To create the poster for the movie, we turned to graphic designers Joaquim Marquès Nielsen and Anders Baden Nielsen and their company Barq. We knew that their distinct graphic style as well as their excellent skills in illustration and typography, would match the look we were seaking for the poster.

The project brief to Anders & Joaquim was pretty straight forward: Create a movie poster for the short movie Connected. The poster should take inspiration from the classical sci-fi posters of the 70′s, but also add a modern touch.

Update: The poster is now being sold in a limited edition of only 73 numbered prints. Visit the webshop here: OV43.bigcartel.com

The following is Anders’ and Joaquim’s overall description of their creative process designing the poster. More details is avalable at Joaquim’s blog.

The final poster for Connected

Inspiration

Together with the directors we collected an extensive pool of reference material. Mainly sci-fi posters from the 70′s, Solaris, THX 1138, Clockwork Orange, Silent Running, 2001 A Space Odyssey etc. But also posters from the 20′s, like Metropolis and Frau im Mond.

SOLARIS: Beautiful and distinct custom type. FRAU IM MOND: The Shading / texture on the rocket look great. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY: Lovely typography. METROPOLIS: Nice texture / shading. SILENT RUNNING: Nice format / layout. ANALOG: The book cover has the perfect grainy look that we are looking for.

Concept development

After brainstorming and sketching out various ideas, we had a meeting with the directors to agree on which path to take – to select the idea which would become the main concept for the poster. We ended up with the concept of having a poster with the two main characters (sketch highlighted in yellow). The idea is simply to show how the characters are struggling to stay on their feet, but presented in a very illustrative way rather than just using a photo (sort of like the Frau Im Mond or Analog poster we found during our research).

So now that we had the basic idea / concept for the poster all set, we started talking about which format we should go for. Given the fact that we were going to make a poster heavily inspired by old sci-fi movie posters, we thought it would be suitable to choose a format that would go well with the old look – something that would also contain a bit of storytelling. So we ended up with the classical 1-SHEET format. We also noted that a lot of the posters from the 70′s shared the same basic layout, a solid white frame and the text placed in a white box below the main illustration.

Poster sketches

Working on the illustration

We browsed through the photos from the shoot, looking for a shot where the two main characters were in just the right pose. We found a photo that came pretty close to what we had in mind, but there was still something missing. We liked the overall pose of the person to the left, but we really wanted the other person to look up, and also change his leg somehow. We browsed through the photos again, looking for “replacement” body parts. Also, the tubes were way too cluttered and chaotic, so we had to clone them out and make custom tubes which were more visually suitable for the poster.

Combining photos to create the best pose as reference for the illustration

From then on began the laborious work on the illustration. Rough outlining and shading of the characters was done in Photoshop, before moving to Corel Painter.

Working on the illustration in Photoshop and Corel Painter.

Typography

Along side working on the main illustration, we was brainstorming and sketching out ideas on how to present the title Connected. Question: A modification of Futura or a completely customized title / logotype? We end up going for the modified Futura:

Sketches of the film title

Joaqim's process designing the title on the poster

Texturing

After the painting was done in Corel Painter, it still looked much too computer generated to match the look we wanted. So to finalize the poster it was color corrected and several layers of scanned paper textures, grain and dust was added.

Printing the poster

The final poster was offset printed on thick 200g recycled paper.

The offset printer used to print the poster

Paper feed

The poster in the printing press

The final poster is checked for color accuracy