of a movie from recent years (2010 or later, to be exact) in his style. 

The first step was defining his style: we narrowed it down to minimal color, two to three key elements, and a paper-cutout style rather than using actual images. (I cheated slightly on this style by using a gradient)

The first element I chose to include from my chosen movie, Super 8, was an alien hand reaching out, shadowed. To make this part, I simply created the outline with the pen tool in illustrator.

Point by point, I got a shape that looked enough like a hand to be recognized as one, but off-model enough to clearly be something not of earth, or alien to us, at least.

Additionally, I used a gradient throughout the poster to mimic the feel of dusk or a heavy fog, giving the poster and unsettling mood to it that mirrors the mood in the film: unsettling and unsure.

A second element I used was the likeness of a train. The train is a key plot point in the movie Super 8, and with the chance to make the train also have resemblance to a reel of film in keeping with the symbolism of the camera, it turned out to work well at the bottom as a kind of lower border. In hindsight, I would have removed the gradient form the train windows and left it a flat white.

The large central camera integrated with the title '8' was the finishing touch to tie all of the elements together, with more foggy gradient in the background to complete the mood. And with this last bit, I had my poster. There are surely things I would change looking back at it, but you can't just continuously correct everything. Sometimes you have to let something fall short to learn from it.

Fancying Text

A name, my name, what a wonderful thing to have.

In the name of uniqueness and custom graphics, I have ventured forth to learn how to take a name, and make it into something special. For this exercise, I used my own name since I am both familiar with it, and a fan of how the amount of letters in my first and last names are equal (as is my middle name, but that's for another time). I took advantage if this equal spacing to link certain letters together.

Unfortunately, at first, the font I had chosen was not of equal width, and the N in my last name took up three times the space I wished it to. Therefore, I had to convert the type to points and edit each little vertex manually. This is relatively easy in illustrator, as it willingly lines up text with itself, allowing the middles of each letter to connect.

The equal spacing and roundness of the letters was aesthetically pleasing when contrasted with the sharp corners, so when I came to this point I stopped and let it be. I wonder what I will do with this in the future.