Movie posters serves an important function within the marketing of movies. It hangs outside of numerous cinemas around the world, and they have to provide a succinct summary of the movie in a single picture that is also visually intriguing so that it could attract its viewers at first glance. Many would belief that a movie poster is a simple snapshot of a key scene or of the main characters within the movie but it is much more complex than that. To invite people to purchase the ticket and walk into the cinema, the poster has to be visually attractive and at the same time not leaking too much information; this usually requires the poster to contain certain visual or compositional contradictions in order to do this which would require a special interplay between color, composition, text fonts, and layout. Here is 2 movie posters which hooked me instantaneously.
The strong contrasting color between orang and blue caught my attention at first sight. Then clearly examining the photograph of the main female characters, the image itself even begs more questions. Why is the women bleeding? Why is parts of her brain showing? Why she appeared to be not experiencing any pain? The neon color theme of the poster also perfectly fits the futuristic setting of the film.
To me, this poster demonstrates the power of typography design. The layout of the Chinese characters perfectly fits the falling motion of the rain drops and compared to gigantic words the two main characters appeared to be small. Though the Oscar nominated film is about bullying in Chinese schools, the movie is ironically named Better Days with the Chinese words written on the poster being: “When you were YOUNG”, the seeming contradiction between the printed words and the content of the movie along with the imagery of the two main character appeared to be small but staring into the light in a heavy storm makes the poster very visually intriguing.
