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New Movie Advertisements of Note

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Recently a couple of movie advertisements have caught my eye for being decidedly different from the norm. The norm meaning the star's giant head emerging from a dark background with the title of the movie underneath. It's a formula that's been prevalent for about the past two decades and these new advertisements are certainly a breath of fresh air.

The first is for the movie "Drive." The first time I saw one of its posters on the side of a bus I wasn't sure what I was looking at. It was a close-up of one of the stars, Christina Hendricks (the red-headed bombshell from Mad Men), with just the word "Drive" in big pink script in the lower left quadrant. Was this an ad for a clothing store? Make-up? Upon closer inspection one can see the "In Theaters 9.16.11" and it becomes apparent that this is for a movie. I was struck by its graphic simplicity and mystery. This movie is considered an noir action thriller, something that's not too obvious by its use of a big pink scripty typeface. It's so feminine-looking, it could almost be a poster for a chick flick. When you see the other posters/billboards in the series you get a bigger picture of what this movie's about, but I really admired the boldness and cleanliness of the art direction. While searching for photos for this blog post I found an article in the LA Times that seems to echo my sentiments.




Another advertisement series that's caught my eye is for the movie "50/50," starring Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as two friends who deal with cancer. I first saw the billboard for the movie while driving down the 710 freeway. Again, its simplicity and graphic approach really got my attention. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find an image of the billboard (I suppose I could have run myself off the road trying to take a picture of it while driving, but I'm not that dedicated), but here is the poster:

So clean and impactful, the billboard even more so with its use of big solid blue fields with a powerful diagonal slashing right through the middle. Is it just because I'm a graphic designer that I appreciate these ads? I'm curious to hear non-designers' reactions and see if anyone noticed or cared. I like it that the whole movie ad paradigm is shifting with some fresh new directions.

- Stephanie Han

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