This year at SXSW, I was lucky enough to hang out with David Frost from the design firm, All City Media. If you’re not familiar with All City, check them out by clicking HERE. They have done some amazing work for films such as BAD LIEUTENANT, WALTZ WITH BASHIR, GOMORRAH, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, A PROPHET and MAN ON WIRE, among many others. David was one of the judges this year for the SXSW poster design competition and also spoke on a panel called Floating Heads are Dead: Why Traditional Posters Suck. As you can see, their MOON poster is anything but traditional. This is actually an unreleased version that All City made and were gracious enough to let us release.

We had to make one small change to it, though. The image used of Sam Rockwell was a photograph and therefore was not able to be screenprinted, so we asked our good friend and illustrator Martin Ansin to illustrate it. I remember seeing the poster in a theater lobby here in Austin and it making me do a double take. I distinctly remember saying “wow” outloud. With lobby’s full of giant pictures of actor’s faces, it’s great to actually see some design fighting back. We salute All City Media for being one of the leaders in bringing creativity back to poster design.

-Justin

Poster design by All City Media. Sam Rockwell illustration by Martin Ansin. 24″x36″ screen print w/ glow in the dark metallic inks. Hand numbered. Printed by D&L Screen Printing. Edition of 80. Click HERE to buy.

Poster design by All City Media. Sam Rockwell illustration by Martin Ansin. 24″x36″ screen print w/ glow in the dark metallic inks. Hand numbered. Printed by D&L Screen Printing. Edition of 80. Click HERE to buy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

24″x36″ screen print w/ metallic inks (glow in the dark for variant). Hand numbered. Printed by D&L Screen Printing. Edition of 235 and 100 for the variant.  Available at 6/30/2010 at 11am CST $45 or $80 for variant.

Instead of doing WRATH OF KHAN right off, we decided to do a poster for his first appearance, SPACE SEED. WRATH OF KHAN will show up eventually, but we had to plant some roots. This will be an ongoing series in partnership with CBS. The most exciting thing about this partnership is that they have given us the keys to the kingdom. We can do LITERALLY ANY Trek property. That means the original series, the movies, TNG, the J. J. Abrams version and even the cartoon if we wanted to. Our goal is to do one a month and leave everyone guessing at what’s coming next. Next months entry will drive people NUTS and if everything goes right, we’ll be selling a variant at San Diego Comic Con.

“I wanted the poster to work in a rational way, almost like a chart; many bits of information are shown as graphic elements…

In there you may find several references to the Space Seed episode: modified DNA, a shadowy hand that could take over the globe, the universe or just a small planet (spoiler!), some data sets, and even Castor and Pollux (the Gemini constellation), a tip by Prof. Rob Jones; as the original writers meant for Khan to be a reflection of Kirk, like Castor and Pollux, they too are connected through their attributes as leaders.”
— Martin Ansin

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s the good word from Mondo on this piece.

When thinking about what artist we would tap to illustrate this poster, we had to keep several things in mind. Not only did we need someone that could compose an image that was wondrous and full of imagination, like Terry Gilliam’s films, but it had to be simply put…beautiful. THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS is most definitely all of those things and the poster we produced for the film had to match. Enter: Martin Ansin. Martin has done a few posters for us so far and he is quickly becoming one of Mondo’s go-to guys. His poster definitely captures the spectacle and luster of Gilliam’s latest.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.