There are a number of unmistakable signs that you’re in a student flat. The smell. The minimal fridge. And the walls plastered with peeling posters of films released years before anyone living in the house was old enough to have seen them at the cinema. If they have seen them at all.

Scarface, Pulp Fiction, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Trainspotting, Chinatown: all instant classics of unique and punchy design, which neither misrepresented nor undersold the movie they were flogging. Once so respected and venerated an artform, the poster has become a functional product; carelessly Photoshopped, cropped and stuffed with explosions until logic, sense and any artistic ambition have been ruthlessly abandoned. In 20 years’ time, we’re unlikely to see a poster for The Danish Girl or Dirty Grandpa up on anyone’s wall. Including those of the directors.

Beloved of students everywhere … the classic Scarface poster.

Bad posters are not part of a new trend, but there’s a boring uniformity and a lackadaisical nothingness to the majority that have been spewed out in the past 12 months, with independent designs becoming a rarity.

“Obviously, the main purpose of a movie poster is not to be art but to maximise box-office revenues,” says Michael Barnett, print editor of Marketing Week. “You would think the most effective way to do that is to create something memorable and striking, but most of the time, marketers will choose the low-risk option, which is to pick the one that market research tells you will appeal to the people most likely to watch your film. That’s why characters on Disney posters always have an annoying smirk and one raised eyebrow. It conveys an attitude of quirky confidence, which market research shows kids respond to.”

The modern film poster, then, is the victim of a desperate tug-of-war, and the result of a murky cocktail of contractual obligations (lead actor’s name must be at certain font size), commercial needs (does this poster appeal to ABC1 males?), limited options (stars reassembling for a poster shoot isn’t always viable) and protracted conference calls to LA with 20 women called Melissa.

“The task of boiling an entire film down to a single image is difficult in and of itself, made more so by the various interests of everyone involved,” says Alex Griendling, a designer who has worked for studios on posters for Angels and Demons and Watchmen. “Directors want something that represents their work as they see it, marketing teams want something that will attract an audience, the producer is often stuck between the two, and the designer is trying to reconcile these opinions through their own voice. Like anything designed by a committee, these competing perspectives often steer the final product to a ‘safe’ solution.”

Griendling has sat on such committees before, but when it comes to placing blame for the blandness, he points his finger at the whole industry. “I think it’s all of the aforementioned conflicts between the involved parties, and the legal requirements placed upon most posters,” he says. “Elements like the billing block [the chunk of credit text at the bottom] and actor credits [the callouts at the top of many posters] must be sized in relation to the film’s title. Sometimes, an actor’s presence on a poster can trigger a series of other requirements. For example, if actor A is on the poster, actor B must also appear, but no larger than 75% of A. As you can imagine, these requirements can quickly pile up and limit where the final poster can go, creatively.”

But while most posters are stuck in a rut, there is a glimmer of hope – and an important change underway. Firstly, the staid nature of the medium has led to an increase in independent designers creating alternative artwork, distributing it online and often selling physical copies. It’s a rapidly expanding market and some studios have even been smart enough to collaborate with designers whose work makes a concerted effort to buck the trend. Artists such as Olly Moss and Brandon Schaefer have been recruited to bring much-needed style to a generic landscape.

There’s also a shift in how posters are displayed by studios and consumed by the public. If you’ve spent any time on the London underground in the past few years, you’ll be aware of the advent of this move.

“Outdoor advertising isn’t becoming less important, but what is changing is that more digital poster sites are being installed,” says Barnett. “That means moving images, interactivity and designs that are more targeted to the people nearby. So a lot more ‘posters’ will probably be short movie trailers or animations rather than static images, and they’re likely to be tailored to the types of people who are most likely to walk by them.”

This means we’re entering Minority Report territory, where digital posters will start analysing passers-by in order to customise their message and use mobile-phone data to bombard you with promotional material. A brave new world – one ripe for a new level of visual inventiveness. It also means our sticky student walls are likely to remain safe. Scarface lives on.

Four of the worst



Photograph: Allstar

Joy The manic energy of David O Russell’s under-rated comedy is nowhere to be found in this joyless attempt to disguise the fact that the film is mostly about a mop.

Photograph: PR

The Dressmaker Kate Winslet’s fruitcake revenge drama has been stitched up with a garish and shoddily meshed mixture of bright colours and unflattering stills. This is a sixth-form art project scrambled ahead of deadline.

Photograph: PR

Youth Paolo Sorrentino’s mature and stylish film is ill-served by this baffling, context-free lineup of cast mugshots,and a colour palette straight out of nursery school.

Photograph: Rex

Brooklyn The aesthetic of a magazine you’d usually find in a dentist’s waiting room hampers the poster for this Oscar-nominated romance. The slideshow of stars makes them seem unengaged and a little bit lost.

… and four of the best

Photograph: Rex

The Third Man In 1949, a photo shop was a shop selling photos, and posters were the result of artists creating promo material from scratch, such as this moody, hand-painted original, which is now part of Martin Scorsese’s personal collection.

Photograph: Rex

Anatomy of a Murder Riffed on, or rather copied, in the campaign for Spike Lee’s 1995 drama Clockers, this Rothko-esque design from design legend Saul Bass remains a deviously simple yet striking image.

Photograph: Rex

Rosemary’s Baby This menacing one-sheet for Roman Polanski’s 1968 satanic horror uses a mixture of eerie colouring and the surprising use of a pram to evoke utter dread.

Photograph: Rex

The Thing Despite the content of John Carpenter’s gory remake, this brave throwback refused to go for the easy route (no head with spider legs to be seen), and chose art-deco design to sell an 80s alien horror.