1. A poster designed this millenium:
Lord of War (Art Machine, A Trailer Park Company, 2005)
The wall of text that is customarily placed at the bottom of most posters migrates to the border of this poster to help shift emphasis from the credits to the image of the title character. The unique texture of the image draws the viewer in to reveal the jarring secret to its unity--it's actually made entirely of bullets and shell casings!
2. A Post-Modern Movie poster (designed after 1960):
A Clockwork Orange (Philip Castle, 1971)
The repeated triangular shape of the central images (themselves making an "A") and the "A" in orange brings a geometric unity to the design, intentionally disrupted by the shape of the knife jabbing out of the image's tidy triangular bounder, drawing attention to the chilling images inside. Couple that with the film's understated but straightforward tag line, and the design as a whole captures the mood of a pristine surface masking sinister undercurrents, setting the tone for an otherwise complex and hard-to-describe film.
3. A poster designed by Saul Bass:
One, Two, Three (1961)
Bass's monochromatic design emphasizes the juxtaposition of two images that need no introduction: the iconic shape of the Coca-Cola bottle and the American flag. The image maintains its unity by using the same handwritten lettering for the title (placed on the label of the bottle), the director and the cast, while the lettering conforms to the shape of the bottle--a playful design befitting a comedy.
4. A movie poster designed before 1950:
Gone with the Wind (Artwork by Howard Terpning, Design by Tom Jung, 1939)
Emphasis is placed on a scintillating picture of the two principal characters, with extra tension created with the use of bright oranges and yellows. The tiny vignette of Civil War imagery below and the modest placement of "Winner of 10 Academy Awards" rounds out the design as if to say, "Seeing Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh getting hot-blooded should be enough for you, but just in case here's some historical context and cinematic credentials. Hello? Most magnificent picture EVER!"
