Film Poster - Final Crit

This morning was the final crit for the film poster brief, my final poster is shown below. I really enjoyed this crit, as I feel that this is the first crit I've had this year where I've genuinely gone into it feeling confident that my work was suitable and was as good as it can be, which I think shows my progression from the beginning of the year from when I used to be intimidated by crits. It also helped that everyone else's work was fantastic as well. 

I gave a brief synopsis of the film and spoke about how each of is identities were necessary for certain things to be achieved in his plan, and the only thing that brought them together was the fact they all wore glasses, which is one of the things you associate with assassins. I also spoke about how I liked the theory behind Bill Golds use of text in his posters and how I wanted to implement it in my work.

Questions About Design Decisions

This was the first crit I've had where I've felt like people have asked questions out of intrigue as apposed to being out of criticism, but I see this more as a reflection of my work than my course mates. 

I was asked about my choice of colour and choice of font. With regards to colour I spoke about how I needed to use something neutral for the hair as each identity had different coloured hair, and by keeping it consistent you bring the identities together as one person. I also wanted something quite cold to reflect the heartlessness and brutality of the character, so grey naturally leant itself well to these requirements. This then left the text and glasses needing to be the same colour, which meant I couldn't pick a vivid or vibrant colour, as I didn't want the text to overshadow the other use of the colour because I wanted the glasses to be the iconic bit. It also had to be a colour with a darker tone than the grey. It seemed like the natural and most sensible choice was black because not only did it fit these requirements, but it complimented the cold feel of the grey by keeping the poster monochromatic. 

I chose to use Helvetica as my font because like I spoke about with colour, I needed something simple so the text didn't overshadow the glasses. I also wanted a font that's cap height was the same as the ascender height, as this keeps the text looking tidier which aids me in not detracting from the glasses. I experimented using Gotham as well, but it seemed a bit too wide to me whereas the shape of the text fitted the shape of the hair more when I used Helvetica.

General Feedback

The feedback I was given was very complimentary in general. People said that:

• I'd communicated something about the film in a discrete way as opposed to going down the obvious assassin route of using guns etc. 
• It was good that I'd been influenced by existing work but not to the point where I'd just straight up copied it.
• They could tell that time had been spent adjusting the composition.
• The general feel of the poster reflects the general feel of the film, and that I'd got the poster spot on.

In truth, I'm very pleased with my poster and was hoping for good feedback because I felt I deserved it, but it went a lot better than I thought it would.