mental_floss magazine
SUBSCRIBE >
GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS >
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS >
subscriber services >
Because movies are such a star-driven medium, a lot of movie posters blindly follow suit: you Photoshop the lead actors’ heads into the sky, probably superimposed over an evocative landscape (if it’s a chick flick) or an explosion (if it’s a dude flick), then slap the title of the movie and the date it’s coming out in there somewhere, some gushing quote from a local-rag nobody about it being the “best (genre) of the (season),” and you’ve got yourself a movie poster!
But wait a sec — stop the large-format printers! — before you start stripping heads and pasting them into skies, there’s another breed of movie poster out there; it strives to be simple and iconic at the same time, it doesn’t rely on faces, and it makes font nerds everywhere salivate. (We know you’re out there — just check out the passionate responses to this post by Higgins and this one from David. You people love fonts!) A great hot-off-the-presses example is pictured above: the movie (27 Dresses) is a rom-com starring Knocked Up’s Katherine Heigl that’ll be coming out sometime in January, about a woman who fashions herself a magic dress made of words. (Kidding! But it’s a cool poster, no?)
Stranger Than Fiction
A great movie and a great fonty poster: Will Farrell is literally overwhelmed by the type on the page. (Another favorite exclamation of mine: the band !!!.)
Malcolm X
Perhaps the most iconic and recognizable of text-only movie ad campaigns, the Malcolm X image spawned a line of “X” hats, shirts, and other merch. (By the way, can anyone name this font?)
Little Miss Sunshine
This clever teaser for LMS plays on the titular protagonist’s brooding, voluntarily mute brother, who communicates primarily via scribbled notes. Something about the angry scrawl and the insanely happy canary-yellow background makes this poster subtly hilarious.
The Illusionist
More word-clothes! But this time it’s Ed Norton in 2006’s The Illusionist, and the font of his language-suit gives this poster a distinctly turn-of-the-century feel (as opposed to the modern teenage-girl feel of 27 Dresses).
The Simpsons Movie
The Simpsons being probably the most famous TV show on earth, and thus its style one of the most recognizable anywhere, all Fox needed was a few simple elements for people to immediately get it (and empty their pockets at the box office).
There are certainly great ones I haven’t mentioned — what are your favorite font-tastic posters?
Comments (12)
Comment
I think the Malcolm X font is Bodoni Egyptian.
>.>
posted by xenylamine on 10-16-2007 at 11:12 am
The best I could come up with for the malcolm X font was Rockwell, but its a little stretch taller than the ones I got. I linked to a screencap I did of the X in question, in my name.
posted by james on 10-16-2007 at 2:43 pm
Check out the Redacted poster at impawards.com. Others I found there were Before the Devil Knows Your Dead, Bee Movie (the one with the big B), Skid Marks, and Death Sentence. There are more, but I’ll stop here.
posted by Meagan on 10-16-2007 at 2:52 pm
This isnt really related to the topic, but…
27 Dresses was partially shot in Rhodes Island (I don’t know how much). There was a big buzz around the New England area. Many of my freinds went down to participate as extra’s playing ‘goths’. I cant wait for the movie to see how many of them made it in!
The poster would be better in Bauhaus though (The only goth/font related joke that can be made).
posted by Jeremy on 10-16-2007 at 4:42 pm
speaking of fonts and movie posters, why do the majority of the designs use
that extreme condensed thin font (don’t know it’s name)to list the credits? It’s always the same and VERY hard to read, expecially when they also use it in TV spot…
posted by Lauren on 10-16-2007 at 5:38 pm
Does the film “Helvetica” count? That was a good poster.
posted by Lauren on 10-16-2007 at 6:03 pm
good question Lauren. a good example of that font is in the illusionist poster above. I absolutely hate that font because its completely illegible unless its gigantic.
posted by james on 10-16-2007 at 6:27 pm
I wish I could see a chart of fonts. An example of the fonts with their name. I don’t know one font from another. It could just be the name of the font written its own font.
posted by Tdave on 10-17-2007 at 2:14 am
And then there are Polish movie posters. They are completely different:
www.polishposter.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=USA
posted by jab on 10-17-2007 at 3:39 am
… and then there are the Polish movie posters which are completely different.
They are really artistic and innovative. Usually the American movie posters get their Polish remakes, too.
Polish posters try more to describe the style and atmosphere of the movie rather than just to inform you that this is a movie with actors who have faces.
Google for “polish posters” for more.
posted by jab on 10-17-2007 at 3:49 am
Okay, I know this is off subject a little… but what about the TV series “V” from the 80’s. The creeepy spray painted, red “V” was a cool icon.
posted by Stick on 10-17-2007 at 9:21 am
The poster for 300 had a killer font, set on the black cliff as the soldiers go tumbling over it like lemmings. Cool.
posted by Johnny Cat on 10-17-2007 at 2:09 pm