Psycho Reimagined

For this brief, we were asked to create our own movie posters for a movie of our choice (from a pre-selected list, of course). As a horror movie fan, I immediately knew I would be designing a new look for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 classic film, “Psycho.”

We were asked to create both a reimagined movie poster for a specific target audience and a “cult” movie poster more geared towards superfans. For each movie poster, we had to first create a handmade version which we later had to re-create digitally. This page displays my reimagined poster and the process behind its creation.

Brief
Reimagined Movie Poster

Year
2020

The Process

I decided to market “Psycho” to a more modern generation of viewers, specifically people at the older end of Gen Z and the younger end of Millennials. This is a generation that has an appreciation for both aesthetically beautiful, brightly colored motifs as well as the macabre. The poster had to be bold, colorful, and demanding of the younger generations’ distinctly short, not-so-easily impressed attention span.

Typography

A quick study of color psychology reveals that we often associate bright yellow with implied danger, fear, and anxiety. Perfect!

Equipped with yellow and red paper, I set to work on the design of my title typography, drawing inspiration from Swiss Design, specifically a couple works by Emil Ruder and Wim Crouwel.

The rest of the poster typography was inspired by paper cutout lettering by Saul Bass as a nod to the creator of the original movie credits.

Image Making

Texturally, I wanted to create something that had a rough, gritty, almost carnal energy. Lino cuts and ink rolling seemed like an obvious solution for that raw handmade feeling.

I experimented with the yellow lettering on pink and blue lino ink backgrounds. This color combination was chosen in an effort to connect with younger, more modern viewers. On their own, yellow, pink, and blue can be read as playful, but my job was to use them to communicate a more threatening message.

To do this, I created three carvings: one of Norman Bates sporting his iconic sinister smile, one of his victim, Marion Crane, and a human skull. Overlaying them created several different striking combinations, which could also serve as sneaky references to some of the movie’s plot elements (Marion over the skull foreshadows her death, or could be read as the dead mother’s skull with hair, and Norman’s face over Marion’s implies their fateful meeting or possibly alludes to Norman dressed as his mother). The three of them blending together on the poster sends a loud and clear message: these two characters are inextricably linked, and at least one person will certainly wind up dead.

Digitizing the Final Design

Once the final poster was complete, the new challenge was to digitize it in a way that remained as faithful as possible to the original. To do this, I created my own brushes in Photoshop by scanning in lino rolling ink marks that I made by hand. I created the typography in Illustrator and scanned in the lino stamps for the final result. Below, you can compare each piece by clicking between the digital and handmade posters.