Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Sam's Myth



We just put up a link to his Everlasting Moments post over at the Criterion Current, which reminded me that I've been meaning to link to newly-minted Criterion designer (and helluva nice guy) Sam Smith's excellent blog for a while now. (In my defense, I've hardly posted anything at all, so it's not like I was specifically neglecting Sam.) If you've been frustrated by the lack of updates over here, Sam's blog should help fill that design-process-blog-shaped hole in your life...

Friday, June 11, 2010

Chaplin!

Hey, how about a sneak peek of the poster for the new Janus Films Charlie Chaplin series that will be touring soon:



It's drawn by the great cartoonist Kate Beaton, she of the great webcomic "Hark! A Vagrant"--also available in book form as Never Learn Anything From History. She did an amazing job capturing the classic icon of the Little Tramp but treating it in a new way. We wanted to remind people that these aren't just stuffy classics to be studied, they're honest-to-god funny films to be ENJOYED. (Something that even some of us at the office had forgotten until we started watching them again recently.) And I think Kate captured that spirit perfectly.

The type is inspired by (read: "stolen from") an old poster for Modern Times, one of the films in the series, redrawn in Adobe Illustrator. In the actual posters that grey is a shiny pantone silver, which gives it a little more life. Overall I'm thrilled with how this came together.

The series starts June 17th in L.A., then July 16th at Film Forum in NYC, and on from there.
As of this posting, we don't quite have the Chaplin site live yet, but given the frequency of posts around here these days I should probably link to it anyway, since it'll almost certainly be up before I get around to another post here...