Client

Vanessa A. Yee, Director

Services

Concept, Design, Photography

Project Overview

Documentary filmmaker Vanessa A. Yee contacted me to make a new poster for her film to promote it on iTunes and other digital distribution platforms.

Challenges

After working with Ms. Yee to design the website for her documentary, she asked me to redesign her film poster. The previous poster was an illustration, which Ms. Yee felt didn’t match with the tone of the film or the new website branding.

Her film deals with mental health issues in Asian American communities. The title The Laundromat represents a safe space where people can air their emotional “dirty laundry.” I needed to create a poster that conveyed the core of the movie in an easily digestible image that would appeal to a viewer scrolling through titles on iTunes.

Here is a sample banner that I created as part of her website redesign.

Solution

I started by looking at the posters for popular documentary titles from the last ten years. The most successful posters had a singular image that symbolized the emotional message of the film. Ms. Yee and I discussed the aspects of the film she wanted to highlight in the poster, and we came up with 3 items: the laundromat as a physical space, Asian American community, and her emotional journey with her own family.

We decided to use her own family photos in the art and wanted them to look aged to symbolize emotional wear and tear. (Going “through the wringer,” to play on another laundry term.) I printed hard copies of the photos and hand-weathered them to achieve this effect.

To symbolize laundromats and also Asian American experiences, we chose to display the photos on a hanging drying rack, a common feature in Chinese-American homes. We wanted a specific look that would match the red and beige color palette established in her earlier branding, so I bought a red hanging rack that fit the bill.

I then staged a photo shoot of the weathered photos on the hanging rack. Finally I composited the right shot into the final poster.

Takeaways

It was a pleasure to work with Ms. Yee on this project. It felt like we were both archaeologists, digging toward the right symbol for the project. We spent a lot of time discussing and sharing reference photos before I started on any art for this job. This discussion process really helped me to narrow in on what she wanted, and as a result, I was able to produce the final work very quickly, without a lot of iterations. Considering the immense challenge of distilling a feature film into a singular image, I was proud that we were able to get there so quickly.