Assignment: The Prestige Poster, Vintage Redesign

A while back, in one of my Poster Trends articles, I mentioned that I thought the poster campaign for The Prestige really missed a great opportunity to pay homage to that late 19th Century style of magic posters. And instead came up with this:

And these, which are definitely more creative, and at least hint at the setting of the film more overtly:

Well, I ended up actually putting my money where my mouth is, so to speak, by making the posters myself using Photoshop and Illustrator. This was for a class, at first. We had to propose a redesign of something we thought was poorly designed. Initially, our final project was to actually create that redesign, so I got started on it early. But then our teacher announced that the final project assignment had been changed, so this ended up being extra credit.

I learned a hell of a lot, putting this thing together. I'll go ahead and document some of the steps that went into making it.

First, I took two of those posters from above and used the figures of the Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as reference and isolated their figures in Photoshop.

I discovered that the process is like the digital equivalent of chiseling a form into stone. I used the pen tool to create jagged shapes of different colors, then used the airbrush eraser to whittle the shapes down and fade into each other so the face looked soft and rounded.

Once I had his and Hugh Jackman's figures ready to go, I started laying everything out.





When I started making the characters for those bottom circles, I used the same technique as I had for Jackman and Bale, but tried to make it less realistic and more like the kind of sketch you would see on those old magicians posters. I didn't quite pull off the authenticity, but it definitely turned out more cartoonish than the Jackman and Bale's faces.

So I tried to keep that in mind so the style would be the same with each of the four heads. But when I got to working on Scarlett Johannsen, I got a bit carried away:

I'm really proud of how it was starting to turn out, but it's definitely too realistic for this poster. However, it's very cool to know that I'm capable of that kind of trace work at this point. When the right project comes along, whether in school or not, I now know I can pull that off. For this poster, though, this was more appropriate:

So, the final layouts went like this:





The sepia-toned version is just for kicks. I don't particularly like it without the color. Below is the latest draft of the poster. I tried to make it look old, gave it some texture and wrinkles.

I'm reasonably happy with it. It was a learning experience, first and foremost. I might tinker with a few details, but overall, I'd be happy to frame it and hang it on my wall.

In related news, I want to do another one! Here's the rough layout, so far:

Assignment: Website Redesign pt 3

Lastly, we have hotbot.com, one of the forgotten search engines in the Google-driven world we now live in. Though, with such an awkward and bland design, there's a good reason many of us don't use it.


Broken down into basic shapes:

And the redesign:

If your logo's going to do the Yin Yang thing, why not take it all the way and really make the screen pop? I'm sure they have enough trouble competing with a giant like Google, so they might as well set themselves apart aesthetically. Of course, there's the question of functionality: when the screen cuts to search results, would the black & red background stay? Probably not, because then the text would be illegible. But then an abrupt cut to a pure white screen with text would be pretty awkward, too. So maybe the answer would be to keep the black & red background, but put the search results text in a grayish box that would lay over the background. Just a thought.

Assignment: Website Redesign pt 2

Next up is boo.com, which is an easy target, I'll admit, with its broken links and bad HTML. But let's pretend for a minute that it didn't end up branded as one of the biggest dot com flops of the late '90s, and instead see what can be done to fix what's there.

Broken down into basic shapes:

And the redesign:


The first thing to do was bring the page up from the bottom left corner of the screen and reduce the amount of links available on the main menu. Also, I replaced the ugly rainbow design on two of the buttons with a more appropriate purple, so that your eye is drawn to them, but they're not such an eyesore. The background has been changed to a solid yellow-orange, instead of that stark, blank white, but I could also imagine a real subtle pattern in there, too.

Assignment: Website Redesign

First up is CHUD.com, an excellent site for impassioned movie reviews, commentary, and up to date news on all kinds of film geekery. Unfortunately, it's riddled with seizure-inducing ads and organized with a general disregard for coherence. Coincidentally, as of today (9/4/09), they're "Undergoing Massive Beneath the Hood Improvements," so at least they know there's a problem.

Broken down into basic shapes:


And the redesign:


Since its primary function is to give us news and editorials, I brought in a little symmetry and made it a bit more like a newspaper. The ads are still there, but they belong on the rims of the page, and the search bar has been moved to the top right corner, on the header, where most people would expect it to be, anyway. I decided not to mess with the color scheme, because the black and green is essential to the theme of the site. "C.H.U.D." is a reference to a little known 1984 horror film of the same name, about a city plagued by mutants from the sewers.