These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art.

I sometimes complain about the last of imagination in movie posters, usually because I see missed opportunities in graphic design that would replicate the visual daring of the best cinema. Studios don’t want to spend a whole bunch of money on big stars, so they make sure those individuals are represented on the poster front and center, with minimal adornments to distract from the investment made on the personnel. In general, those sorts of posters are the most boring and provide practically no information about the film itself, save the identities of a couple people who are in it.

And yet one of my favorite movie posters from college years fits fits squarely within the above description: the poster for Gus Van Sant’s breakthrough film, Drugstore Cowboy. Somehow and some way, I find it to be incredibly evocative, somehow capturing the inner spirit of the film even though the shot itself feels strangely disconnected from the danger and desperation that pulses through the movie. Truly, it could be some romcom with Matt Dillon and Kelly Lynch as crazy kids just trying to figure things out. And yet I find the very soul of Van Sant’s film when I look at it, maybe because it’s so blazingly cool. This poster was tacked to a wall or a door on nearly every college apartment I lived in.

These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art.