Posters: These strangers

Subtitle: I bet Toulouse-Lautrec never ever polemics with the director of Moulin Rouge.

It happens very often that to a graphic designer are made proposals obscene. Not obscene within the meaning of lascivious and obscene about sex, but for the real sense of the term. Obscene, unwatchable, impossible to propose under acid and drunkenness .

Isn't it real? Turning here and there on some forum that gathers the poor Italian graphics comunity, seems that proposals of this kind are all agenda (If possible even worse), then as time passes I learned that I can console since my misfortunes are well shared.

In my modest experience I learned that when you are dealing with a new client (coming from different fields… It does not matter, are all the same) everything that concerns the promotion becomes a drama. The rule that universally unites all life forms “clients” is: have no clear ideas. Never.

Only when you break your head to try to get a sense from vague and incoherent mumblings that they call “explanation of what I want” and only after you've pulled out with pliers a sentence sense, often accompanied by large gestures of arms, then (and only then) they understand what they want. When you finally present the project, not have minimally attended, They immediately clarify ideas and so, at last, they criticize you.

I recently discovered that it is a classic, again I console myself because it's not just me.

With the Theater issue I often have similar problems, Although not all of the subjects with which I have ample opportunities use the same attitude, not to say that their idea is different from that described above.

For a start give all assume that their will is the verb. Often ask what is aesthetically obscene like color combinations as from color-blind (a chance for artistic avant-garde) or old dusty visuals pass off classic. But my absolute favorite, What makes me swoon whenever they hear, is: all on one page.

This usually happens with posters and with the theatre shows, the rules:

• create one poster standard format.
• put every pictures of every artist or person that work on a show, whith smirking faces, old colors, old moves, etc… “This is not a real problem? Photoshop makes miracles”.
• The manifest must contain data of every single person involved in the project, well written because otherwise the technician of lights resents.
• It takes a strong theme that identifies the subject of review: the 90% of cases does not exist. The remaining 10% involve every single thing in the all universe.
• Must use a beauty image fun, but not to colorful, and colorful, but not to colorful. Must be loved by everybody, from kid whit bycicle to the granny whit big cane.
• Watchword: sobriety, elegance and creativity.

There is nothing to do… the Italians are a people of artists.

Who more, less so and think all requests you make more and more absurd. When, by the time, you lose the enthusiasm for your work that is the fault of the “projects to hack” as these. I admit that sometimes the temptation not to commit myself is strong. Then, fortunately for the client, passes. ;)

Yet a little reading or research to understand by themselves that their ideas are wrong. How arise an advertisement poster? What is its history? The invention of the poster is old, as the need to communicate to the masses, I don't know the precise date, but it is definitely plausible to think that they are born with the invention of printing. Pass by posters without pictures that communicate decrees and declarations of some Royal family, written thick and black and white, to colourful theatrical poster with stylized dancers with long johns in plain view or beautiful girls with elegant profiles and wavy hair in the wind.

The pitch is very long but the genre is still popular and, according to me, very effective.

My idea of an event like a theatrical review is like a good woman dress: beautiful and elegant enough to want to take it off. As to say? I stopped watching because I know the Group posters playing, or I see a nice photo, or there is an inscription that intrigues me and usually what you see is little nothing, consequently, what interests me I'm going to look for other channels.
The only reason I'd stay ever to watch a manifest as what the customer wants is to criticize it ferociously.
Less is more. No?