Design-Geeking Out on the Oscars

CreativePro Staff Mike Rankin

The Academy Awards are coming up in little more than a week, and many film fans are making predictions, planning parties, and catching up with the contending films they missed last year. But if you’re a true design geek, there are other ways to get ready for the Oscars.

Check out (and be amazed by) the official “85 Years of Oscars” poster by Olly Moss. It features 85 unique renderings of Oscar statues representing all the Best Picture winners from 1927 to 2012.

It might take you from now till the show next Sunday to guess the titles of each film (but it’s sure fun trying). If you need a cheat sheet, here’s the official Oscar timeline with all the winners.

Type fans also love picking winners and losers when it comes to movie poster design. Fontfeed has a look at the type designs used in some recent films of note, including Best Picture nominee Zero Dark Thirty, whose teaser poster might appeal equally to lovers and haters of Helvetica.

Linotype has an article on the typefaces used in last year’s winning films.

Slashfilm has a fun article deconstructing the elements of ten recent action movie posters.

Either these posters were all designed by the same folks, or there’s a Flying Debris filter lurking in Photoshop somewhere.

If you liked the ornate typographic treatments used in last year’s telecast, Catherine Davis (aka Design Editor) has tracked down free sources for fonts and vectors very much like what the Academy’s designers used.

And finally, I can’t fail to mention a couple movie-related articles right here at CreativePro: the movie poster type quiz and Scanning Around With Gene’s It’s a Wonderful Typeface.