Design Presentation

For the good design I chose the movie poster done for the film "Jaws." Directed by Steven Spielberg, and was released in June of 1975.

Elements of Good:

When you read/view something you're most likely to do it from top to bottom. When you throw a huge shark into the mix things tend to go out of order. From what I've noticed, our eyes tend to shift straight to the largest or the most contrasting color. This poster does an excellent job at both of those things. With the shark being the center of attention, and the largest part of the poster, your eye automatically veers to it. Which gives you an indication that the movie is most likely a horror/suspense. Then you eye notices something red and contrasting above the shark. So, you move your eyes to the red shapes. You then learn the title of the film, "Jaws." Now the shark is starting to make sense. You have taken in the two more noticeable elements of the poster so you think, "It's time to look around the rest of it to see what's going on." You look down from the font, and notice there is a young women swimming. From what you can tell she hasn't a clue that her life may soon be over. The poster plays one of suspense film's greatest tricks- a sneak peek into the victim's future. Another element I found effective was the use of what I believe to be continuity. Where the water is cut off on the edges and berson who has been to the ocean or a large body of water would assume that the water continues on both sides of the poster, if the poster was real life. As the viewer of the poster I automatically feel terrified this woman will not make it out alive.

An important part of this design is the fact that it says that much with only four letters. That is the main reason I qualify it as a good design. I also enjoy the use of negative space surrounding the shark and woman.

For the bad design I chose the movie poster for the film  "The Devil's Mistress." Directed by Orville Wranzer, and was released in March of 1966.

Elements of Bad:

If there is one thing I hate about design is an abundance of clutter. And when it comes to visual design you should try to portray what you want/need without so much type. I can see why they need all of the type on this movie poster because, while it looks interesting, It isn't telling the story. It looks like your typical B-movie horror. Of course, that is what this is, but couldn't they aspire to be something more. While I am against women being oversexualized in any business, especially design, the look of the woman does fit with the lengthy verbiage used on the poster, I don't find it fair to pin that down. This hasn't been horribly done. the images flow from a loving couple to her about to murder him. I am still not a huge fan of the amount of type and the little amount of negative space is used.