Individual Scholarly Post by Chunyan Yu

Movie poster design under different culture background
 

The world film has been more than hundred years of history since the date of birth. Movie poster is one of the commercial advertising posters that generally being posted in the theaters, billboards or on the avenue road and other public places. "Poster is son of button, big brother of bumper sticker, weird indoor cousin of the billboard, teeny-bopper daughter of the painting, city-slicker cousin of the print," rhapsodized novelist Herbert Gold in 1968, describing how personality posters and rock baroque serviced the public appetite for funkiness. 1 Movie poster belongs to graphic advertisement design and its role is to promote the content of the movie in an aesthetic form of art. In the modern society, “consumers are diverse in age, income and ability, and have a wider variety of expectations, influences and education”. 2 And “The poster must attract the people across the street to tell them in as few words as possible what they will see when they get inside. You must excite their curiosity sufficiently to make them part with their nickel, dime, or quarter. You must appeal to their artistic sense, and managers are apt to underrate this quality of the general public's mind”.3

Because of the designer's different culture background, movie posters appear strong national art styles. Poster becomes the faithful record of the era. The thesis will focus on the nationality issues presented in the movie posters under different culture background, as well as how the traditional culture influences the designers so that embody the distinctive national tendency in the movie posters. The movie poster designers must base on the culture tradition and break free of its shackles in order to improve their ultimate goal no matter in eastern or western culture. The American Hollywood films are famous all over the world and so are the movie posters. At the other side of the world map view, western countries such as Japan and China also bring fresh air of movie poster design to us. They do have some similarities and differences. So I will compare the movies posters between Western culture and eastern culture. The thesis will be compared in three aspects the designer’s objective growth environment and aesthetic culture background; the development of technology in movie production; new art forms and concepts in movie poster design.

The first aspect is the designer’s objective growth environment and aesthetic culture background. Because of the difference of aesthetic culture background and limitation of the objective conditions, movie poster design must have the national characteristics. The designer’s growth environment determines the design concept of the national difference. His works embody the clear context of historical development. The international trend of movie poster with graphic language has not lessened the nationality connotation. On the contrary, the international background of national design is the trend of development about movie poster. Just because internationality bases on nationality to produce and develop, otherwise the international of movie post will become empty.

In western country, I take German as an example. It is the birthplace of modern design and modern design education. The design philosophy of Bauhaus still influences our lives. On the other hand, the traditional European culture has an obvious influence on Gunter Ram bow’s advertising poster design. The designers from the same culture soil must have the similar design concept. An international movie poster, “Metropolis” is personally designed by HeinzSchulz-Neudam. It has been auctioned for six hundred and ninety thousand dollars in the United States. Because the work was drawn in 1927 and been kept less, the designers use artistic decoration technique trying to build a futuristic world full of aesthetic effect, and make the artwork become art treasure with collection value. Thus different culture background determines differences in the design concept of movie poster. In the process of promoting the theme of film, movie poster virtually becomes a new witness of era with designer’s national character.

On the other side of the world, in the eastern culture including Chinese nation, Japanese nation as well as Korean nation, they all clung to the traditional Confucian ideology and have different features. Such subtle cultural differences have a crucial impact on the design of movie posters. In the “Memoirs of a Geisha” directed by Steven Spielberg, the poster focused its attention on a pale face with bright red lips, green eyes, a flowing black hair. The poster has formed a strong visual impact like the light and shade relationship of black and white, the color contrast of warm and cold, the calm facial expressions and dancing hair. These design elements bring a divergent response between the eastern and western culture. In the culture taboo, oriental culture enjoys a long history. Chinese people have always been taboo “Meteor” and the number “Four”. The Korean taboo “Daisy”. The Japanese taboo “white handkerchief”. These three kingdoms all resent the name written in red ink, because it presents the meaning of “death”. In addition, the traditional oriental national culture also has different characteristics. China’s “Yin-Yang” theory in reality corresponds to the corresponding symbols as day and month corresponds to the “Yang” and “Yin”. In the Japanese kimono etiquette, dead people can only wear the tie right.. Because of the culture differences, the Chinese pay attention to the concept of balance in the design and highly praise the doctrine of the mean thought. The Japanese advocate minimalist design style reflecting national calm, delicate cultural view. In addition, Chinese characters are not only as communication tools but also a kind of aesthetic pattern to express emotion. Thus, there are clear differences and features in the design of movie poster under the designer’s objective growth environment and aesthetic culture background between eastern and western culture.

1.      Harris, Neil. “American Poster Collecting: A Fitful History.” American Art 12, no. 1 (April 1, 1998): 11–39. doi:10.2307/3109289.

2.      Forlizzi, Jodi, and Cherie Lebbon. “From Formalism to Social Significance in Communication Design.” Design Issues 18, no. 4 (October 1, 2002): 3–13. doi:10.2307/1511972.

3.      Rhodes, Gary D. “The Origin and Development of the American Moving Picture Poster.” Film History 19, no. 3 (January 1, 2007): 228–246. doi:10.2307/25165429.