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What Killed The Movie Poster?
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Jun 30, 2025
Movie Posters used to be one of the mail selling points for films in Hollywood. A great poster can tell an entire movies story in a single captivating image. Though as the years progress, and IP ownership remains king, poster design has become messy and uninspired. Where have the days of Saul Bass, Bob Peak, and Drew Struzan gone? Is the art of movie poster design truly dead?
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Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, Back to the Future, The Thing, Goonies, Blade Runner
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Big Trouble in Little China, all these timeless posters were designed by one man, Drew Struzan
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Drew Struzan, do your posters. Almost worth making movies just for that. For close to four decades, Struzan's illustrations and artwork represented the movie-going experience
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His posters served as a beckoning call to arms for movie fans across the globe, and yet today
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Movie posters aren't created to tell a story or create an indelible image that represents the film
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They're just walls of floating heads, which begs the question, why has this once vital piece of the filmmaking industry vanished
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The artistic unit of the movie poster is an integral piece of the filmmaking industry
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It serves as a cheap and effective way of informing the public about a movie's existence
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When it's produced well, it can propel a film to success. When it's boring, well, it doesn't do anyone any favors
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The first movie poster was created in 1895 for the French short film La Rosée à Rosée
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by iconic director Louis Lumière. As you can see, the poster served two purposes, to inform people what it was like to see a
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film and, of course, to advertise the film. This dual nature of movie posters is something that they've been attempting to balance ever since
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Even today, the push and pull between artistic pursuit and commercial success is in constant tension
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In this case, the Lumiere's poster functioned as much as an advertisement for the idea of
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going to the movies as much as it is for the film itself. As more complex printing processes were developed, the medium of movie posters blossomed
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Divergent styles were implemented in order to attempt to catch the eye of the movie going public
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Simple posters, complex paintings, narrative posters, and ones that primarily featured topography were all employed
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And as you expect these posters reflected the eras they were made in Throughout the 20s and 30s the role that movie posters served in communicating to the public shifted and evolved Actors names and
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roles began to be more prominently featured in the marketing of the film. Additionally, as the
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printing processes matured, movie posters were able to move away from simplified designs and into
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more painted and complex visual tapestries. In the 40s, patriotism was on display. In the 50s
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people were looking for escapism, so fantasy and science fiction were the taste du jour
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This is often thought of as the golden age of movie poster design, as arguably the greatest
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to ever do it, began gaining cultural ubiquity. Bob Peake. He created the posters for James Bond
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Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, My Fair Lady, The Dark Crystal, and literally scores of others
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His works were omnipresent throughout nearly three decades. Running counter to Peake's
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brilliant narrative instincts and god-tier drastmanship was Saul Bass, a poster and
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credits designer. You probably know him from his work in films like Vertigo and The Shining. His
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highly graphic reductionist approach to shape, language, color, and topography changed the way
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film posters, intro credits, and the medium of graphic design approached idea implementation
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Drew Struzan was the man who took the mantle from Bass and Peak as the next and maybe final
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mainstreamed named poster artist. Inarguably since the 1980s, Struzan worked as the most
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important movie poster artist in the industry, and maybe ever. When Drew came along and started
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to do the work, it really made a big difference. His photo reference style, keen eye for composition
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and instantly recognizable voice have served as the definitive capstone on the art of movie
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poster making. The way Struzan uses color, airbrushed acrylic, and colored pencils to
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simulate a stylized and warped reality is truly a magical feat There a mesmerizing quality to seeing an entire two story encapsulated into one single image Struzan work does this effortlessly He pushed the medium of poster art to heights it had never before seen
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His work struck a chord with the public. You know, feeling of texture that he brings into his art
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the feeling that you can almost reach out and touch it, and just the fact that it's so tactile, his art
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and that's because he paints, he doesn't keyboard. The process by which Struzan created his work
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is not that dissimilar from how posters are created today. He was supplied with photos from the studio
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He would use them to create a rough composition. They would approve it. And then he would create a highly detailed trace drawing from the photos
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which he would then airbrush, paint, and crosshatch on top of. However, this process can take weeks and even months to fully complete
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And as such, the legacy that Struzan worked so hard to build
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is not being carried on in the mainstream film industry today. Struzan is retired
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His last work being a Star Wars The Force Awakens advanced poster that wasn't even put out for wide release
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In the current cinematic landscape, movie posters are dull. Lifeless sales tools cranked out by design firms and plastered all over the internet
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The speed and efficiency of production is what's most important, not the end product
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To add insult to injury, there isn't just one movie poster for a film
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There's as many as nine or ten. Often, most wide releases will have a main theatrical poster with all the characters on it
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usually depicted in what's called Head Salad. This is regularly just a photoshopped mountain of faces of the actors appearing in the film
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Floating heads in the sky over a small scene from the movie. Floating heads in sepia tone
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Floating heads in space. Lots of floating heads in space. It's a trend that's just everywhere
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Then there will usually be 5 to 10 breakout character spotlight posters
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It's commercial. It's boring. This trend of character spotlight posters also ruins any chance of having an iconic singular image to represent your film When you hear Indiana Jones The Thing or Goonies you instantly have an image in mind When you hear
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Spider-Man Far From Home, it's either head salad or just random photos of the actors standing there
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vaguely looking like they need a restroom. Additionally, in generations past, movie posters
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would attempt to tell a story that was germane to the film, give you a bite-sized chunk of
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narrative to make you intrigued and want to see the film. Look at Roger Castell's poster for Jaws
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Massive shark, woman swimming, you instantly get what the movie is about. It doesn't have
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Roy Scheider or Richard Dreyfuss's face plastered all over the poster. It's focused on the idea that
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a shark is going to get you. Smile, you son of a... Today, there are very specific visual tropes that these design firms go back to over and over again
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Is it a romantic comedy? It's probably a man and a woman back-to-back with the man smirking
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Is it an action-adventure thriller? Then the color palette is probably orange and blue
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complimentary colors, and we're going to see someone running or looking pensive. Is it a thriller or a superhero movie? Get ready to see a billion posters of someone with their
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back-to-camera looking back at us. These tropes are so pervasive because it's not an individual
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making them. It's a design firm who's just trying to please a studio client. Even when they are
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executed, well, they feel soulless and it's not going away anytime soon. The thing illustrators
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like Struzan and Peek brought to the table is that even when they were working off photo reference
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they're bringing their perspective as an artist. They're tweaking things. They're adding small
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highlights, details, and stylizations. Very uber realistic style, but as a result, it's rather
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stunning to look at. Look, have movie posters basically been showing people's faces to you in
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the hopes that you'll pay to see them move since the beginning of the film industry
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Yes. But the version of it that exists today is just so much worse
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