Mar 01 2011 March 1, 2011 March 1, 2011 17Comments by ben

‘Heartbroken’

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For the first time in many a month I find myself reading Creative Review.

In it there is an article on one of my favourite subjects: movie posters.

Apparently there is a niche strand of movie poster design that is commissioned for festivals and art house cinemas. The posters are really excellent, but they never see the side of a bus or the wall of your local Cineplex.

In other words, they are the ‘chip shop’ part of that particular discipline.

But the resemblance to advertising doesn’t end there. Under the subhead ‘heartbroken’, the brilliant Corey Holms explains his feelings on trying to get a big client to buy good work:

‘Every poster is a compromise, and I think that a lot of designers have the same feelings that I do, which is that when you look back at your work, all you see is what could have been…the typeface that got changed, or the shot of the star smiling that I was required to use that removed the intended tension in the poster. The most difficult part of the movie poster industry is that 99% of what we do is thrown in the trashcan. We generate a phenomenal amount of work – six to ten unique posters per designer, per round, and you rarely have more than three or four days to complete them. For me, the most frustrating thing is the incredibly difficult balance between caring and not caring. If you care too much then every single revision and comp that dies rips your heart out, so you have to be detached from the work. And if you don’t care enough, your work suffers. Part of the reason I left the industry is because I genuinely care about the work I do and there’s so much amazing work generated that never sees the light of day. I can only have my heart broken so many times.’

Bless.

If you’ve worked in advertising for more than a year, I’m sure that sounds very familiar.

Nice/depressing to know we’re not alone…