Process: WORLD ON A WIRE

As Fassbinder's newly-rediscovered sci-fi opus WORLD ON A WIRE makes its rounds in US theaters, I thought I'd share a few steps in the poster design process. I was honored to have Janus Films ask me to work on this exciting project, and it ended up being a tricky journey from complexity to minimalism. After watching the 2-part film, the first step was obvious: convert the iconic original title treatment into English. After incorrectly assuming that the typeface was a form of Helvetica, a little detective work identified it as an out-of-print version of Akzidenz Grotesk, the typeface that branded the famous and iconic Marber Penguin covers. I knew off the bat that these white lines could be a great graphic starting point for my design.

I felt that we should present WORLD ON A WIRE as a kind of event movie for its target audience: lovers of international cinema, science-fiction and the avant garde. For some reason at the time-- likely my infatuation with the complex, detail-filled Mondo screenprints designed by the likes of Tyler Stout and Ken Taylor-- my initial instinct was to create something epic in scope and volume, filled with sci-fi imagery and digital abstractions, with a retro 70's frame. This resulted in the rough comp below:

Meanwhile, I came up with this idea for a teaser poster that could trumpet the arrival of the film as an event...

...and, in the interest of additional options, this quad-style teaser poster that typographically suggested the film's worlds-within-worlds theme:

Janus liked my use of the white lines of the title treatment as a both a graphic element and a suggestion of the film's multiple layers of reality, but after sitting on it for a while we started to think it was too complex, too cold. I felt I just went overboard... I didn't like it. I sent them this next idea, switching the main color field to the red background of the film's credits, and simplifying the concept to something more graphic and minimal. The hero's face would be broken up and delayed through the white lines as his identity in the film is fractured through multiple realities:

(The below image, which I made based on a shot of a computer panel in the film, was integrated as a background pattern for many of these comps... The dials and panels could, I thought, help remind viewers of the sci-fi genre):

A couple other variations on the same concept:

And a no-good, too-abstract pattern-only variation...

Janus loved these color schemes, but we still felt like we hadn't nailed it. We wondered if we even needed the hero's face at all... if we could convey the concept of alternate worlds and multiple realities with an even simpler iconic image. They pointed to my posters for Before Sunrise and Before Sunset as examples, and I was happy to indulge in such a liberating guideline. Kind of the opposite of a studio telling you that they want all the actors' heads big and large across the poster, this is the kind of direction from their client that a designer dreams of. I started with this simple overlay of two circles, a vertical representation of multiple realities:

...and the rest presented itself almost instantaneously. The overlapping shape would become a watchful eye, a sinister symbol of control; within the target of that eye we would see our hero running for his life, and from that eye would hang the puppet strings holding the title, suggesting an invisible manipulating force. The lines from the title treatment could continue upwards and suggest a modern cityscape. I went back to black for the dominant background color and had fun coloring the rest in a way that resembled the look of the film, but with a little more vibrancy and play.

I was really happy with the result and Janus approved it without any further suggestions. Of everything I've done, this piece was probably most inspired by my dad's artwork, which he would often execute by hand with skillful airbrushing techniques. I'm very proud of this one, but the coolest thing about it is that a studio like Janus was willing and happy to take a purely graphic approach to a theatrical poster for an important release. We hope it seduces viewers into Fassbinder's newly-rediscovered world(s)...

Poster for sale in the Criterion shop.

Janus Films presents WORLD ON A WIRE
Art direction: Sarah Habibi
Trailer (long version) edited by Damon Packard

WORLD ON A WIRE

I'm proud to share this new poster I made I made for Janus Films for Fassbinder's sci-fi epic WORLD ON A WIRE. A mind-bending paranoia thriller whose source novel has been considered one of the first to imagine virtual reality, you can think of it as Germany's modern sci-fi masterpiece just as ALPHAVILLE is to France and SOLARIS is to Russia. Head over to Adrian Curry's Movie Poster of the Week column at MUBI for more details and a too-kind write-up, and be on the lookout for this new restoration touring the country starting this summer.

UPDATE: The poster can now be purchased at the Criterion store.

Process: SOLARIS

SOLARIS is being released today by The Criterion Collection in a new transfer on Blu-ray and DVD. I was honored to be asked to work on a new cover and package design for it; a dream-come-true assignment. Criterion didn't give me any major restrictions in re-visualizing Tarkovsky's science-fiction masterpiece, but an existing cover had grown stale and they wanted something fresh for the film's birth on Blu-ray. We looked at the fantastic Polish poster designed by Andrzej Bertrandt and loved its abstract futuristic imagery and its title treatment. But I also felt that this poster, and many others that had been made for the film, all but ignored the humanity and psychology of the film as it relates to its protagonist Kris and his lost wife Hari who lives in his memory and, it appears, on the space station orbiting the mysterious planet Solaris. This is the core of Tarkovsky's film, and what separates it from so many other classic science fiction films, and we wanted to focus on this while remaining open to other visual possibilities. And I loved the idea of making Hari, rather than Kris (the protagonist), the icon for the re-design.

The first step in the design process is always to watch or re-watch the film. Solaris is a film I had already spent a good amount of time with, a film that has only grown more interesting each time I've seen it. Watching it again from a design perspective, I took notes on themes, concepts and imagery that I wanted to focus on and frame grabs that I might want to use, and also revisited some of his other films, interviews and commentaries just to sink myself into the world of Tarkovsky. My instinct was to start with a few key visual ideas and explore from there: Hari (a haunting shot from her entrance into the film seemed like it would work as a striking icon), an ocean background (nature is an important character in Solaris and I wanted to focus on this), a circular motif suggesting both the planet and a psychological hole/portal, and a hand-written title treatment representing the film's humanity over the cold, clean aesthetic associated with most science-fiction films. Many variations followed:

While we let those ideas sink in, I continued to run with some other rough ideas and experiments, throwing everything to the wall and seeing what stuck. With a film as visually rich as this, it was easy to be inspired and play, and I knew that it was going to take a lot of exploration to arrive at the perfect cover.

These below incorporate a photograph I had taken of a wet and rusty metal dish at my dad's house in the country; I thought it would make for a great planet icon. These were a bit thin conceptually, not really tapping into the humanity I wanted to convey, but I'm fond of them from a purely graphic standpoint.

Above, another purely graphic approach using the rusted dish. Inspired constantly by the great Czech and Polish poster artists, I always like trying messy, abstract concepts that don't use any film imagery at all, just to see if they might work, to see how abstract a cover we could possibly get away with. But for a film photographed this beautifully, it was a hard thought to forgo any actual images from the film in the design; some kind of photo montage was feeling like the best possible tribute we could pay to the beauty of the film. Next came a few more experiments trying a Futura title treatment and a Kris-centric cover:

With all of these covers thrown about the virtual table, the image that Criterion wanted me to come back to and work with was of the ghostly Hari, and they liked this comp in which I flipped an image from the film upside down, switching the assumed roles of the pictured reflection in the water and the actual photographed embankment. Reflection being such a huge theme in the film, this made sense to me as a visual trick and I liked the haunting quality of the reflected trees fading up and melting away into the space above:

Meanwhile, with a cover moving in this direction we thought a more genre-specific title treatment might make sense. I made an original title treatment that would serve as a kind of rebranded logo. I also thought it would also look nice reflected under itself, on top of whatever background we had to work with. I threw together a few simple cover concepts to try the new title treatment, including a simple-as-it-gets "planet in outer space" concept that checked-in with those original Polish posters. These also demonstrate a fixation I was enjoying with a contrast between a black-and-white background (representing Earth/nature) and a circular planet/gateway filled with color.

Switching back to the "reflection" comp... the colors in this framegrab came across as too dull and murky, and with the dark shadow of Hari this was starting to look like just a dreary ghost story. It was suggested that I try to incorporate some of the planet's vivid colors that we see in the film's later sequences, which led me to a comp that would be closer to our final cover but still not right, looking a bit hellish:

I went to another film still that would provide some nice reflected imagery and came up with this comp that I still like, but that seemed a little too busy. Here I also started to lighten Hari's face to bring some humanity to the image rather than just a ghostly shadow. At this point you can see the final cover taking shape comp by comp...

From here I returned to one of the first stills I worked with and the first comp I came up with. I applied the flipped-reflection treatment to that ocean still, along with a complete color-overhaul that encompassed a larger spectrum of the planet's look. This image of Solaris' ocean is one of the most beautiful in the film and from the beginning had such potential; flipping it upside down provided a thematic and visual solution (creating negative space for Hari at the top and center of the frame), and after trying so many things in other comps, I was able to return to this background image, apply what I'd learned, add the new title treatment, and finish it up. The approved final cover achieves what we were hoping for-- an elegant and seductive re-design that paid tribute to the psychology and visual beauty of Tarkovsky's film-- and hopefully it does it justice.

The rest of the package was a joy to assemble. Without any pressure to over-design Solaris as a sci-fi movie, I simply plucked the images that I love and seemed strongest thematically, and let Tarkovsky's own visual beauty do most of the work. My goal was for the package and menus to feel elegant, human, and warm. Here are a few peeks at how the booklet and DVD menus ended up looking:

Thanks for reading, and thanks of course to everyone at Criterion for this dream assignment. And I hope anyone reading this will enjoy discovering or re-discovering this sci-fi classic by one of the world's master filmmakers, another of which is coming just around the corner from Janus Films...

Childrens Bookshelf: EXPLORING THE MOON

Illustrations by mid-century master Lowell Hess. Read more about Hess' work at Today's Inspiration and see more of his illustrations and neat pop-ups at his official website.

MY POLAND

Via The Guardian: A new exhibition at the British Library presents the rich history of SF down the ages, from Lucian of Samosata in the 2nd century to the Russian novel that inspired 1984... This 1985 Polish samizdat edition of Zamyatin's 1921 Russian dystopian novel was published in Warsaw. My translates as "We". The novel influenced George Orwell’s Ninteen Eighty-Four: set several centuries in the future after the Two Hundred Years’ War has wiped out most of humanity, it takes place in a highly regimented city-state encircled by the "Green Wall", which is supposed to keep out the world.