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Author Topic: Title Design Robert E. Allen Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1078 From: Checotah, Oklahoma Registered: Jul 2002 posted 05-12-2012 12:32 PM                     What's with today's title designers? Many of the titles are so small and unappealing that it almost looks like the designers are ashamed of their work. When I run those films on my 32 inch TV screen you can hardly see them or the credits. Give me titles like "The Sound Of Music", "Rio Bravo" or "Hello Dolly". To me opening the film with a great title design makes the film even more special.  |  IP: Logged Jeff Taylor Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 601 From: Chatham, NJ/East Hampton, NY Registered: Apr 2000 posted 05-12-2012 01:11 PM                     Where is Saul Bass when you need him...  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 05-12-2012 02:23 PM                        Movie studios must hate titles, considering many one-sheets don't even have the title on them. I have four one-sheets up right now that have no title on them, or else a dumb abbreviation ("MIB3").  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 05-12-2012 02:47 PM                     Tastes in design change. Regarding small type sizes on screen: I have a feeling more than a few designers are not taking care to see how the lettering in opening and end credits is rendered on older, standard definition television sets. Maybe they don't care. More TV networks are merely letter-boxing their HD programming for SD viewers and not giving much thought about how fuzzy certain details will look on old TV sets. 720p and 1080i are pretty much the new standard definitions the way they see it. I also have a feeling title designers don't feel much one way or the other about the look of their work on screen. Anymore it's just a job. The person actually doing the title work is probably just pushing buttons based on the creative decisions made by some focus group. Punch in. Punch out. Who cares. Movie posters are in the same camp. The days are gone where illustrators like Bob Peak, Richard Amsel or Drew Struzan would create the primary marketing image for a movie, the illustration for the one sheet. Now it's all carefully photographed, Photoshopped heads of actors thrown together in 2468 various collage options. Let the focus group decide which one looks the best and then generate a polished version of it. It's now a rarity for a new movie to have any sort of "brand" or "logo" like Star Wars, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, West Side Story or Indiana Jones. Most movie title "brands" are set in a standard typeface rather than custom made. You guys have heard me joke often about the movie title on so many movie posters and opening credits being set in Trajan. Some of the Trajan over-use has toned a little. Nevertheless, the vast majority of movie posters are using the same few type families repeatedly. In addition to Trajan, I see a lot of Futura, Trade Gothic, Bank Gothic, Akzidenz Grotesk, FB Agency and Gotham. Too many posters just have a same-ness to them that just makes them unremarkable. Walk through the new releases aisle in a video store and it's hard to see anything that stands out from the crowd. That probably gets into the over-use of the minimalist teaser poster. The concept is pretty old now. Studios have been screwing around with it since the early 1980s at least. A big one sheet poster with a very simple visual concept communicates to a crowd a little faster than the same old movie poster layout (especially when the current layouts are so "been there done that").  |  IP: Logged David Favel Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 764 From: Ashburton, New Zealand Registered: Feb 2002 posted 05-13-2012 01:04 AM                     Secretary, poster done well?  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 05-13-2012 10:16 AM                     The poster for Secretary is a provocative yet very simple visual image. I'll give it that. Still, it's a photograph. At least the "secretary" title is set in a letter style that makes sense thematically rather than something like Trajan.  |  IP: Logged

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