When I thought about this assignment, the Watchmen poster immediately came to mind. It’s a perfect example of how good graphic design can have an emotional effect on the audience. For me, the best part of this poster is that it has very little copy. Besides the title, release date, and “From the visionary director of 300,” which tells us nothing about the actual movie, there are no words. However, we get a great feel for the emotional tone of the film. The sharp contrast between the bright, happy yellow of the smiley face and the deep red of the blood spatter makes us uneasy, and the extreme closeup of that smiley face creates a claustrophobic, anxious effect. All of this is largely achieved through a respect for visual heirarchy, or the “Z” formation that our eye follows. Starting in the upper left, my eye was drawn to a white clockface, and then a sudden splash of red blood. I moved from left to right, seeing the smiley face, and then diagonally leftward and down, watching the blood drip down the face and reading the blurb about the director. In the bottom left is the release date, and then, as the eye travels left to right again, all of the logos for the companies involved in the film’s production. Throughout all of this, the vertical title “Watchmen” is ever present, ensuring the audience remembers it.
I completely agree with what you said about being able to feel the emotion and the tone of the movie just through this poster. The lack of text and the vagueness of the title gives a viewer absolutely nothing to work with. However I completely get the sense of uneasiness and anxiety when looking at the smiley face with the blood on it, especially with it being such a closeup shot. Just the simple act of adding that one drop of blood to the smiley face immediately turns it from happy and innocent and to demonic and kind of creepy.
I kind of wish the clock in the upper lefthand corner wasn’t there, especially because it is one of the first things you see. I think it takes away from the other parts of the poster and just adds confusion. The smiley face and title do a good enough job on their own and I think that the clock detracts from poster and ultimately makes it more cluttered.
You’re right the poster is brilliantly designed to make the viewer not only emotional, but actively wanting to learn more. I also agree with your interpretation of how the blood stain directs our eye. Notice how the text is not, in fact at the visual center of the page because it is the physical center of the page. The blood stain directs us to the visual center of the poster, which is the blob of blood just to the right of the eye.