This famous 1960’s poster “Lemon” was apart of DDB’s “Think Small” campaign for Volkswagen. Not only was this poster revolutionary in many ways, but also it is visually and stylistically attractive. Before this, posters used to example the poster, sometimes having the text cover most of the poster. This has small print, but just one word stands out– “Lemon.” Additionally lemon, before this poster, used to mean a bad car; a mistake, a screw-up. When a consumer looked at this poster, you had to stop and think. Why would they call their own car bad? What does it mean? Besides the choice of text, the style is beautiful. White and black with a lot of white space. Just the beautiful car sitting there. So simple, yet elegant; exactly what DDB wanted to portray. At first it looks small and strange-looking, like a lemon, or a screw-up, but the simplicity is elegant and advantageous for an owner. It uses white space and color (or lack thereof) impeccably. It is one of the most important posters of all-time, it even was referred to on “Mad Men”, and it is personally an advertisement that I will always admire. About 75 years later and this still wants to make me want to buy that Volkswagen.

A mystery and thriller, The Prestige is one of my favorite movies. With a dark background featuring three main characters in the film, the poster highlights a creepy, mysterious and thrilling atmosphere the film is trying to sell. What impresses me is the women in the middle. Seeing from a distance, it’s hard to tell what the slim and cursive outline in the middle is: is it the woman’s hair, or smoke? Such illusion perfectly resonates with the mysterious tone of the film, and is further highlighted by the line “Are you watching closely?” I also like the all-cap texts on this poster, which make it consistent, serious and exciting.

One of my favorite movies is The Breakfast Club, and this poster captures one of the prominent characters in an effective way, and also includes the logo of the movie, as well as the title. The contrasting colors of the blue and the checkerboard red pushes the classic pose of Judd Nelson to the forward, as the deep red is a warm color, against the cool blue background. The iconic fist pump during the ending scene of TBC to “Don’t You Forget About Me” is one of the most well known endings in cinematic history, so this poster effectively captures the entire theme of the movie – creating new friendships from different people that you never thought you could. Bender is the glue that keeps the club together, so it is only right to have him front and center. The checkerboard is his shirt, one of the other symbols of the movie. Overall, beautiful representation of the movie in a minimalist way.

Originally, this poster was intended to increase British morale before the Second World War. Now, this poster has become even more famous. I see this poster almost everywhere, and I believe that it has a powerful message. It tells its’ viewer to not worry about what is going on, but to remain calm, and to keep moving along. Not only is its’ message very strong, but it is designed very well. The Gill Sans typography that is used remains the same throughout the entire poster. It is white, bold, and stands out very clearly in front of the bright, red background. The typography, color, and design are very clear and keep the message short and simple. I don’t believe anything should be changed to this poster to improve its effectiveness.

The major message this poster tries to convey is that polluting the ocean with garbage should be prevented because fish eat that garbage and we eat fish. I believe the designer decided to use this sans-serif typography because it is easy to read on a poster-sized paper, and the message is straight to the point. I also believe the designer used the color blue for the typeface to represent the blue of the ocean. The visual choices made were very clever. The picture is two pieces of sushi with a pair of chopsticks like it is ready to be eaten. The issue with these pieces of sushi is that the outside is wrapped in plastic, and the inside, where the raw fish is usually placed, contains more plastic remnants. The words connect very intimately with the graphic image because the words say that we eat fish and if fish ate plastic pollution we are essentially eating plastic. The picture shows exactly what the words are saying by showing plastic on and in the sushi pieces where food from the ocean usually is in sushi pieces. The poster met marketing goals by grabbing the attention of readers with an interesting visual, while having a bold, easy to read, and straight to the point message. It makes for a clever yet easy to comprehend poster. There is always room for possible improvements. I think that maybe the words could have been written on a path of a wave to drive home the ocean message even further. Additionally, one of the chopsticks could have pointed down toward the text to encourage the reader’s eye to read the message. Lastly, the logos in the bottom right could be smaller because the size they are now is a little distracting from the overall message.