50 Movie Poster Remakes (S-Z)

• September 28, 2008
  15 Comments // Graphic Design

Here we are, the last stretch, the last eleven, the last show-downs. In this final part of the series on movie poster remakes, we get a look at Harrison Ford being creepy, Al Pacino acting the bad-ass, Chrispin Glover looking freakish and as always, Audrey Hepburn looking glamorous. What else could you ask for?

This is a good batch for balance. The split between which works better, the original or the remake, is almost divided straight down the middle. As what seems to be the norm, horror movies were remade over and over and so we have a few good comparisons, with the newer ones winning through simplicity and light splashes of colour. We also have a great example of a remake that is so laughable compared to the original you could weep—I’ll let you figure out which one that is, but I’ll warn you, it’s damn easy.

Sabrina (1954 & 1995)

The epitome of grace and elegance within the film world, Audrey Hepburn, stands playfully and is clearly the attraction to this movie. Yes, there is too much type, bizarre floating heads and someone either being punched or stretching out their back while a friend rubs their shoulder, but it all works so well.. even though it’s hard to tell what the movie is called. Then we have Harrison Ford looking as creepy as possible with a “… dance for me and call me daddy” expression on his face. You pick which is better.

Scarface (1932 & 1983)

“Why you! I’ll show you boy-o, put your dukes up, it’s time to rumble! Time for a farce!” vs “Say hello to my little friend!” You can decide this one, too.

Anyway, now that obligatory Scarface line is out of the way, let’s get to the meat. The 1983 version is so iconic I don’t even know what to say. Tony lies between the light and dark, between being a peasant and a drug-lord, between life and death. A look of distaste for what he sees before him and gun in hand, the black/white/rad imagery is so fantastic that you look past the reams of type.

How do you feel about advertising?

• September 25, 2008
  6 Comments // Critique

Some of the best and brightest creatives are in advertising. It is an area where most of the content is witty, beautiful, inspiring and memorable. But there is a darker side to advertising which often leaves a foul taste in the mouths of those who experience it at a constant level. Meaning pretty much all of us. I go into how I feel about advertising, but what I’m really interested in is how do you feel about advertising?

Love

It’s all about a good idea

It’s all about a good idea. Advertisers have a second to get your attention, elicit some sort of emotion, to become memorable and hopefully persuade you to purchase something. One second. Probably less. So at the core of this second is a good idea, an elegant idea. An elegant idea that needs to be wrapped in something beautiful, be it an illustration, photograph or typography.

This is what I love about advertising.

• Good, clever, elegant ideas.
• Brilliantly designed, illustrated, photographed or typeset pieces.

Of the above two, what is there to not love?

A good example of a great idea,
simply executed with powerful, witty photography.

Given the fraction of time given to get attention, the design needs to be fantastically simple, illustrating elegant ideas. Ideas that aren’t always all-bad. Ideas like donating to charities, or making a change in your life to make yourself feel better about yourself and more confident. Perhaps it’ll alert you to a product you’ve been waiting months for and is bound to improve your way of life. Not all awful things, no? And besides, if you don’t want to purchase something, you don’t! You just say to yourself ‘what a clever ad, time to keep moving’ and ignore it.

50 Movie Poster Remakes (M-R)

• September 21, 2008
  5 Comments // Graphic Design

It is a good day to come to the races ladies and gentlemen, we are here today to witness something beautiful. Something elegant! These ponies are going to fly through their air for your amusement! We have the unforgettable Oceans 11 looking far stronger and faster than its older brother, Eddie Murphy ruining yet another piece of creative output, several horses of horror that’ll knock your socks off and a 44 year old backed by Alfred Hitchcock that’ll knock the pizazz off it’s competitor.

The remake of The Manchurian Candidate sports a better poster than its original. A good sense of hierarchy, you don’t get the feeling the names of the actors is more important than the title of the movie. Even though in the original this may have been the case. The typography is strong and the layout is nicely balanced. All except the tag line that Mr. Washington is crying.

Mighty Joe Young (1949 & 1998)

Survival is an instinct. Red is a colour. Water is wet. Thank-you for the advice. This one line pushes me to prefer the original, even though we’re being spoken to for no apparent reason. I’m really starting to dislike taglines. Bitterness aside, the newer version isn’t awful design-wise at all. The type is nice and simple and they didn’t just use a roughed up font which most do, so no repeating textures in multiple letters. All the darkness with splashes of bright lights works well, and light through dust/smoke/clouds is always interesting to look at.

The Mummy (1932 & 1999)

The Mummy cops an eye-full in the original. Clearly, over 60 years later, there aren’t as many women for the Mummy to be looking at, so he’s having a good ol’ yawn.

Typographic Marks Unknown

• September 18, 2008
  56 Comments // Typography

There are many typographic marks which are familiar to most, but understood by few. Most of these glyphs have interesting histories and evolutions as they survived the beatings given to them through rushed handwriting of scribes and misuses through history. They now mostly live on our keyboards and in our software, and a few are used often, so it seems only fitting to know where they come from and how to correctly use them.

The Pilcrow

History of the Pilcrow

As with many elements of language today, it all started with Latin. While the pilcrow has evolved to resemble a backwards P, this is nothing more than incidental. In its early forms, the pilcrow was a C, a shorthand used for the Latin word capitulum, meaning chapter, mostly in a religious sense, which may be why it isn’t uncommon to see it in use in Biblical texts today.

Replacing another symbol, the paragraphos, to become the new mark representing a paraph—a new line of thought or break in text—it evolved over time through the natural development of handwriting. Initially starting as the C, a slash was drawn through it, perhaps to make it more noticeable, then a second slash was added, and through time the C went from being the vertical centre of the lines, to the top of them. All this ended in what is often now seen as a P backwards.

The evolution of the Pilcrow

Using the Pilcrow

Initially the pilcrow was used to separate blocks of text, rather than dividing them with space. While this is, of course, now the normal thing to do, it isn’t impossible to find modern text that do the same as what was originally intended, mostly in an effort to insert a little bit of flare or maybe to serve as a throwback to typesetting that may be seen as a little more classical. An example that is often cited is Eric Gill’s An Essay On Typography. It is also used by proofreaders to denote a paragraph that should be split, and also as a mark used to reference a specific paragraph is legal documents (an example is included in the Section Sign below).

While graphic designers, and especially those outside the field, would have no major need to think about using the pilcrow, it is worth noting that they can be a pleasure to design for our typographic friends.

50 Movie Poster Remakes (H-L)

• September 14, 2008
  9 Comments // Graphic Design

In part two of this four part series of analyzing the differences between movie posters—originals vs remakes—we have some great comparisons. This meal’s main ingredient is a fleshy base of horror/thriller, with a twist of romance, a dash of comedy and a sprinkle of absurdity. It will serve 13 couples.

This is a great batch because it showcases how far posters have come in the horror genre. From horrible beginnings of tacky facial expressions, it’s now possible to say that posters showcasing death, blood and gore are in fact beautiful. Delicate textures and soft browns & yellows with dashes of red, it’s easy to see that the designers behind these posters love what they do. Crafted with care, there is just something stunning about these pieces of macabre. And horror isn’t alone in growth. With the couple of examples below, you’ll notice that the posters for action films has improved greatly also even though their begging weren’t spawned from such beginnings of that of horror.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977 & 2006)

GLADIATORS, ARE YOU READY?! As almost always, the new adaption of this horror flick is far superior to it’s predecessor. Although, the type has me a little perplexed as it feels as if the H/i hasn’t been kerned properly. The girl in the shot looks more bored than scared, but the textures in the background, the dirty hand in a glove and the required text in the bottom left is so nicely done I hardly even noticed her vacancy.

The Hitcher (1986 & 2007)

I love the simplicity of the 1986 version of The Hitcher’s poster, and the logo makes me smirk in it’s originality when compared to the 2007 version. But everything else is almost laughable about this original. It does feel right for the time, but hasn’t aged well. Not to mention the colours, texture and shot of the car in the 2007 version make me swoon. Somehow the designer was able to make the required squished-to-hell text work in a way that makes it obvious the poster was designed with it in mind, not at the last moment when it had to be shoved in somewhere.

House On Haunted Hill (1959 & 1999)

The poster for the 1959 version of House On Haunted Hill wins the ‘Badass of this post’ award. A skeleton hanging a women, some guy with unexplainable hair carrying around a head, and fantastic type makes up the winner. The 1999 version feels like it was designed with a marketing rep sitting behind the designer. Not that the four (I count four, not counting the credits text) fonts aren’t enough, but the paragraph of text at the top is a little too much. Which is a shame, because if the text at the top and faces in the hand weren’t there, this would be a fantastically intriguing poster.

The Creative Blogger ~ Jacob Cass

• September 10, 2008
  3 Comments // Interviews

Blogging has become the platform for many people to voice their opinions, give advice, inspire and teach. Some of the people in the ‘blogosphere’ have become celebrities within their niche, while most stay shrouded in obscurity, no matter how much effort and love they pour into their little space of the web. A lot of those who succeed seem to be able to do it in a manner which appears effortless, and do so amazingly quickly. Jacob Cass is one of those people. He was kind enough to answer a few questions about blogging, university and design.

From 0 to 6,000 (and counting) subscribers in less than a year, Jacob Cass has propelled Just Creative Design to some amazing places. In that time, his name has been on many sites listening him as either one of the most successful bloggers under 21 or in Australia, mentioned in an episode of LayersTV and has written guest articles for Daily Blog Tips, Creative Curio, David Airey and Freelance Switch. A decent list for someone under the legal drinking age in the United States. But the most impressive thing about Jacob? Given his rapid popularity, he is still an easy going, approachable and nice guy.

Alex Charchar: Let’s start off by talking about your blog, Just Creative Design. You’ve been blogging for less than 12 months, yet you’ve built up a considerable audience. When you were starting, did you expect it to be the success that it has been so quickly? Why do you think you’ve been able to grow the audience so rapidly?

Jacob Cass: I never expected to grow so quickly, in fact when I first started blogging my goal was to have 1,000 subscribers by the end of 12 months which is a bit of a laugh now, considering.

It hasn’t been easy growing the audience so rapidly, I did and do put a lot of work into the blog writing quality articles, replying to comments, reading, promoting and commenting on other blogs along with researching SEO techniques and keywords constantly. I started off back in November not knowing one thing about SEO, Blogging or Social Media… In fact I didn’t even have a friend online. I guess it just shows that building a blog from nothing can be done.

I started off back in November not knowing
one thing about SEO, Blogging or Social Media

50 Movie Poster Remakes (A-G)

• September 4, 2008
  22 Comments // Graphic Design

Let’s get ready to ruuummmbllleee!! In the red trunks we have the movie posters of the originals, coming equipped with some highs and lows in their career, and at certain angles, unflatteringly showing their age. In the blue trunks we have the younger, the newer, the remakes! They can sometimes be all flash-bang with their photoshopped, oversized faces, but are fully capable of delivering a masterful punch. Ahem… now that’s out of the way, let’s have a look at 50 movie posters and how they’ve been designed for movies that have been remade … round one!

Remaking a movie, or anything really, is an odd thing to do. Essentially those involved are saying either “it was done wrong the first time, we can do it better” or “it worked before, so let’s repackage this and make some money”. So what about the designers behind the marketing material? They can either reinterpret the poster in the same way the director might reinterpret the movie, or they could go right off centre and doing something altogether different. In this four part series, I pit the originals against the remakes for 50 movies; totalling in 100 posters.

One thing to note: in all but one or two cases, these are the posters that Wikipedia provides as the theatrical versions. With pretty much any movie there are many, many posters, depending on the country they were released in, budget, the cast involved and a million other things. So for these posts, I’m only talking about the two posters shown.

Alfie (1966 & 2004)

Let’s start with getting one thing straight – Michael Caine is awesome. This poster however, is not. The huge amount of quotes thrown all over the poster where ever they can fit just makes Mr. Caine’s floating head suffocate.. which would explain why this modern day Casanova looks so unhappy, which brings up the question of if this can really be considered the original theatrical poster?. The newer version of the poster shows some lovely constraints, hasn’t got the stars face half the size of the poster and uses a lovely ligature! A ligature people! You don’t see that everyday in movies posters. The strip that captures Jude Law is a little thick for the font used (but only barely) and the “what’s it all about?” with it’s sinking question mark reeks of the marketing department. Overall, 2004 Alfie is the clear winner, especially as the stray head of the 2004 version is a great nod to the original (be it coincidence or not).

The Amityville Horror (1979 & 2005)

While putting this list together I realised that a lot of the posters for the horror movie remakes are far superior to the originals. That being said, I’m not sure this one falls into that category. I’m a big fan of massive, strong typography and the “For God’s sake, get out!” quote makes me smirk every time. That being said, I do love the logotype for the 2005 version, and it does direct the eye better, especially with the far more interesting imagery. But the 1979 version is so killer (hah, get it?) because of that quote.

Bad News Bears (1976 / 2005)

The thing that I can appreciate the most about the 2005 version of the Bad News Bears poster is the fact that the designers behind it decided to directly recreate the original with the new cast in tow. While the illustrations of the original are slightly better because of the strong shading, the layout is not. The 2005 version doesn’t hide the title of the movie, which is now filled with colour and a lovely and ever-so-slight gradient and, best of all, the star’s name doesn’t come first.