The Trip - Movie Poster

Original Dubonnet Wine Poster

Designer Daily brings us another one of their great collections. This one looks at movie posters from last year. Most seem to be from indie films which is not just OK, but pretty appropriate and not surprising since most Hollywood big budget blockbuster movie posters aren’t really concerned with good design. Instead they want to get you in the theater right ASAP.

All of these movie posters do an awesome job at letting you know very quickly what the movie is about (which is after all, the function of the movie poster in the first place).

I chose to include the one for the movie The Trip (which is great BTW–I thank my wife for suggesting we watch it) because it is clearly and purposely ripping off of the famous Dubonnet wine advertisement poster from 1956.

The writers at Designer Daily also recommend this gallery at Mubi.com which includes these plus more goodies, and some actual big budget hollywood blockbuster type movie posters that actually are good. You can view the full gallery at Designer Daily here. Happy movie watching!

Absolut Blank Online Gallery

Iconic vodka Absolut continues the iconic branding campaign with a delightful gallery of finished Absolut-bottle-silohuette-turned-work-of-art pieces that are as fresh as 30 years ago when the campaign was new. The original campaign was created around 1980 by advertising agency TBWA. The focus of the campaign has always been  the unique shape of the bottle. TBWA worked with photographer Steven Bronstein, and now includes more than 1500 ads. It is the company’s longest running campaign. It’s clear why and why it has many more years to come. Always nice to peruse all the iterations of the now familiar bottle.

AIGA published this great little article recounting the tale of how the NYC Subway system went from a labyrinth filled with mosaic and hand-made signs in a variety of colors, sizes, styles, and more–to a highly organized signage system. They made it look so easy!

We’ve all been witness to the efficiency of this system so we don’t even think about it anymore. They made it look so easy! This is on of those articles that you want to print and read offline on a Saturday afternoon. And that’s just one of the design wonders that the 20th century brought into existence.

NYC Subway signs - before

Mosaic subways signs (from the top): 1 train, Rector Street (1918); 1 train, South Ferry (1904); N/R/W, Prince Street (1917); “To 19th,” 1 train, 18th Street (1918); L, Morgan Avenue (1928); “Down town,” 4/5/6, 86th Street (1917); “Up town,” R/W, Whitehall Street (1918); E/F/G/R/V, Grand Avenue, Newtown (1936); M/R, F connection to 9th Street (1915) and BMT, Fourth Avenue (1933). Caption courtesy of AIGA.

NYC Subway signs - after

(top and bottom rows): From the 1970 NYCTA Graphic Standards Manual, Unimark Design Consultants, a page indicating directional information, the cover and and typeface instruction using Standard, not Helvetica; (middle) “Donna” illustration of platform signage by Bob Noorda (c.1966, colorized in 2008). Caption courtesy of AIGA.

Design:Related List of Lists for 2009

I hope you have some time to read. I mean read. Design:Related has a List of Design Lists for 2009. What does that mean? It means that right on that page, you’ll find a wealth of interesting Design reading. They have gathered over 100 lists in the following categories:

• Architecture
• Blogs
• Books, Comics, and Magazines
• Fashion
• Food
• General Design
• General News
• Green/Sustainability
• Movies, TV, Animation, and Video
• Music
• Photography
• Strange/Weird/Funny
• Technology
• Tutorials and Resources
• Video Games

My head is spinning. Yes, we’re in May 2010. These lists also cover the decade. And, it’s good to know these lists are here to come back and catch up with on a holiday. Not all categories appeal to everyone–I know I have my priorities of what I want to read. And there is still a lot to catch up with.

Star Wars travel poster

Artist Justin van Genderen makes traveling to planets in the Star Wars universe look so retro hip that you would probably have to knock and have a codeword ready to enter places like Cloud City or Tatooine. View the rest with Justin van Genderen’s Flickr stream which popped up on illustration and cartoon art blog Drawn! In one of the comments of the original io9 post,  a reader wrote that these posters reminded them of Simon Page’s  International Year of Astronomy 2009 posters that I wrote about here. I completely agree—manly because I clicked on the post to read it because I thought the posters were by Simon page. Small world, no?

Via io9.