He credits social media with having a "massive impact" on the way film marketing is done these days. Matt Ferguson says his work has been met "overwhelmingly positively" by fansīack in Sheffield, Ferguson, who uses a mix of traditional pen and pencil sketching as well as digital programmes, now also co-owns an artwork business called Vice Press. Keen to capitalise on what the 46-year-old describes as the "underground promotional effect", film companies soon struck deals with Mondo and the likes of New York's Bottleneck Gallery and California's Gallery 1988 to partner on projects.ĭoyle, who has run his own poster and printing company, Nakatomi Inc, since departing, adds: "It's always good to see illustrators getting high-profile work even if some of the more surprising aspects of the early days have dried up. Small print runs of between 50 and a few hundred posters were eagerly snapped up by fans and collectors. "With the appreciation of older films came a love for the older poster styles, and it became clear the artwork we were producing had a much bigger life online as more and more people picked up on it."
#CONCERT FLYER DESIGNER JOB MOVIE#
It gave us a punk-rock ethos - like we know better than the movie studios. "Usually we would find an artist we thought would work well with a property or be counter-intuitive so you got something crazy. It was just to promote events at the theatre and kind of in that grey area between bootleg and official merchandise. He said: "Back then, none of the work was licensed.
Tim Doyle, Mondo's art director from 2004 to 2009, remembers selling posters in the cinema's lobby as well as pitching in as the "cook, waiter and ticket taker".
Initially selling T-shirts, it began commissioning illustrators to reimagine posters of classic films being shown at the "dark, dirty second-floor theatre" where beer and pizza were served alongside the celluloid.Īpocalypse Now's poster, designed by Bob Peak, was among the most distinctive of the 1970s and 80s Key to kick-starting the renaissance would be small, independent operations in the United States with a "punk, DIY attitude".Īmong those at the forefront was Mondo, a spin-off from the then single-screen Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas, a cinema favoured by Hollywood trend-setters such as Quentin Tarantino and influential film bloggers. Where hand-painted efforts by the likes of Alvin and his contemporaries Drew Struzan (Back to the Future), Bob Peak (Apocalypse Now) and Richard Amsel (Raiders of the Lost Ark) were once the norm, the 1990s saw a shift towards more formulaic composition with airbrushed photographs of movies' stars becoming dominant. Inspired by the "deceptively simple, stark" shots of director John Carpenter and the likes of ET poster designer John Alvin, he is part of a wave of artists who have helped revive a more creative style of work common in the 1970s and 80s. "It's been constant ever since," Ferguson says from his self-described Hobbit hole - a basement office where posters line the walls and Star Trek and Transformers action figures fill the shelves.įerguson was responsible for the official poster for the 2021 version of Dune by director Denis Villeneuve Within two years he had quit his job at HMV. In 2012, Marvel enlisted him to design artwork for the DVD and Blu-ray box-set releases of its Phase One superhero stories. They wanted a copy of a Hulk illustration Ferguson had posted on social media for the Hollywood star. Having "failed miserably at art school", one day he got an email "out of the blue" from an assistant for Hulk actor Mark Ruffalo. So just how did he make the giant leap from working in a comics shop and selling DVDs at his local HMV store to a full-time role creating art for the biggest names in film? As well as being a long-time contributor to the Marvel universe, Batman, Blade Runner and Jurassic Park are among Ferguson's other projects. It is not just the Star Wars franchise which has called upon his talents, though.
The illustrator used Jeff Goldblum's "must go faster!" line from the film as inspiration for his 2018 Jurassic Park poster
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