So in case you couldn't tell, I really didn't want to do a traditional birth announcements. I've received far too many of the same old cutesy cards with a picture and a pastel background. No offense to all those who have gone that route to announce the birth of a child, but as far as I'm concerned – as a designer – I needed something a little... different.
I sketched out a few ideas (which I may yet make into announcements to print and sell, along with this one), and the one that seemed to tickle my funny bone the most was the
retro monster movie poster theme. The way I see it, the more dire and life-altering an event, the more it needs a bit of humor to take the edge off. Plus, having a kid is a joyful event, and if you can't have a bit of a chuckle because of it, then it's not joyful enough.
The great thing about a birth is that the phenomenon itself is amazing and scary enough, so it doesn't need to be spun much to make it seem like the subject of a monster movie. Slap on a quirky label (Pod Person) to the otherwise ordinary being in question, and "Whammo!" – instant monster movie. The trick, then, was to illustrate it.
After taking a look at a few old horror movie posters, one can easily get a sense of common visual elements: drippy lettering for the title, sans-serif font along the lines of Futura or Univers for the rest of the text, a woman in distress (comes naturally with childbirth), and maybe a shot of the monster or shocked bystanders. Well, we don't want to show a shot of "the monster" because that would be crossing the line. Our baby's too cute for that. Plus, the idea that something's in there about to come out is scary enough (
Alien anyone?).
Although most of the old movie posters I looked at were full color, there's something about a 2 color treatment that says, "low budget B-movie." So that's what I did. The woman's head was taken from the Abominable Snowman poster I found, and modified a bit. Nothing like going to the source for that look of shock and terror. I got the torso from a preggy-mom shot, and the rest was just good-ol' Illustrator. The 1950's hospital bed was added in for texture and a sense of space and place. And of course I couldn't leave out the shocked bystander – in this case a wide-eyed doctor modified from a stock photo.
The woman has to be in the moment of impending doom in these posters, so for this announcement the lady had to be in labor. One has to blow the features of the monster out of proportion, but since we weren't showing the monster here, the place where the monster dwells has to be blown out of proportion instead. So now we've got a pregnant belly fit to burst, so big it covers up most of our subject. Ridiculous? Yes. But that's just what we're looking for.
So there it is. Just use words like "amazing" and "cosmic" in the wording on the back, and you've got yourself a genuine, bona fide retro monster movie poster birth announcement... from beyond.
Labels: 1950s, announcement, design, monster, movie poster, retro
The other day I was at my bank, where they often times give out Dum Dums lollipops at the teller. This day they only had one left in the jar, and the colors looked like they might indicate a butterscotch flavor (one of my favorites), so I took it. To my surprise, it was not butterscotch, but piapple coconut. The wrapper was a sort of deep purple and gold, and said "100th Anniversary Flavor", and below that "1953". Obviously 1953 was the year this flavor was released, because if it was supposed to indicate the founding date of Dum Dums, then surely someone over there must be a Dum Dum to be celebrating the 100th Anniversary so early.
What struck me, though, was that a Children's Book Week poster we had decorated my son's room with had very similar colors to this wrapper's as it's primary palette. And this poster was from 1953. Were these – deep purple and gold – some sort of official colors for 1953?
Here's an assignment: see if you can find some other 1953-specific examples on the web that use this color duo, and post the links in your comments to this blog entry.
