A Movie Poster Redesign for Fight Club
Intentions:
Fight Club is about a depressed man (Edward Norton) suffering from insomnia who meets a strange soap salesman named Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and soon finds himself living in his squalid house, after his perfect apartment is destroyed. The two bored men form an underground club with strict rules and fight other men who are fed up with their mundane lives. After an intense process, it turns out that Tyler Durden is the inner self of the Narrator. My poster redesign aims to capture the conflict between the protagonist and his inner self. The constant struggles that the protagonist has been through is the major source of inspiration for my redesign. I came with four ideas initially but I did not use them at the end.
Inspired by a movie poster in a style of collage, I decided to use the traits of collage to imply the intertwining relationship between the Narrator and Tyler Durden. By putting parts of the Narrator and Tyler Durden on top of each other, like covering Tyler’s eyes with the Narrator’s, I aim to foreshadow the fact that they are the same person. For the color, I used the combination of black and white as the main scheme and created a photocopy-like style to create a cohesive aesthetics of the collage. I maintained the overall dark tone by applying a black background because of the suspenseful cinematic feature and put subtle ink splash to add onto the organic quality. For the font, I used “Fight This,” which is the font used by the original movie poster for Fight Club, to continue the inherent cinematic identity. Likewise, I also adapted the same pink color of the soap, which is a main object that serves as a reminder of the violence and cynicism underlying modern living in the film. What’s more, such a bright pink can easily draw the audience's attention to the poster, creating a visual hierarchy with the visuals. To balance the bright pink color and increase the organic feelings of the collage, I added several blue-green doodle lines to interact with the collage content.
Given that the movie is somehow violent and impactful, I modified the font by incorporating a graffiti spray texture (splash/brush/spots…) to highlight the boldness and motion dynamics in my design. Similarly, since the lead actors like Edward Norton and Brad Pitt are emphasized in the original poster, I applied the same color and graffiti effect onto the text of lead actors, but with a smaller scale. For the less important quote and tagline (since I believe the images already indicate the tone of the movie), I made them blend into the visuals and fill up the blank space. For the credits list, I just tried to make them readable but not too obvious by applying similar gray tone of the collage and make the names more distinguishable from the titles by increasing the white tone.
Graphic Design: Ian Lihui Wang
Fall 2023 University of Southern California
IML 230: Introduction to Visual Design
Instructor: Renee Reizeman
Final Design:
Sketch:
Mockup:
Presentation: