From the earliest days of cinema, right up through the 1980s, major studios produced movie posters that were often so aesthetically pleasing that they completely demolished the line between applied and fine art. So is that era now truly dead and gone? After the last couple of decades of uninspiring Photoshop blandness, I'd have to say yes. For all the freedom that Adobe's products have given designers, there's a monotonous homogeneity to it all, the cancerous byproduct of every designer on the planet using the same tools. Monopoly is never a good thing, but to be fair, you can't blame Adobe's ubiquity for everything. There's other factors to consider - tighter deadlines, lazy designers, clueless execs etc.
It's not all bad though! If it wasn't for the death of the beautifully illustrated studio one sheet, would we have seen the rise of boutiques like Mondo? Would the growing movement of poster artists who work outside of the studio system be as healthy as it is now? Probably not.
Rather than lamenting the death of the traditional movie poster, I'm all about celebrating the wealth of independent talent that we're seeing now. Having already sung the praises of contemporary masters of the form like Akiko Stehrenberger, Gary Pullin, Erik Buckham and Jason Edmiston, let's take a look today at the mind meltingly cool poster art of Canadian wizard Justin Erickson...
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