Yet to be titled cinema project.

-Warning what your about to read may or may not make any sense what so ever, let this be a reminder to people who put stuff up on the internet, never do it when you're exhuasted. You'll only look silly.-

So, this past week has ultimately been rather quiet. So I've been picking around through some old work to see if it can lend a hand with coming up with a project or two. 

It paid off surprisingly and it leads nicely into my current idea. 

Cinema. Or the be more precise the decline in the smaller lesser known independently run organisations around the UK.

The idea is full of hypotheticals right now as I have yet to observe the current infrastructure of the cinema industry, but what my main goal is to see if I can create a campaign that would help bring interest back to these smaller cinemas.  Some of these establishments are well known for being a little more creative than the much larger corporations such as Vue and Odeon, such has having film nights, replaying classic films, foreign films, and mini conventions showing off artwork and Q&A sessions with film makers. 

These elements help make the smaller cinemas stand out, but in some ways I don't think they stand out enough. The original concept of cinema was to express ideas and to tell a story visually with elements that can't be told in a verbal format. I think over time most of use lost that sense of exploration that comes with cinema instead falling into the pit of one Hollywood blockbuster after another. While I'm not condemning cinema for being a largely American industry, in my opinion I think sometimes the people can be missing out on a more enriching experiance if they gave other films/directors/even different countries a chance of showing what they can do. 

My overall plan then for this campaign is to do something big, (We all say that about our projects but stay with me here.)

So far I only have a rough bare bones idea on what I am working with. My plan is to help bring to light these cinema's that are suffering and perhaps give them a wider audience for people who not only enjoy film, but want to reach out and explore a different format in cinema. 

This could include old films British, American, European - films that are not as well known by the current generation. 

Foreign films - Famous directors such as Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amile), Hayo Miyazaki, have a large fan base, but sadly because these films are foreign there is often a good chance that they will be pushed to a straight to DVD format, often cheating people of the chance to go see the film in a cinema as intended. 

Smaller independent films - While this is becoming less of a problem in America with the Sundance Film festival I feel that smaller independent films are still suffering outside of these events because of their lack of coverage. The Sundance FF has created a format that has allowed for very small independent film makers to be able to produce and show their work. It could be possible to incorporate these ideas into a scheme for British film makers as well. 

A rough idea of what would work be produced - 

Branding - logo

Website 

Posters

Web ads

Website

While they are the typical bare bones of the idea I am getting across a style already. I'm currently exploring artistic styles relating to older film posters (don't worry it's not more Saul Bass, but you'll be seeing more of that in the future). I'm exploring the old style Grindhouse posters as a style of long forgotten cinema that has a goofy but ultimately different thematic style to them. My only concern though is that it really does limit your visual elements as well as the Grindhouse genera wasn't really a PG setting. So while I could perhaps use it with the connotations for film buffs in mind I am considering exploring outside that element, perhaps even forming a whole new kind of poster. 

Here's a snippet of ideas. It's sort of at the top of my idea chain, (sort of like a food chain but with ideas),

it was mocked up while I was pulling together bits and bobs to help get the ball rolling. I'm prone to sketch out ideas and little snippets, but I enjoyed working on this one a lot so I kept it hanging around. 

I totally forgot John Hurt was in this film. How do I keep doing that?

It needs a good polish though, there are a few things lacking, for example there is no real depth to the poster, and sadly the only high resolution image of the Xenamoprh I could get my mitts on was from Alien Vs Predator. *shudders* I may invest in the fancy Alien skull boxed set purely for a better image of the beastie. 

I may even pull the "Jaws" and not show the monster since that's the ol' trick of cinema (sort of lacking today) is to only show the monster partially and let the imagination go wild. Perhaps I should take cues from the original poster and use the face hugger egg instead as that as always been a far more predominant image in advertising for the original Alien. 

Perhaps a fresh version of this poster may crop up when I have the time as I really enjoyed working on this one, the type especially as it's rare that I make myself do movie posters, it was fun to come up with creative ways of displaying the cast list that wasn't in the conventional 'tiny text and the bottom of the poster' routine. 

Well that's all we have time for today kiddies. Minecraft beckons to me but I'm going to resist and go and scribble stuff for you all to stare in awe at. 

Until next time. Keep cool y'all. 

Opinionated blog post - Detective comic's comic.

Face it, we're designers. And we have opinions about everything. I know it, you know it, we all know it. If there is one thing we designers like...nay love to do is put our foot in the door and say. "Well I think."


Oh we do it so often I've lost count how many times I smugly walk into a situation with ego carrying my aloft over the crowds of undesigned neanderthals all using comic sans or that horrible font from the Avatar poster. I descend into the situation with a firmly placed. "Well I think -" and I promptly receive looks of death from everyone in the room. 


Don't worry if it seems like I'm rambling. Because I am. What I'm getting on about is how all us designers like to have opinions, so. what am I being opinionated about? 

Seems the good folk at DC have unveiled...something. I think it's their new logo. It seems they've been trying to radically alter themselves over the last few months and give themselves a new face. They rebooted all their comics creating 52 new comics, some good, some bad, some pointless. But now they have unloaded a new logo at us. It seems odd that they would do this some five months after they had this paradigm shift. But what do I know about the comic book industry? 

So, the logo in question. Short answer. - I don't like it. 

Long answer - I really don't like it. 

Okay, perhaps I should elaborate. 

It's nice. And a creative idea, it's also a big step away from what DC have had as their logo for some fifty plus years. 

Dc's evolving stamp logo has been around for donkey's years, eventually evolving into the spinning star. Here's the thing about these logos. None of them actually contain the words comic. And there is a reason for that. Anyone care to tell us that DC standards for? 

Detective Comics. - from the original publication of Batman. So, yes Detective Comics is now "Detective Comics comics." 

Smooth. 

Of course people have been calling it DC comics for years out of sense of habit, like Marvel comics, or Image comics, but when you actually start putting it in the logo, it sort of gives the impression that you don't actually anything about the company your designing for. Hence why I don' think this really does look like a comic book company logo. Well I suppose the logo has strengths. For starters. The personality of the logo, well it hasn't got much. If any at all, it's more about the ways that it can be altered to fit the comics it's working for. It feels very tacked on less of a design feature and more something to help it feel less bland. And that's it's only real strength - ironically also being it's weakness. The logo lacks any real sense of personality and individuality. Yes they can make it glow like a power ring, yes you can have the bloody smear from the Watchmen, but outside of that. What is the logo in it's neutral form? If I want to by a product from DC, will it have just a plain format of this logo? Or is there going to be mass micromanaging of the logo for every product? 

I'm all for giving a logo of sense of continuity with a specific branch of it's creations, but at the same time it should have a just as recognisable neutral form. There's also the problem that it feels very amateurish. It's not pushing the envelope with it's ideas and staying rather neutral. Peel away the gimmick and all you have is a simple peeling D idea with a C under it. Of course they are comics, nay Epic Page turning comics! But it feels like something a college student would turn in with their own personal project of rebranding DC, it's weak. It's corporate and doesn't leap out at me. None of these logos say that it's it a company with a history, this was the company that brought me such things as Year One, All Star Superman, the Killing Joke. It tells me that they have a big roster, sure, but none of the above images makes me think of a man from Krypton, the dreaded Batman. Well that's unless they open some sort of law firm. 

The fact that your logo says DC, and then you have DC comics under it, well that is unnecessary type for a start. It makes the logo unbalanced and makes me wonder if the people who designed this where so worried that people wouldn't recognise the logo they had to put in a new section that tells people the obvious. 

When even the designers who are working on this lack the faith in their logos. It's a good sign that you should scrap it and go back to the drawing board. 

As I troll through the internet looking for information on this new logo I come across a little line about the logo. Sadly this quote has no name attached to it so I can't say if this is genuinely from someone in DC of if it was in fact their sort of buzz word for when they where working on the logo. But anyway, said quote is this. 

"re-capture the older branding"

Now I've got to stop and scratch my head here for a second. Older branding. Incase you've forgotten, scroll back up to the top of the page and look and new ones, then, scroll back down and look at the older ones. Go on, I'll wait for you. 

Okay, so if you feel that this is totally justified, please tell me, correct me. The internet is full of conflicting opinions on how someone can be so wrong, draw me a flow chart, give me a diagram. Hell just tell me I'm crazy. Because that isn't what I see. The older logos? They actually remind me of something else. They make me think of a big rubber stamp. (Well not so much the 05 to 12, but stay with me here) They feel like this big seal of approval. As if it was a certified product, as if this product was so awesome it has been awarded the highest honour of receiving this stamp. Of course that's blatant nostalgia talking since Dc has turned out as much tripe as any other comic company, but it's the idea behind it. This logo feels like like a seal of approval and more like a business card logo - as if Green Lantern hands these out after defeating Sinestro. "Do you have what it takes to join the GL corps?"

I digress. Really, I could summarise this ramble with a simple opinion. It's amateurish at best, it lacks the power of even the dignity of the classic brands. It feels more like a cheep marketing tool rather than a thought out logo crafted to make us think of the history and the creativity of this brand. (Of course the classic logos had that with a big hit and miss factor, but hey, now would have been a good chance to do so.) 

It's certainly not lacking imagination in parts. Time and effort needed to be put into this. When handling this logo it needed to be done with more expert care. This wasn't it. 

Well that's my opinionated blog post done for the afternoon, if you made sense of this. Well done! Feel free to comment bellow on what you think of the logo, be it good bad, and hey while your there what would you liked to have seen as a new logo? It's got to be better than this one.