We’re not sure when the last survey was taken, but it’s pretty safe to say that 99% of creatives love pouring over well-designed movie posters. Secretly, some love them even more than the films themselves. And so 1001 Movie Posters: Designs of the Times from Reel Art Press will be sought-after inspiration material for design studios everywhere when it’s released on 3 September 2024.
The 640-page book is the opus of Tony Nourmand, an authority on the subject whose previous works include books about film posters through the decades, along with tomes dedicated to James Bond posters and Audrey Hepburn. Blade Runner, Star Wars, The Exorcist, The Silence of the Lambs, Barbie, Moonlight, 12 Years a Slave, Scarface, The Godfather – no matter what your genre or era, if the film had a great poster, Tony and his team have included it in the book.
“I wanted the book to cover the last 100 years of film poster design from around the globe,” says Tony. “I limited the selection to final posters that were actually used for the promotion of films at the time of their first release and tried to pick out the crème de la crème from all genres and periods.”
Along with the artwork itself, 1001 Movie Posters does something many other books of this ilk do not – it provides anecdotes and information about the designers, photographers and illustrators who worked on them. In many cases, they’re being credited for the first time in decades. Over 150 art directors and illustrators feature work from over 20 countries, and occasionally there is the opportunity to compare posters for the same film from different countries.
“For example, the original French poster for Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville in 1965 was by the illustrator Jean Mascii, who chose to depict the leading actors against a futuristic backdrop in black and white, highlighting the film noir aspects of the movie. In contrast, the original Polish poster by the noted innovator of the Polish School of Posters, Andrzej Krajewski, has a more pulp/comic book look and is straight out of the Pop-Art movement,” explains Tony.
Similarly, Star Wars fans can compare the original American Style A poster by Tom Jung, created in 1977, with the poster made for the film’s first official release in Russia in 1999, with art by Aleksandr Koulov.
Honouring cinematic history, Tony has included the very first poster created to promote a film shown to a paying audience – that for Cinématographe Lumière, with art by Marcellin Auzolle, in 1896. The most recent effort is Erica Dorn’s’ design, with illustration by Javi Aznarez, for The French Dispatch in 2021. “The resulting poster perfectly blends illustration, typography and overall design. A modern classic,” says Tony.
As always, when curating a monumental tome of artwork like this, there will be one or two that escape. For example, he would love to have included the poster for Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness with its poster campaign by Vasilis Marmatakis, but 1001 Movie Posters had already gone to press.
1001 Movie Posters: Designs of the Times is published by Real Art Press on 3 September, at £85 or $93. It’s available to order from the publisher’s website.