Andrew Rench

I’ve been noticing a trend over the past 15 years or so with the use of typography on movie posters, specifically bad comedies. For some reason, low-brow, uninspired comedies tend to have similar typeography in their posters. The common threads seem to be the use of heavy sans-serif fonts (black, ultra-bold, slab, etc, usually Futura) and the they are typically set in bright red.

What’s interesting to me is that this seems to be a very concious marketing decision. Take for example a film like Year One. Is there really any reason why the typography should be set in a modern sans serif font in bright red? Wouldn’t some sort of ancient-looking script font or at least something inspired by the time period be more appropriate? It really seems to cheapen a movie when they go for this type of eye-grabbing effect. It’s no wonder most of the films that get this treatment end up being stinkers: the filmakers don’t have much faith in the film to start with. I can imagine some film executive saying, “You know what it needs? Big red type. That’s what sells a movie.”

If you have any doubt, here’s some examples to illustrate the point: