Movie posters make a big impact. They seduce audiences in to spending their money on cinema tickets and can become the ‘image’ of the movie.

Then there are those posters that become more than just advertising material, they become iconic and pop culture collectables.  These artists didn’t rely on technology, computers or the latest photography must have.  These posters were hand drawn by extremely talented and creative artists who managed to capture the feeling of the films. Here are just a handful that come to mind when I think about these posters, I wanted to share them with you.  I’m not about to delve in to the techniques or theory of each image, it’s simply a collection of awesome posters!

Then of course, the master of cinematography Alfred Hitchcock had some fantastic posters…here are just a few.

Some of you may have seen these in an email already but I wanted to share these images for those who haven’t yet seen them.  I was stunned by the quality and uniqueness of the work, all of which are creations of Guido Daniele, an expert body painter from Italy.  I urge you to take a look at his site and see samples of his other work.  Some of these hand paintings took up to 10 hours to complete – that’s dedication!

I wanted to share with you a brief description of my logo design process.  I know people do things differently so it would be interesting to hear from others regarding this.  Maybe even offer me some tips to streamline/improve my process!

Brief
First of all I’ll make sure I have all the details I need from the client, style, preferred colours, orientation, the message they want to convey etc.

Thoughts
I’m someone who likes to think on paper, so I write down everything that comes to mind about the company and scribble thoughts and ideas around that.  For example, if I were designing a logo for a financial company I might write jot down the words money, wealth, success, banking, saving…then continue with further words relating to each.

Scribbles
Once I have my ideas and thoughts down in writing I begin to scribble them out as images.    I keep drawing until I find an idea I’m happy with and can develop into a logo.  I’ll usually also jot down colour ideas.

Getting on the mac
Now I have my logo draft/s I’ll hop onto the laptop and get the idea onto the screen.  Depending on what I’m doing, I might also be tracing the draft using a pen tablet.  I’ll usually come up with a multitude of styles and variations and I’ll disregard probably 80% of those and work further on the 20% I choose to keep.  This part of the process can take any time from a few hours to a week.  Usually, if I have done the previous part of sketching out ideas properly, this shouldn’t take all that long.  I’ll usually design in black first to check the shapes come together well, before I apply colour.  As well as designs looking fab in colour, it’s also important that logos work in black – it can look a mess on a photocopied corporate header otherwise!  There are a few exceptions to this, I’m sometimes asked to make a logo that will only be used online for web based companies and that wont be used on print at all.  In that case, things are clearly a bit different and I feel happy to throw colour in from the start.

Client
The client is sent a copy of the logo to view.  At this point I encourage revisions to ensure we’re all happy when the project is completed.  There’s no telling how long this can take, but if we both understand the requirements at the beginning then it really does help.

Delivery
So, when the logo is done, the files are ready and I’ll send them over to the client.  Typically, I will provide an ai file, pdf, small jpg, large jpg, transparent png, opaque png, gif and a tiff.

So that’s about it.  Of course, you can never really write a step by step on a logo process – there are always some unforseen bits and pieces that get thrown into the works, but that’s the basic outline.

I’d be interested to hear from others and how they do things.
To view this as a breakdown of 6 simple steps click here (external site)