THE BLACK MASK
Inside the poster creation
THE BLACK MASK is a fictional film idea I had starring two of my favorite actors of that era, Humphrey Bogart and Gene Tierney. Bogart and Tierney only did one film together in the mid fifties called The Left Hand of God which wasn’t exactly the hard-boiled noir film I wish they had done together. The Black Mask represents to me a Maltese Falcon type detective thriller that would bring these two iconic actors together in search of a stolen artifact, a black voodoo mask. I researched around and found some of my favorite publicity photos representing Bogart and Tierney, as well as some other elements I needed.
Here are the image elements I decided to work with.
I used photographic elements of Bogart and Tierney from previous films they did, trying my best to find images that haven’t necessarily been used as a poster element. Since my fictitious film takes place in San Francisco I found a great image of the Golden Gate Bridge that would add a geographical feel. I also wanted Bogart holding a .45 to add a more hard-boiled detective feel so I found an old image of Bogart from “The Petrified Forest” that would work.
initially I wasn’t sure exactly how I would lay this out, and I already had plans to maybe add more elements. I started with various blank versions that I thought would give it a large bold look. After I played around with these initial concepts I started focusing more on the text and final design. The challenge with most of these vintage style posters is trying not to introduce modern design styles into a poster rebuild that is supposed to represent a certain era of graphic design.
Initial rough poster concepts
The difficult part with reproducing posters from the 40’s and 50’s is the type fonts and the setting. During this era most of the posters had hand drawn text and fonts which isn’t that noticeable until you start using modern computer generated fonts. I had to search around and try and come up with some fonts that looked like they were from that era. I also needed to alter the text very slightly so it doesn’t look too clean and perfect, after all I wanted the finished poster to look like something you dug out of Grandma’s attic – a vintage original 1-sheet from the 40’s or 50’s.
1-sheet poster concepts
I’m still not sure which design is my favorite, they all have a different look but all in all I was pretty pleased with the outcome of this project and look forward to working on more film noir mock posters.
Alternate designs
Although this is not a size format typical of this era I still wanted to come up with some design concepts in this rectangular size. I like the longer canvas ratio, which I feel allows you to explore similar concepts but with a different layout. These four below are what I came up with, adding and removing certain elements from the 1-sheet designs to get a slightly alternate visual look.
