Desigining the posters - Blade Runner

With the first two designs it was proved that for the compression of title sequences in the form of a poster any concept in the movie that is taken to the abstract can work just fine. The design for this poster of the movie Blade Runner wants to challenge that, so instead of trying different ideas only one is going to be explored.



The design is going to be about one famous quote that takes place in this movie: “Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” As tears is a concept linked to eyes, the idea is to show the eye like in the tests the replicants were subjected and somehow putting that into the context of the quote.



There's also a philosophical question that the film leaves at the end. Why the human kind would take the liberty of discriminating a being just because they created it? If humans creates something that understands and feels love, why is it not real love? This is an amazing aspect of this movie and the design will reflect it by that mixture of technology (computer), physiology (eye) and experience/feelings (contemplating the stars).

So the first thing that needed to be illustrated was the eye. Several photographs were taken and other one used from internet to try to make it work.







It was then when this tutorial was found and used to make the iris of an eye. After a few tests, the final version of the eye was ready.







Replicants were known in Blade Runner for doing jobs that human beings wouldn't like to do like, for instance, space exploration or going to war. In the quote, Roy, the replicant, mentions the shoulder of Orion. Now this is not as recognisable as the Orion belt, so the design has the Orion belt on the eye as something he has seen. The eye was combined with a grid and a texture of old TV (to match that futuristic look of the 80's) as if the eye is being scanned. This mixed with a public domain picture of a window with rain drops and city lights in bokeh gave the following result (the colours were modified for aesthetic reasons). The background is black so the eye look like is coming out from the darkness.

 





As mentioned with the other posters, there's no reason to change the original design of the title for the purposes being explored in this project. At first, it was only used the name of the actor that portrayed the character that made that specific statement. This could work on a title sequences or a series of posters for Blade Runer where only the eye of the person behind the name that is being shown. But as this intends to be a compressed version of the title sequences, there were added more names.

The typeface used is Garamond Premier Pro Medium Caption as it has the right thickness that almost matches the typeface that appears in the computers in the movie. Also, the quote was eventually added as it could be a line that could be potentially be crossed on the design of a poster but it couldn't in a title sequences, something that is very interesting considering that until now that's the only space the design can expand to considering the limitations.

The title was also modified a bit to balance the design. The rest of the colours were chosen according colour theories to give a sense of futurism