Typography I

Typographic poster

For my first poster, I wanted to convey the sense of loneliness and suspense present throughout the movie. I wanted to also try to work in the retro aesthetic of the technology in the movie.

To convey the sense of suspense in the movie, I used type to create a planet peeking above the footer, using color to add texture. On the planet I added a single one to represent where the Alien came from, and in the space above the planet, I put another one to represent the Nostromo. I isolated the second one, alone in space to show that they were alone and no one was going to help them. The empty space around it creates a sense of mystery and dread.

In order to create the retro aesthetic of the movie, I chose to create my poster as if it was a block of code. The footer is formatted in a way similar to code, with each line representing a command put into the computer. The font I used a similar font used by windows cmd prompt, creating even more tie in with the code. 

I used the same font for the title on my first poster, I used wide kerning as well as large size to create hierarchy along with it’s isolation.

Expressive Poster

When I first was making this poster, I was planning on making it show the alien through some sort of frame such as the slits in a locker, but there was a problem with this, there are no scene where Ripley hides in a locker. This made the idea hard to tie into the movie.

I then decided to go with an alteration of my second idea which was to utilize a single light source to dimly light up the scene and create mystery, as the viewer doesn’t know what’s around the corner.

To make the poster feel dynamic, I utilized the lines created by the walls to create frames for the footer text. This allowed me to separate the footer into 3 distinct areas. The middle area is used to show the most important elements, the director, and the age rating. The left area is used to show the main actors in a slightly larger font than the text on the right.

For the title Text, I decided to keep the movie’s iconic style, with the large kerning. The space between the letters felt as though it tied into the mystery and suspense I was trying to create.

I also took the poster into Photoshop at the end to add some texture and depth to the type.

Over the course of this project, I saw improvement in many aspects of my design. I started out with a quite clunky and cluttered design since at first, I wanted to mimic medieval manuscripts. Though, I strayed away from this in favor of a more sleek and almost mysterious design to complement my topic.

At first, I was intent on drawing every illustration in the book, but my professor brought up a good point, and that "it would detract from the typographic elements of the piece." This caused me to stray away from doing the illustrations myself and instead of using various pictures and drawings from the games themselves, such as cover art and concept art.

I figured out a lot on how to properly organize a book layout without it looking cluttered. In order to make the text feel more central to the design, I made it so it took up a whole page while the opposite page was taken up by the image. This allowed me more freedom to play with the text. In order to make the design feel more dreamy, I added large blank spaces around the body. This expanded the margins and let the type take a more central role in the overall design.

The final design takes vague inspiration from illuminated manuscripts with its decorative border and tinted paper, but largely reflects a style more reminiscent of the Arts and Crafts movement of the industrial revolution. Taking inspiration from the old, but blending it together with the new to create a unique new style.