The greatest master of poster design丨Bill Gold
On May 20, 2018, movie poster designer Bill Gold died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. Died of illness at Greenwich Hospital in the United States at the age of 97.
Gold, who was born in 1921, has been fond of movies and painting since he was a child. Because he studied illustration and design at Pratt Institute in New York, Gold entered Warner Bros. Film Company after graduating at the age of 20. of poster department work.
In his 70-year career, Gold designed more than 2,000 films
Hitchcock, Kubrey Gram, Eastwood, and many famous director's movie posters are also written by him.
From "Song of Victory" in 1942 (his first movie poster) to "Hoover" in 2011 (his last work), it can be said that his design career has witnessed The development of Hollywood for most of its film history.
As part of the movie promotion, few people care about who designed the unforgettable posters.
But an excellent poster can attract the audience's attention and condense the essence of the movie. It is not just a piece of paper posted on the wall, but becomes a part of the movie experience.
He explained the design concept this way:
“I instinctively knew what a movie poster should look like. I looked at MGM, Paramount and all the companies. Everything I've done, I've always found that they would show three actors in their heads, and that's all the concept they were going to use. : I don’t want to just make a concept with three positive faces, I want a story.”
Sometimes when you watch an unforgettable movie, it will be many years later. , maybe you have forgotten all about the plot, but a wonderful movie poster can remind you of everything.
"Casablanca", "Call to Murder", "A Clockwork Orange", "The Exorcist", "Unforgiven", "My Fair Lady", it is hard to believe that there are actually people behind these great movies Such an incredible connection.
They have a different poster designer.
These posters have different styles and forms, but they have one unique characteristic.
These posters reflect Gold's understanding and respect for the film itself.
In order to commemorate the passing of this master, we will select 10 posters from Bill Gold's many classic designs in his life. I wonder if there are any movies you love.
"Rope of Souls"
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
"The Game of Thrones"
Director: Laurence Olivier
"The Male and Female Robbers"
Director: Arthur Penn
"Blood Behind Bars"
Director: Stewart Rosenberg
"A Clockwork Orange"
Director: Stanley Kubrick
"007: Top Secret"
< p>Director: John Grant"Casablanca"
Director: Michael Curtiz
"The Exorcist"
Director: William Friedkin
"The Liar"
Director: George Roy Hill
"Mystic River"
p>Director: Clint Eastwood
The movie tells the story of three good friends, Jimmy, Dave and Sean. Dave became more and more alienated from others due to sexual abuse at the age of 10, and the three went their separate ways. Later, they reconnected because of the murder of Jimmy's daughter, but unexpectedly discovered that all the evidence pointed to Dave.
In order to find inspiration for the design, Gold also spent a month in Boston and took many photos. The final poster shows the reflections of the three main characters in the water, which hints at the relationship between several people's chaotic lives.
It also echoes a line of dialogue in the movie, "We bury our sins here. We wash them clean."
"
Film critic Leonard Martin once commented on Gold's posters as
"The designs of these posters are as personal as the films they are intended to promote. I can't identify Bill Gold's style - which is actually a compliment, because he doesn't try to interpret different films with one visual way of thinking, but rather develops a visual style for different kinds of films. design style. "How important are posters to movies? He costs 1 million to draw one.
There is a saying in the domestic film and television industry: A good movie poster is worth 20 million box office.
Movies Posters form people's first impression of a movie, which plays a very important role in promoting the work. Some people will even pay for a movie just for a poster.
There is such a top actor in China. Movie poster designer: He needs to make an appointment one month in advance, and the construction period is long. The works he gives will not be reworked, and the price starts at 1 million.
But many big directors are still willing to spend time waiting for his works. The audience will even go into the theater to watch a bad movie because of his poster.
The designer is called
Huang Hai
, a native of Fujian and a graduate. Department of Design, Xiamen University.
Before Huang Hai, my country’s film industry did not pay much attention to movie posters, and film producers mainly stayed at the stage of using celebrities to attract audiences——
The posters with big faces are not aesthetic at all.
The poster for "The Secret of the Dragon"
is a typical example. /p>
What, you said it looks familiar? I think so too.
After Huang Hai realized that he liked to pile up celebrity portraits, he decided to break this habitual thinking.
In his posters, the story of the movie itself is the focus, and the faces of the stars are only a small part of the movie, so the pilot poster he designed for "The Secret of the Dragon" is like this -
Since he started designing movie posters in 2007, Huang Hai has been doing subtraction - removing useless scraps and digging out the core of the movie.
The one he is most grateful to is Jiang Wen, because of his first one. The work was "The Sun Also Rises" directed by Jiang Wen, which also established his future design style.
Jiang Wen's requirements for posters at that time. Simple and crude: Look at the feeling, don’t take photos, just find the material from movies. After rejecting hundreds of designs, Jiang Wen spotted this poster at the Cannes Film Festival. "An instant hit": the bright red background, the barefoot woman, the embroidered shoes hanging on the branches, the story comes out at once
This strong visual impact and unique artistic conception make the story come out immediately. Everyone was impressed, and he designed several other posters for this film, which instantly became famous internationally.
After that, Huang Hai began to experiment with more Chinese-style posters.
He always carefully studies the script, selects characters and materials from the stills, and then goes to the shooting site to experience it, carefully captures the emotions of the characters, and uses traditional Chinese elements as a visual language in the poster design.
In 2014, Huang Hai was invited to design a poster for
"The Golden Age" directed by Ann Hui. He gave this work:
An educated young man dressed up The woman stands in a corner amid the messy dripping ink. The traces of ink spilling are irregular and spread out wantonly, which is a metaphor for the heroine's quiet and peaceful posture in troubled times.
The combination of movement and stillness reflects the contradictions and conflicts of the era background and characters. The heroine stands tenaciously on the page, just like a little person in the torrent of the great era.
The story of female writer Xiao Hong is vivid in my mind, and it also foreshadows the drift of life.
After that, Huang Hai also designed five international versions, which took more than half a year in total. Director Xu Anhua, who has always been strict with details, said "OK" after seeing the poster and made no further changes.
Huang Hai’s use of ink and calligraphy has a strong appeal, which is both the finishing touch and the finishing touch.
In the poster design of Zhang Yimou
"Shadow"
, he only used black and white to extract the black of ink and the white of rice paper. , forming the tone of the poster.
The entire film revolves around the avatar and the real body. The two are in opposition but have a unified relationship, just like the shape of Tai Chi and Bagua - merging with each other but always separate.
The word "shadow" is written in running script, with vigorous and elegant brushwork, especially the intermittent strokes and discontinuities in the last stroke, which give people a difficult feeling, which just hints at the character of "shadow" Features.
In the American version of the poster designed for Wong Kar-wai
"The Grandmaster"
, Huang Hai used traditional Chinese arch elements.
Two people inside the door stood opposite each other, showing off the gait and boxing skills of martial arts - arches, martial arts, and robes. It is the perfect balance and interpretation of movement and stillness, and a hazy and delicate expression of friendship. A long sense of history.
It not only shows the style of the great master Ip Man, but also has a great sense of lens and literature. These are quite consistent with Wong Kar-wai's personal style.
In the poster design of animated movies, Huang Hai also showed a very high level.
The poster of "Big Fish and Begonia"
uses highly saturated colors. Through changes in lines, layers, and colors, it depicts a picture of magnificent colors and fantasy. picture scroll.
A big red fish with smooth lines is in the center, and the girl touches the mouth of the fish, which depicts the wonderful encounter between the two.
The interweaving of red and cyan is the blend of ocean and flame, including the spreading wings of the phoenix, which has strong oriental aesthetic characteristics, and also opens up the audience's imagination of a mysterious dream.
In the Chinese version poster designed for the digitally restored version
"My Neighbor Totoro"
, Xiaomei and Satsuki run happily on the furry belly of Totoro On top, the whole style is warm and healing.
This poster aroused a strong response in Japan as soon as it came out, and it was even on the hot search. Everyone praised the design of the poster as no less than the original.
In the Japanese movie
"Shoplifters"
In the Chinese version of the poster, Huang Hai uses an ukiyo-e style and combines the classic scene of the film with an umbrella to form a Feeling of "home".
In addition to having a strong sense of beauty, it also vividly expresses the concept of family conveyed in the movie. After the director Hirokazu Kore-eda read it, he greatly appreciated this euphemistic and implicit oriental beauty.
In the 2018 world's best posters selected by a British film magazine, "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Shoplifters" were both selected into the top 20.
A series of posters including the 2016 documentary "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City"
were also designed by Huang Hai.
In one of the posters, he selected part of a "Ru kiln azure-glazed string-patterned three-legged bottle" as the background color of the poster, and added a silhouette of a character with a uniform tone among the broken porcelain pieces.
It not only integrates characters and objects into one, but also details the daily restoration work of craftsmen. It perfectly conveys the theme of "big history, small craftsmen, choose one thing, and last a lifetime".
Huang Hai also designed a very eye-catching trailer poster for Chen Kaige's
"The Taoist Comes Down the Mountain"
.
When this ink-style poster came out, it made people feel high-end, and everyone's expectations for the movie were much higher.
Unfortunately, for the final official poster, the director still chose a version with many celebrities, which can be regarded as living up to the reputation of a bad movie.
Also, who would go to see this movie without stars? Story? Chen Kaige has not been able to tell stories for a long time.
An excellent movie poster carries the most sincere emotions and artistic conception behind a movie, not a simple pile of heads.
While fully guiding the commercial nature of the film, it can also carry forward oriental aesthetics. No wonder so many people say:
Basically, the movies are not worthy of his posters.
Finally, let’s appreciate some of the master’s works. Beijing Film Festival poster designer: "We didn't expect to be scolded like this"
\FilmFestival/
For all this, the designers behind this poster that caused an uproar What do you think?
Preview poster of the 10th Beijing International Film Festival
In recent days, a Beijing Film Festival poster has triggered unprecedented heated discussions. Compared with the one-sided criticism of the poster of the last Beijing Film Festival, this time the public's opinions on this poster are extremely polarized.
The crowd is divided into two distinct groups like Moses dividing the Red Sea: one group believes that the design language of this poster is very current and even represents the future of graphic design; the other group believes that this poster is unpolished and unpolished. It almost looks like an amateurish student work.
Voicer immediately interviewed the team of designers behind the Beijing Film Festival’s pilot poster "Stop the Ban" immediately after the incident. What was it like to unexpectedly become famous?
Liu Zhizhi&Mysterious Box
Liu Zhizhi
/Famous graphic designer, co-founder of Liliban & Fuyishanshan. Graduated from the Graphic Design Department of the School of Design, Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2003. Since 2010, he has been a lecturer at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. In 2003, MEWE Design Alliance was established with Guang Yu and He Jun. In 2007, Tumaoqiu Studio was reorganized with Guang Yu. In 2015, it was reorganized and banned. The design work has won the Tokyo Type Directors Club Nomination Award (2004-2009) and the New York International Art Directors Club Merit Award (2005-2006). In 2010, he became a member of AGI (International Alliance of Graphic Designers).
Mystery Box
/Served as senior designer and editor of "New Vision", creative director of the Chinese version of TheNewYorkTimesScienceTimes, and art director of TheNewYorkTimes China. In 2011, he founded the independent magazine "Cover". In 2013, he joined Tumaoqiu Graphic Design. In 2015, he reorganized with Liu Zhizhi and established Ban Studio. Those who prefer Editorialdesign try their best to convey more information through design.
Entry prohibited
/ was reorganized in 2015. Its members are composed of creative people with completely different design orientations. They are engaged in graphic design, illustration, interactive interface, publishing, and exhibition planning. Graphic design touches all aspects, including art, fashion, products, architecture, media, the Internet, music, literature, education, etc., and is highly cross-domain.
Official website of VOICERx:
Q&A
VOICERx: VOICERx:
Voicer: When you received the Beijing Film Festival project, the official What are the requirements?
Entry prohibition:
First of all, it must be clear that this poster is a pilot poster, not the main poster.
Although we followed the main poster at that time, the film festival may still hope to have a main poster that is more visually recognized by the official. So everyone on Weibo was very enthusiastic about the pilot poster we made. In fact, we tried too hard. I hope everyone can wait until the main poster comes out before being enthusiastic.
In fact, the organizers of the Beijing Film Festival respect us very much and did not make too many changes during the design process. Before making the design, they proposed that there must be a windmill, because their main logo is the windmill; they hope to have the Temple of Heaven, because the windmill and the Temple of Heaven have the meaning of good weather; in addition, they hope that the light and color can have a cinematic feel.
So basically they didn’t make any big changes, especially on the dynamic poster, they didn’t mention any specific opinions. Some designer friends on the Internet spoke for us: "Oh, we must have been bullied by Party A!", but in fact, we were not. Party A has requirements, and as mature designers, we certainly cannot ignore their requirements. Therefore, it is completely untrue to say on the Internet that this poster is the result of "forced" by Party A of the film festival.
Outdoor renderings of the Beijing Film Festival poster designed by Liliban:
No one expected that a pilot poster would be a hot topic, nor did we expect to be scolded like this, "Adventures in the private sector can be so dangerous." We were just wondering, why is there such a polarization in everyone's reaction?
Friends in the design circle said it was refreshing. Today, some designer friends said that we are a cross-generational design. This poster will It became a design standard for a new era, but it didn't.
It doesn’t matter whether you scold or not. What you are making is something that enters the public domain. Isn’t it normal to be scolded? It would be boring if it didn’t cause controversy. But we will think about the reasons for these disputes.
Many people do not realize that movie posters actually have a specific paradigm.
The fonts of many movie posters are made into calligraphy or metallic effects
Take the part of this poster that is the most criticized by others. Many people say why this word is not designed, why It only uses bold fonts, and the layout is also very strange. Why they say this is because most of the movie poster fonts they see are calligraphy; otherwise, they are the kind of three-dimensional fonts commonly seen in costume blockbuster posters, with the text designed to have a metallic texture. They will think that this is design. If you only use bold fonts, then there is no design.
Another point is that everyone feels that this poster does not have a high-tech sense of brilliance, nor does it have images such as celebrity heads and stills that appear in many movie posters. So they will think: Why is this poster different from the film festival poster I expected? People will feel rejection, fear, disgust, and anxiety because of this difference. In other words, this is not a question of beauty or not. Although movie poster design is a branch of graphic design, they are really two languages. The mismatch between the language of graphic design and the language of movie poster design caused this controversy. If it is not in a counterpoint relationship, it cannot constitute a discussion.
The overlapping details of the letters and the top of the Temple of Heaven
Many people said: "This poster is made like a student's homework. It doesn't know how to type. The balls on the top of the Temple of Heaven and the The words "Film" are all stacked up together, and we don't deal with them properly. It's uncomfortable for us with obsessive-compulsive disorder. "It's okay if it feels uncomfortable." Our graphic design is to make obsessive-compulsive disorder particularly uncomfortable to explore visual possibilities. This is originally our design language. You will find that there is no overlap in other places. This is actually a small thought we made during the design. However, due to the mismatch between the two sets of languages, this small thought became ineffective.
When designers see this overlap, they think it must be intentional, but people without design training will find it awkward, and this overlap becomes an attack point. Netizens say that we are unprofessional, and we can’t even free up positions? We can, because we all had a background in text design back then. We have designed so many title fonts more than ten years ago.
But there is a big gap between this trend and the field of movie posters. In the field of movie poster design, people think that if you have not done metal lettering or special effects, you are a liar. We have no way to defend ourselves. We can’t go on Weibo and explain to netizens one by one.
For example, the fashion industry has been wearing dad shoes for five or six years, but you come to a place where people are still wearing white shoes. If we were designing dad shoes in a place like this, they would definitely ask: How did you design a pair of shoes that were popular in the 1980s?
Although we have always wanted to discuss it with you on a public level, The current situation in China is that each group of people is exclusive based on the paradigm that this group of people can understand. Crowds of people should not close themselves off. We made a test, can we apply the most current language of graphic design to other industries? The result is that we found that: in the contemporary art world, music industry, media industry, and fashion industry, there is no problem. When it comes to the film industry, we encounter Problem.
Beijing Film Festival Series Posters
Voicer: There has always been a big difference between the aesthetic standards of the design industry and the average aesthetic of the general public. This time in the public sector Discussions may magnify this difference infinitely. Do you think this disconnection is a state that can be changed? Or do you intend to change this disconnection?
Establishing a prohibition:
There must be a disconnection, otherwise How to change it? If we now make something that everyone likes to hear and see, then there will be no possibility, and we will all be overwhelmed.
And what does "popularity like to hear and see" mean? It's hard to say. This public is not the same as that public. Russell said, "It should be noted that variety is the source of happiness." Variety is the form that all things should have. So this disconnect actually raises a question.
It is a good thing that everyone is at least willing to discuss and think about a poster, and it is better than discussing some inexplicable gossip.
For example, I am now explaining that the ball on the top of the treasure is pressed with words is actually a concept. After this explanation is given, if one or two people suddenly realize it, that is a good thing.
The ban on entry has led to many derivative designs for the poster
Voicer: When designing the Temple of Heaven, why was it designed in such a layer-by-layer form?
Entry prohibited:
This year is the 10th anniversary of the Beijing Film Festival. Our concept is to focus on the Chinese character "十" and use this Chinese character to make a windmill. When the windmill spins faster, it will turn into a circle, and then we took ten circular "lenses" to form the Temple of Heaven. Ten lenses stacked together are actually the structure in the lens. For example, Leica once produced a very famous lens, the Summicron 35mmF2, which was called the "Eight Tama" in Japan. So the Temple of Heaven we designed is made up of a bunch of lenses. Looking out from the Temple of Heaven is like filming a movie. This is what I mean.
It is forbidden to make the Chinese character "十" into a windmill
When we made it, we not only made it dynamic, but also made it a three-dimensional static one. The poster we have released now, It’s just a screenshot of one frame of the dynamic poster, not our final static poster. Dynamic poster motiongraphic is a trend internationally.
Voicer: How did the organizer of the Beijing Film Festival find out that entry is prohibited?
Entry is prohibited:
Many years ago, there was a poster for the Beijing Film Festival Before the collection event, Liu Zhizhi was invited to give a lecture on poster design, and that’s how he got to know the organizers of the Beijing Film Festival. They have always wanted us to come and make posters for them. The person in charge has been very sincere in inviting us for many years, but we have always declined until last year when we were really embarrassed and we accepted the invitation.
Last year’s poster was criticized like this, so we were prepared at that time. No matter what this year’s poster is made, it will attract criticism.
If people want to participate in discussions or vent their emotions, they will not think about problems sequentially. Better than last year's poster, so easy. If someone praises our poster for being better than last year's poster, it sounds like a curse.
Beijing Film Festival poster derivative renderings
Voicer: How would you rate your poster design?
Entry prohibited:
Percentage system? That’s difficult, let’s say 93.5. I think this poster can score above 80 points among all our works. Because its limitations are actually there. We need windmills and the Temple of Heaven. We can't express it in one picture, so we can only do dynamic ones. How to change the dynamics and how to transition scenes. In fact, there is a lot of thinking behind it. This poster may not be the best among our previous works, but it very much meets the requirements.
Voicer: Some people say that the poster you made this time is particularly Asian (cultural). What do you think?
Limited entry ban:
This is really not Asian. , we did a great job. Besides, isn't it good to be inferior? The Beijing Film Festival is originally very high, but we just want to subdue it.
Renderings of the Beijing Film Festival poster series
Voicer: What do you think is the most ridiculous among so many comments?
Entry prohibited:
"Is this made with PPT?"
Everyone is still concerned about the time and effort involved in using so-called "technology". If a poster looks very simple, they think it's not working and it's not working hard. In fact, customers also have this problem. The earliest dynamic posters we made were very simple. There were no colorful colors, just very simple solid colors. We also showed them the main visual of the 70th anniversary of the Berlin Film Festival this year. They still felt that it had no technical content, so we Only slowly were these color transformations introduced.
We also saw a very funny comment, saying that the most important thing about posters is to leave blank space, and the surrounding text should surround the graphics, especially the text in the upper right corner is a big no-no! This also creates a flat surface Have you learned design Feng Shui?
Voicer: After this incident came out, the designers of Voicer had a feeling: If the public cannot understand the designs made by designers, then in many cases they will not understand their own work. What is the meaning of it, she will feel a little confused.
Limited access:
The real public actually has nothing to do with you. If you think about it carefully, your design only serves two people, one is real, your Party A ; One is virtual, that is, the possible audience. There will be no third person.
As Guang Yu said: "High quality is scarce, low quality is the norm. Provocation is almost impossible to accept, and will be understood as lower than low quality."
For example, in this poster, we have solved several problems locally. Windmill? Yes. Ten years? Yes. Temple of Heaven? Yes. Lens means lens? Yes. In the dynamic poster, the windmill is white and the background is color. After the conversion, the Temple of Heaven is in color and the background is black and white, symbolizing the technological change from black and white to color in the film. We have solved all these problems and have a clear conscience.