How to design a Movie Poster - Frettouch Branding Agency

As a designer if you were called upon to do a design for a movie poster how would go about with your design and concept?

The first step as a professional would be:

1. Get a Brief

A brief is simply (in this contest) an over all understanding of what the movie is all about: Horror, Action, Romance? you name it.

2. Research

When you first encounter a brief the first thing you should do is research. find out a style for the movie that you want to create a poster for.

Check out this story line:

Johnny Aysgarth is a handsome playboy who lives by borrrowing money from his friends. He meets and marries shy Lina Mclaidlaw, but after their honeymoon, the girl finds out Johnny’s true character and becomes suspicious of his behavior. Lina starts believing her husband is a murderer and she fears that she could be his next victim.

Research into the film category which in this case is film noir. Read through the plot highlight important facts / figures / items and gather the frames from the trailer of the movie.

I also researched on what current movie posters looked like today and this site was a huge resource for me. Be careful clicking on the link because it is a big load.

3. Brainstorming

After a lot of research it is now time to start brainstorming up different concepts and poster designs for the movie.

Remember the key poster design points

A poster should be:

Aesthetic – It should get attention so the message is delivered.
Focused – It should focus and communicate on a single message.
Ordered – The sequence should be well-ordered and obvious.

You should also remember a poster is going to be printed in a relatively large format so anything you do should be done using a high resolution. ie. Use a high resolution setting on your camera or scanner when digitising your concepts. A good starting point is at least 150ppi.

You should also consider other factors of the poster design such as the film title, classification, leading cast, distributors, directors, producers etc. The best way to find out what should be on a poster is by looking at other poster designs.

Creation

After you believe you have an idea of where you want to go then this is the time to bring it to life. Go out and take the photos you need, get the material you need and begin creating the poster.

Remember to experiment and play around with your original ideas as you can always improve on your original ideas.

Concept Behind This Poster sample

For this poster, the idea came down to using the “infamous glowing cup” that was featured in the movie (illuminated by a hidden light to make it seem surreal) as seen above. There is a story behind this cup which I will tell you know…

The movie as you guessed is based around suspicion and Lina, the wife of Johnny gets so suspicious of him that quoted from the plot synopsis “She cannot even stay in the same room at night with him, and when he brings a simple glass of milk to her before bed, Lina is filled with dread. She fears that Johnnie now plots to poison her, and collect the money from her life insurance.” – In simple terms, she is so suspicious she can’t even trust a glass of milk from her husband.

It is actually quite interesting because in the original novel she knows the milk is poisoned (and it was) and she gulps it down knowingly however in the 1941 movie, the milk is left untouched and there is an alternate ending (a car chase) which leaves viewers thinking whether or not Johhny was innocent or not proving how important this glass of milk is to the central theme of the movie.

Resources Used

Above you can see the original shots for creation of the poster, It was shot with a 7.1mp Olympus 720SW Handycam on the Macro setting. The staircase is actually curling around like in the original 1941 movie which is another small detail that you might have picked up on?

The fonts used were Blue Highway Condensed for the title, the oh-so-famous movie font (Trajan), for the cast titles and the classic Steeltongs for the condensed type at the bottom.

The edges of the border were done using Photoshop brushes and masking. The movie logos seen at the very bottom of the poster were grabbed from Brands Of The World.

Final Poster

Let’s see how the poster sums up to the tips I mentioned above.

A poster should be Aesthetic – It should get attention so the message is delivered.
The bright contrasting red and unusual white glass figure draws attention into the poster.
A poster should be Focused – It should focus and communicate on a single message.
The black and white style portrays the film noir style of the film as well as portraying a mysterious feel to the poster overall – the image leaves you wondering what is going to happen.
A poster should be Ordered – The sequence should be well-ordered and obvious.
A large heading and a large image draw your eye into the image and there is a clear hierarchy of information. There is a balance between the word suspicion and the glass of milk which makes you think they are related, ie. What is suspicious about the milk? The next thing you would probably read would be either the “A film by Alfred Hitchcock” or the bottom tag line which both are red. The key parts of the poster are all in red which helps help give the reader a hierarchy of information.

And there we have it, that is how to make a movie poster.

Update: Top 100 Posters of all time. A great resource. I am thinking maybe the Casablanca (#12) font could work for my poster. My favourite is #77 the A.I Cover and #7 just because it is so cheeky.