For some reason, The Man Who Wasn't There popped into my brain almost immediately. Probably because I've been kicking around another Coen Brothers project for a while now, so it was on my mind. Not to mention, this film deserves the attention, I've always felt it was criminally underrated.

Sure maybe that's not the simplest movie title, but nevertheless I had a nice idea nugget, so I was off and running. First up, a quick verbal brainstorm of nouns and verbs that would become the launching point for the design.

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE - image 1 - student project

Early on, I had a vision of a silhouetted man who's top half was blending into the background and his bottom half was formed with a pair of barber scissors. After a quick thumbnail sketch I realized the poster would work much better if the man & scissors were formed using negative space and the title treatment was die cut into his body. Like the title itself was taking pieces away from him. I then moved onto a more formal pencil drawing so I could really work out the layout, shadows and tone. I really liked the feel of the pencil drawing, so I decided to incorporate some pencil gradient into the background of the piece.

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE - image 2 - student project

Being the film is a moody, black & white noir, I wanted to make sure those elements were incorporated in the design. Working in black and white was the first step, but I then decided to include some art deco style lines within the background. Those lines created some cool shafts of light, which really helps draw the eye down to the centerpiece of the art. It was also a nice homage to the lighting style of classic film noir.

Creating the man and his scissors was pretty straight-forward. Just some basic work in Illustrator. The most challenging aspect was to find a font that not only worked for the time period, but would also be thick/fat enough to cut out a large chunk of the man. Originally, I wanted to use a condensed sans-serif, but ultimately settled on Proxima Nova. (I did wind up using a condensed version of the font for the director and actor billing.) Once I had the figure, scissors and lettering in place, I worked on the shadowing details inside and around the figure. I wanted THE MAN to look as though he was disappearing into the shadows behind him, so I played around with his opacity.

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE - image 3 - student project

The blood spray was the last piece of the puzzle. This wasn't actually a part of my initial concept, but after completing a full pass of the design, I felt like it was lacking something. I was hoping the sharp angles of the scissors would evoke the "murder" and "criminal" side of the story, but it wasn't enough. A dash of blood red would do the trick! A few paint splatters later and the design was complete.

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE - image 4 - student project

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE - image 5 - student project

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE - image 6 - student project

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE - image 7 - student project

Gary Irwin

Creative Director, Variant

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