I Designed A Film Poster For Harry Potter
For my contextual studies project we had to redesign 3 of our favourite movie posters into specific design styles. First I had to do a Harry Potter poster in the style of Saul Bass. I also designed posters for Snowpiercer and Wall.E. This was such a fun project because I got to work with films I love.
Saul Bass was a graphic designer and was well known in the 50s and 60s for his cut paper style. He designed the posters for over 30 films, created title sequences for many films and designed logos for major businesses like AT&T, United Way and Continental Airlines. I started out by doing some visual research. This is all collated on Pinterest because it’s a very easy way of finding imagery.
I DESIGNED A FILM POSTER FOR HARRY POTTER
The Saul Bass posters are very simple, most having one element or object which is important to the story. Since I was redesigning a poster for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone it made sense that this one icon be Harry’s scar since it is so recognisable.
But I didn’t like the poster I ended up with. It seemed too off balance. My lecturer actually told me this was good enough to hand in but I wasn’t happy with it and started again.
MY DESIGN PROCESS
So I went back and started the Harry Potter poster again. This time staying with the same icon (Harry’s scar) but this time I included a full portrait. I really liked how it turned out. Though Harry’s glasses do look a little John Lennon-y. One thing I found really interesting about this was how adding the credits made it feel more like a movie poster.
Maybe it’s one of those things where you’re so used to seeing the credits on a poster it’s now an integral part of what a movie poster looks like.
12 Comments
🌐 'M.' 🌐
I have all the books except for the first one… 😀 I thought your rendition was cool, idk ^^
bluchickenninja
Thanks!
1 Nothing Please
I love the final product! And I learned so much through this blog post, i have never studied this before, so this was seriously cool 🙂
bluchickenninja
Glad you liked it!
Zezee
I love the final poster, the orange one, and I agree that it has a movie poster vibe to it.
bluchickenninja
Yeah it’s the tiny details that makes it really look like a poster.
Emma @ Wandering Words
Your final poster is incredible! 🙂
bluchickenninja
Thanks!
subduechaos
I’d love book covers in this style!
bluchickenninja
It’s not exactly the same but check out the covers Olly Moss did for the ebooks. His style is similar to Saul Bass.
reesertshadow
Both were cool, but the second one looks a little more polished. 🙂
bluchickenninja
Yeah the second one looked much better.