Midnight Movies, Sci-Fi London Barbarella, Candy Darling, Andy Warhol, Film Poster, Flyer

Here are the new designs i have just finished for the Curzon's Midnight Movies.

Featuring Andy Warhol 'Factory' favourite Candy Darling in 'Beautiful Darling: The life and times of Candy Darling'. So i wanted to give a it that Warhol flavour but bring it up to date more with a modern twist, so i used the Candy's portrait in the iconic Warhol portrait style, then looked at complimenting this it with the use of bold typography. I then dropped on big washes of colour to bring it all together.


The Second billing is the Sci-Fi London showing of sexy space romp Barbarella with Jane Fonda:

As Barbarella is such a iconic 60's film i really wanted to push that side of it and go for a whole psychedelic poster style but keep it space age, pop culture and feminine. So i took some visual inspiration from Jane Fonda amazing hair in the photos where she's laying down and expanded on that.


They also needed an A4 Portrait poster producing for the front of the cinema, so i played around with an alternative design, going for the old screen print hand painted 60's poster feel.

Curzon Cinemas Midnight Movies Flyer, poster, Labyrinth, Bad Santa

Hello back after a bit of absence with the new Curzon Midnight Moves flyers for Labyrinth and Bad Santa.

So ill start with Labyrinth. I wanted to recreate the feel of 80's recreated comic book illustration style like you would see in the pages of 'look in' magazine (if anyone else used to read it as a kid) or you got on various 80's merchandising (see here: 1, 2, 3). Due to there being a lack of technology and decent version of Photoshop at the time.

So after a bit of research i found they did do a Labyrinth comic book and so based the character illustration style around that and worked it around the Ball theme for the night.


For the Bad Santa i wanted to give it that quirky twist again. So i based the design around emphasising the BAD in the title and treated it like a 50's style pulp film poster. (for example: 1, 2, 3, 4)
I kept the illustration to a simple 3 colour print, offsetting them slightly. Then pulled out some quotes from the copy and had fun playing with the type.

Curzon Cinemas Midnight Movies Flyer, poster, grindhouse, Sam Raimi, Drag Me to Hell, An American Werewolf in London, John Landis

Here is the next Midnight Movies Flyer.
I did two alternate versions for the Drag Me to Hell as universal wanted to use the main image off there quad poster i originally used one of the movie stills for the old woman.
Rather than just dropping in the imagery I wanted to give it my own twist with a hand painted pulp, trash, old grind house poster style (harping back to Sam Raimi's 'Evil Dead' roots).
I took the original images tweaked and twisted them then painted over the top and this was the result.



For An American Werewolf in London i wanted to give it a more 80's style to reflect the film.
Originally i did it as a one colour photocopy mash-up style print, but more colour needed so i looked at it more as a sort of scrap book, old newspaper ad. Offsetting the colours adding the aged tape and adding the subtle use news paper text bleeding though the background.


Hope you like.

video cover, Video Nasty, grindhouse, film, vhs: The Rent Collector

Here is the cover of new video nasty sleeve cover the lost classic 'The Rent Collector' produced by 'Mondo Video' (a bit of a homage to Faces of death).

I wanted this to be a more 70's Roman Polanski esque, art house, skin flick, slasher film.

So lots of brown, earthy tones. Cigar smoke and leather pretty much sums up the feel i was after on this one.

video cover, Video Nasty, grindhouse, film, vhs: DUDE

Here is the beginning of a new design/art project based on early 80's video nasty covers.

It was something of an obsession of mine growing up, living in a small village i not much moved fast!, I even remember the first time i ever went to the video shop.
I saw the video store as a twisted pop art gallery, these brilliant covers all displayed in rows would entice me as I went around the aisles and viewed the display cases at the local 'Blaby video' or 'Hollywood video' shop.

Then as i got older i really fell in love with the video nasty section, it was like art porn almost. The excitement of what lay behind these worn, sun bleached trashy covers with there tacky Video logos and all the promises they made but sadly rarely delivered, 'selling the sizzle but not the steak'. really got my design rocks off.

Video nasty covers are what really got me into graphics, i started off by my own video covers for the old horror films i recorded off the TV and Its been a love hate relationship ever since. With this project I've come full circle and returned back too a subject matter that first inspired me, exploring design as pop art combining photography, illustration and graphics.

So here is the first in hopefully a long line of covers in the series.