Recently I was contacted by an old high school friend to design something (anything!) for an upcoming exhibition at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, New Hampshire. The exhibit will showcase independent (non-client) work by designers from all over the country, essentially explaining visually to the Colby-Sawyer community what exactly a designer does. I was really happy to be invited to such an exhibition because it's a great excuse to get some long-overdue personal work done.
What to do?
As I suspect is the case with many designers, I've had a project milling about in the recesses of my mind for the past couple years and had never really had cause to put it out there. I'm a big fan of the films of Stanley Kubrick and have long-wanted to design a poster for his epic film, "2001: A Space Odyssey." The film has many, many different readings—Kubrick was no slouch when it came to delving deep into the human psyche. One theme that's always resonated with me is mankind's place in the universe, how far we've evolved, how far we have to go, and the potential existential crises that arise for both the characters in the film and for the audience.
For me, one of the most powerful moments from the film (and the book) comes when Dave Bowman must deactivate (kill) the murderous AI system HAL 9000. As Dave systematically unplugs HAL's circuitry, HAL gradually reverts to his earliest formatting and begins singing "Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)." HAL's ability to sing the song degrades from normal singing voice to a bass murmur that can't even be described as language. It's haunting and terrifying to hear—Dave will soon be alone on a ship that will never return to Earth, his only companion removed from existence by his own hand.
Pulling Reference
There are a LOT of fan posters out there and it's been really fun and interesting to review them for inspiration. However, most of these deal with the entire film; that is, the imagery is selling me (the viewer) on the grand scale of the film and what I would deem fairly shallow connections between primitive man, modern man, and future man. Here's a tiny sample of what I pulled for my mood board:
Various fan posters for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
For me it's also just as important to look at posters and images from the original film as well. A recurring component to the images is a grid-like light effect. HAL and the ship's operating system is essentially giant set of disks that can be removed and inserted depending on need. All of them appear to light up, creating some dramatic effects in the room and also on Dave's helmet:
(L-R) The Server Room, official film poster, and Dave and HAL 9000.
Sketching
Before I start sketching I tend to write out a few words that I want to include either in type itself or in the meaning of what I'm designing. Since there are a million posters for 2001 and the film has been around since 1968, I'm not overly concerned with describing the whole of the film in one image. As you can see above, Dave Bowman's shock and awe seems to convey even the best designer's inability to do that effectively.
I've decided that I want the viewer to feel what I feel every time I watch Dave disconnect a singing HAL: anxiety, uneasiness, tension, depth, existential dread, solitude, the unknowable vastness of space, abandonment, awe, loss of mental faculty. Those are the words I wrote while thinking about what I want to convey, and I'll of course add and remove some as I go and more ideas come to me.
A Word About Geometry & Emotion
Kubrick's fascination/obsession with geometry, symmetry, and one-point perspective camera shots has been well documented. In the example images above it seems hardly accidental that so many of the designers made choices that reflected and complemented Kubrick's vision.
Many critics have also observed that Kubrick's films are fairly detached from their characters; that he often favors a detached storytelling style that works on a grander scale than one in which a characters' innermost feelings and motivations are clear and relatable.