In Defense of the Floating Head Poster Artist

I'm reminded of a story about how all the stage moms of the Goonies wanted the lead Goonie in the posters to rotate so their child could be first.

That was great to hear someone on that side of it, and it sounds believable.

It's definitely a grinding experience for which the artist gets no credit. I'm pretty decent at creating movie posters as a hobby, and I've won one contest (for Factory Girl) and was a finalist in another recently - but there's no way I would get into that ego shredder for a living. It's too much work to have some lackey shit all over it in the end.

Glad you printed this follow-up Devin, good stuff to know. If anyone knows any portfolio sites for poster designers as mentioned in the email I'd love to see some of their more personal rejected designs. Hell, in this the age of the Internet you should be able to purchase a print even if they weren't authorized for the release campaign.

As someone that got burnt out and gave up on the idea of being a creative professional, I can seriously relate. I was formerly in a position where I would have to produce creative pieces for clients. The problem is most clients are completely devoid of any creative talent and yet they insist on directing and tweaking your work to oblivion. This includes executives who probably have backgrounds in business and administration.

I don't know what it is, when it comes to most jobs, you usually don't attempt it yourself, instead you hire a professional and you trust their expertise. When it comes to the creative world, it's all up in the air, it's no longer about what you like and don't like, clients will actually dictate and direct your work.

In my opinion, when you get a floating heads poster, that's a designer who just got burned out from the amount of stupidity he/she has to put up with. It's very rare when I'd work with people who actually wanted to take risks or chances. Most of them would tweak designs for posters without any clear understanding of what made that poster work.

For example, I once had a manager who would freak out if I used white backgrounds, or anything resembling minimalism. She saw white as boring. If I attempted something that involved simplicity she'd freak out and ask me to fill up the white spaces. If I used small font, she'd ask me to make things huge so people could see it. If say I dealt with an ad or flyer that involved investment or business I was stricken from using anything metaphorical, instead I had to take my pick between images of money or businessmen. The woman would openly admit to not being creative, yet I was forced to implement her bizarre demands. There was just no way to avoid producing shit, no matter how hard you struggled. In the end you just give up and realize that you're not doing this work for yourself, but for someone else.

In my opinion, creative artists usually get the shaft, because I think creativity is something that a lot of higher ups think is merely a matter of taste or natural ability as opposed to any form of technical expertise.

This is depressing. So many great posters we don't ever get to see.

I disagree that all the shitty posters are done well though. I've seen plenty of really awful stuff that's made it through, that fails on both the conceptual and technical level. Of course, many of these artist may simply be too burnt out at that stage to really give a fuck.

I remember in the Hamster Factor documentary on 12 Monkeys, there's a scene where Gilliam and crew go to the design company and are shown about a dozen different posters and poster ideas - almost every one of them better than the final poster used for the film.

This is completely believable.

I've worked in the design industry for over 10 years and I realised on the first day of my first job that this is the way the industry is.

Left uni with a great degree plus one of the country's top design awards and now I churn out shit on a daily basis - not because I'm shit, but because what the marketing department demand.

I'm now freelance and work in a large company that has a design department that is briefed in and work signed off by a marketing/management department that have no artistic ability or appreciation. The first draft of any job that we submit are usually great - we take the knowledge of what our peers and the public respond well to coupled with our knowledge of the technology and its abilities and limitations and create something that works really well - when in gets to the marketing/management level it eventually gets watered down and designed by committee by people with no artistic ability but who all have an opinion - the eventual outcome is usually crap - and believe me, its soul-destroying.

On the other hand I have external clients who listen to my input and trust my judgment and the outcome is completely different - I'm proud of all the pieces I do externally.

The autor of the email is correct when he says you should direct your annoyance to the marketing departments and not the artists/designers - we've got to our level by knowing/refining and having a genuine love of our individual crafts only to have them scuppered by some cock in a suit or skirt.

We know 90% of what we churn out is shit - we don't like it either. Every day we whore our souls to pay the mortgage.

Amen brother.

News at 11:
Devin realizes he has been an ass to someone.

Don't worry, he will get over it and start insulting random people again soon. No need to panic all you Devin fan boys.

You nailed it in one, man. Over the years I've worked in everything from 3D design, concept art, video game design, advertising, branding etc and there is nothing more soul-destroying than some arsehole with the creative ability of a knobbled shite telling you to do/change something when you KNOW he's wrong. The worst kind is the one who'll tell you to make a change just to feel like they've had an input, or control the process. The email is just so spot on. Every time a movie poster comes out, and the same tired 'floating head'/'Photohop hack' commentary is trotted out, I really feel for the artists. It has fuck all to do with them.

Different discussion, but it also highlights the general problem with critique as a mode of communication. More often than not, the person criticising the work has no ability creatively, nothing to contribute. Which makes it all the harder for those who are creative to take (wrong) instruction or listen to their work being shat upon by the very type of person who has effectively forced them to create the shit work in the first place.

I'm confused, maybe the work you are talking about is different from what I am about to say. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I opened my own office about a year ago and needed a logo. I had several ideas and gave them to an artist friend who began sending me sketches and other items to peruse. I, being the person paying him for his work and knowing what I wanted this logo to look like, kept "directing and tweaking [his] work".

I had one overarching request of the logo, it must equally balance good looks across a spectrum of stitched logos on shirts, printed t-shirts, website and letterhead. I have seen logos that could never be stitched and looked horrible online. I wanted something versatile.

My original idea changed based on a name change. My second idea would not work in the literal sense I wanted, it was too sci-fi. The stylized versions were too reminiscent of a competitor in town. We moved to a different idea based upon a friends suggestion and began to come together on many things.

I had much input because I was paying for the work but did my best to defer to his artistic sensibilities. My final logo is a wonder for me and I love it. I actually enjoy walking through the entire file of concepts he sent to see how it evolved.

Am I wrong for directing and tweaking his work to meet my idea of what I wanted or am I comparing apples to oranges?

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/47d...d-brian-huskey

This is hilarious, Devin will feel the rage towards this guy, for sure... check out the unused Crash poster (worse than the movie).

Posters and other promotional materials (sometimes even trailers) go through marketing research companies before anyone outside the project ever sees them. A typical testing process: Test groups are briefly shown an array of posters, and are then asked to fill out a survey or talk to a surveyor about the product. Based on the results of the survey, the posters get ranked by a number of factors, including brand recognition and ease of recall. Coolness or artistry aren't ranking factors.

The process for selecting a company logo is nearly identical.

We all want cool-looking movie posters so we can have something to hang on our wall. The studios want a poster that effectively communicates who's in the movie. Bemoaning the lack of artistic movie posters is like bemoaning the lack of artistic cereal boxes.

That is what I am figuring as well. Kudos to Devin for both articles, I myself dislike boring posters as well. However, it seems that the boring poster/floating head styles simply smack in the face of his anti-capitalist(maybe not so much anti-capitalist, but his leftism that often times can be found aligning against capitalism) viewpoints.

Studios just want to sell this shit.

I wouldn't harp on the artist(rightfully so Devin posted the second article) so much as the people in focus groups who push this crap through with their generally poor taste in art.

People suck.

Nice to see such an insightful, reasoned perspective into what is - from an artistic viewpoint - an inherently depressing process. From the business angles, movies are first and foremost a product. And like any product, it's recognition that (allegedly) sells, thus we have Vin's floating head.

It would be fantastic if an influential director insisted that the marketing meet the artistic standards of the movie, but that's a quixotic battle that probably isn't worth the headache of waging. Ironic, though, that there's more studio scrutiny over the marketing than over the movie.

Yes clients can be the bane of creative people everywhere. A couple of months ago a client wanted a new web site. So I get in touch with a web design agency we normally use and they come up with a pretty sweet minimalist design. So what was the client's first suggestion? Change the font. And to what? COMIC. MOTHERFUCKING. SANS.

It should be extraneous to mention that this monstrosity isn't to be found anywhere in the agency's portfolio.

I think it's a different situation. The marketing people who "direct and tweak" movie posters rarely have the same personal investment in the hundreds of key art designs they might oversee in a year that you would have for your singular company logo. Technically, the marketing people who demand floating heads aren't really paying for the work they're commissioning, in that it's not their own money.

The problem is, a lot of marketing people I've met are people who've failed up into their position. They generally lack taste and creativity but are overly-fixated on schedule and budget. Certainly there are exceptions. I've also met some very smart and creative marketing people who totally get it. But it's a high pressure job that on the one hand blindly relies on data and statistics, while on the other hand demands a creative vision for product that may or may not personally resonate for that executive. And the grind never stops, so burnout is inevitable. And yet, they do have to justify their salary, hence "directing and tweaking." Digital imaging software has only made it easier for their clumsy fingerprints to become a factor. See Drew Struzan's fumbled REVENGE OF THE SITH key art.

I think this ILM Halloween Party invite summed things up pretty well:

Surprised this site hasn't been linked yet:

Not a Movie Poster

On the front page, there's a great rejected poster for Moon. The site is described as: "Lovingly crafted by various film poster designers, these are the film poster designs that didn't make the cut. These are not film posters." I'm taking that at face value.

That Moon poster is a beautiful bit of design.

Also - 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days.

Sometimes the floating heads work.



It's the fucking VOLUME that's soul-crushing.

Thanks for that link, flyarz - good stuff.

That's not fair, Phil. ANY poster would be improved by a floating Peter Lorre head.

But aren't you describing the natural process between a client and a designer ?

The issue is when someone in the client position, starts explicitly dictating specific alterations that completely kill the design. Obviously since they paid for it they're in full entitlement to whatever they want, but I think the issue for most designers is that they get into the industry with the hope of expressing artistry and creativity and can get frustrated when they're reduced to generic technicians.

It's also frustrating when a manager or executive just doesn't get a concept that from your experience, you know would work. Like a poster mentioned above, the idea of someone throwing in comic sans. Or when a client insists you put red all over something that would just clash. The most frustrating thing is actually that they have a complete and utter right to do so. I have worked with some brilliant people that may not be artists but had excellent ideas; it's just too often that one encounters ye old idea killers.

You can apply this rant to pretty much any creative position in the work force. You can be an expert at what you do and put all the love, sweat and elbow grease you want into a piece, and odds are, the "boss" (in whatever form that arrives in) is going to shit all over it and browbeat you into producing something that makes your skin crawl.

This sounds like a challenge to our Photoshop having friends.

Yup. My "favorite" critiques (from the same individual even) were:

"That's perfect!... But wouldn't it be neat if..."

"Can you make it... cooler?" (as in hip, not temperature)

The Gremlins poster on page 2 is pure awesome!

Flyarz, thanks for that link - absolutely made my afternoon. Anyone else know where to find any of these 'countless' rejected poster sites? And yes, I ask that in the full knowledge that Google is my friend.

I often feel these types of complaints are misdirected, so I'm glad Devin posted the rebuttal.

Excellent e-mail. I'm not particularly surprised that the studios are the idiots in this scenario.

This needs to happen, now. Photoshoppers?

I guess.

That is beautiful.

I'll take a dozen, Litmus. Full quality. I'll even pay to have them framed.

The best thing all of these floating head 'artists' can do is get out of the movie business and go back to where they belong - flipping burgers.

I take it you didn't read the article. These artists are generally NOT calling the shots.

I read this a long time ago and feel like I posted about it, but can't find my comment here

 

Anyway, do studios know for a fact that floating heads are what drive audiences to see a film? Have they tested this theory? I guess it stands to reason that they must have, given the money at stake any time a blockbuster opens, but still. The double dip collectors edition DVDs always have better art. They must do this because they know that cooler art is going to drive people who already picked up the film to get another copy. Surely the same applies to posters int he first place? Cool posters are eye catching. I don't believe that anyone has ever had their eye caught by the face staring out of a floating head poster

 

"GREEN ZONE: Whoa.. Matt Damon with a back pack! We have to see this!"

Now I want a thread dedicated to Photoshopping Peter Lorre's head into movie posters.