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Introduction
This case study is a reflective, research-led evaluation of my film poster redesign project. This is a continuation from my Major Research Project: How do design elements in film posters influence audience engagement and interest in seeing a film? This essay builds on my major research project’s focus on colour, typography, composition, and imagery. This project applies secondary research and primary audience opinions and findings within the final film poster designs. Rather than simply creating new versions of existing film posters, these redesigns serve as experiments.
My primary research findings from my major research project highlighted that audiences respond strongly to emotional cues, recognisable genre conventions, and professional visual execution, with “curiosity” as the dominant emotional response to film posters. These insights helped me redesign my new film posters, encouraging me to prioritise tonal communication, strong focal points, and unique colour palettes while avoiding spoilers for the film’s plot. In addition, research on visual perception and recognition (Ware, 2012), facial recognition and emotional processing (Bruce and Young, 1986), and the roles of typography and composition (Lupton, 2015; Wang, 2019) informed the design decisions throughout my design process.
This essay will also document how feedback on these poster redesigns influenced the final design outcomes and assess how these film poster redesigns align with industry expectations for film marketing. Ultimately, this case study demonstrates how my dissertation research can inform design practices, highlighting both the skills involved and how development can deepen understanding of how poster design influences audience engagement.
The research for this project consisted of primary and secondary research, the secondary research for this project consisted of mainly focusing on the films that I would be designing and also upcoming films to help give me a greater understanding of what I should use for my film poster designs and gave me an understanding of what aspects should be in my film posters and what characters that will be in the upcoming films can be added to the film posters.
The research for this project consists of secondary and primary research. The research that has been done has helped to give me a greater understanding of how to create thes new iterations of poster designs as well as create completely new poster designs for upcoming films. The secondary research that was done in my dissertation was inmplemented into my new poster designs.
I made many iterations of film poster redesigns. These redesigns were done through the knowledge that had been given to me through my primary research in my Major research project, and when doing these redesigns, I focused on the key elements that had been found to be quite effective with audience and showed as to what they like to see in a film poster such as character imagery, typography, colour pallette and also designing these films in a way that helps to envoke curiosity for the audience and try convey the theme of the film in a way to give the audience a greater understanding of what they should expect the film to be about.
As you can see I redesigned these films whilst taking inspiration from the original film posters, I tried to maintain the same theme and understanding that the original posters produced whilst also making them in a new way to would help to further appeal to audiences in the modern days through the use of what I know through my prior research.
The tools that where used for when redesigning these film posters was primarily Photoshop as that was a tool that I am used to using to help with the total redesign of these film posters. When doing these resdesigns I tried to find what aspect was used in the orignal film posters and try to find a new angle in using those some aspects but in a new and creative style to further help with the redesigns. Why I tried to use the same aspects in a new angle is because I wanted to help redesign these posters in a way that still helped to give the same sence of the film and help to incorporate the same themes of the original film but in a new way that can help to attract a new set of audience members.
The development of these film posters focused solely on creating original designs for upcoming films that are yet to release there respective marketing material. In this section rather then redesigning film posters this new poster designs allowed for me to apply research findings and also apply industry conventions to show how posters for these upcoming films can be marketed and produced.
To acheive this, I selected multiple films across multiple different genres, including action/adventure (The Batman Part II), Fantasy (The Legend of Zelda) and science fiction (Star Wars). This variation allowed for a broader exploration of how genre-specific poster tropes can influence audience expectations and engagement. By working on different genres I was able to test different visual strategies such as colour pallette, compositon and character imagery and learn more as to whether these film posters give an accuarate representation of that supposed film and its genre.
For The Batman Part II, the decision to position the potential antogonist, Two-Face, at the centre poster was done due to prior research, as prior research has shown that key partsshould be put at the center of a poster as that is where people tend to look first helpin to make sure that people have seen Two-Face and have a greater understanding that he plays a significant role in the films plot. The research into visual hierachy (Ware, 2012) was able to give me the greater understanding of how people are naturally drawn to focal elements, especially human faces (Bruce and Young, 1996) this gave me the understanding of how to implement Two-Face to be at the front of the poster. Also widley discussed rumors of the upcoming projects especially regarding characters allowed the inclusion of said characters in the design
Primary research was conducted to help get a greater understanding of what people liked or disliked about the film posterss that had been created. They where shown five film posters, three film posters of upcoming films and two of films that had already been released. These film posters where a variation of different genres of films to help at some more diversity into the films that would be shown to the public. The responses that where given helped to redefign and enforce my future poster designs.
A significant pattern that was seen across the responses was the importance of visual hierachy and focal points. For example, in the Batman Part 2 inspired poster, participants repeatedly highlighted the effectivenes of the silhoutte composition in the background of the poster, stating that it immediatly drew there attention and helped to establish the tone of the film. The use of a dark colour palette combined with a strong contrast was seen as "thematic" and further aligned with the expectations of the genre of the film. This further helped to support Lupton's (2015) argument that composition and contrast guide viewers to interperat as to what the films theme and tone and what it is about.
Particapants also responded positively to the background and the foreground of the Zelda-inspired poster. The environment was described as helping to "set the scene", whilst also stating that lighting helped to contribute to the tone. However, feedback indicated areas that needed improvement such as logo placement and spacing, comments such as the logo appearing too close to the edge and required better visual balance.
The Star Wars poster received mixed feedback primarily due to the typography all though they said that the typography was in theme of the franchise they said that it did not sit all that well with the composition of the poster and looked all too much as if it was just sitting on top of the poster and not at all bringing anything necessary to that poster. Additionally furter comments talked about how it clashed with the colour pallette and may need improvement. This further explains the importance of colour harmony, as discussed by wen et al. (2022), where inconsistent palettes can reduce visual appeal and clarity.
The moonlight poster design helped to generate a lot of insightful feedback especially regarding character imagery and composition. Particapants stated that the faces where the first thing to help draw there attention this helped to reinforce as to what Bruce and Young (1986) said with there theory of facial recognition stating that facial recognition plays an important role in poster design. The use of colour overlay on the central characters received positive feedback and was seen as a good representation of the different characters and helped give a clear representation of the characters through different lifestages. Several students did comment about how the imagery needed some refinement though and how it the lack of refinement in some parts and got comments such as "tidy up the face" and "make the images more consistent" as not doing so can negatively impact the poster. Additionally I was given suggesstions to lower the characters imagery lower down the page and to let them bleed of the page to help with making a stronger composition for the characters.
Research Content and Literature Themes
Research Content
Primary research/Feedback
Literature Themes
Practice Development and Iteration
Practice Development
Iterations
Original Poster
Redesigns
Upcoming Film Posters
Feedback
Findings and Evaluations
Findings
