For our summer project we were asked to produce a create a new arthouse film event and create a series of posters for it. After looking at several different films I chose The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, The Motorcycle Diaries, Chopper and The Kite Runner. Looking for connection between the films it occured that they were all films based on novels and thought this could be a strong link to create an event on. I decided on the name preBook as the word has connotations to booking tickets for films and the obvious other reason that it contained the word book.
Whilst I was doing some experimentations for the film posters I was researching places to host the event, in doing so I realised that the central library in manchester was shut for refurbishment and thought this the perfect event to have as a re-opening celebration. This dramatically changed the focus of the project and it now became more about the location and the event as a whole, I created a new brand for the library coming up with a logo that incorporated both the unique circular structure of the building and the opening of a book. This design style then followed into the posters, I used the book opening image and turned it on its side, this way when all of the posters were placed together then they would create a circle in the center to once again reflect the unique structure of the building.
Looking at the inside cover pages of books they had a very nice typographic style to them, using the smaller linking words in smaller point sizes to emphasize certain words. I then transfered this into my film titles, using the ‘the’ in the titles in a smaller point size and framing the title using simple lines at the top and bottom of the type. This also gave the titles a strong feeling of literature and helped link the type and imagary together.
To tie in the whole theme of literature I decided to use different materials to print on. For the main poster about the event I used a book cloth to screenprint onto, this was because the preBook poster was the start, the cover of the event. Then each of the four film posters were printed on a newsprint to try and emulate the inside pages of a book. I felt this really emphasized the theme of the event and gave a certain quality feel to the posters.
