Design — STAR WARS Poster

Happy New Year!

I was never a STAR WARS fan. Don’t take me wrong — I have seen all the films in the past three decades and I do like them.

Then a few weeks ago I was gifted a LEGO Blacktron Cruiser (40580) during the Perth SUPERCONNECT event organized by Dr. Kate Raynes-Goldie and Matt Willson. My kids assembled the set and soon started ‘flying’ it in my home. Then a brainwave hit me — what about showing my kids all the STAR WARS films, displaying a lot of flying cruisers and warring lightsabers, in the chronological order of the story?

Yes, I know. The big plot twist in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ will not work if we watch the franchise in the chronological order of the story. Still I wanted to go ahead with this plan because my kids now have the luxury of seeing the entire thing in two weeks, than the three decades I took for the same.

This poster designed by me shows the order in which we watched the Skywalker Saga.

Wow, what a ride!

We finished all 11 movies of the series by 30th of December, 2023. Now I can appreciate the changes done to the original trilogy by George Lucas to maintain the continuity and tying some loose ends by employing the latest computer graphics in 2000.

And now we are STAR WARS fans. ‘Santa Clause’ even brought an R2-D2 toy lamp for my younger kid during Christmas!

I can fully appreciate what the fans felt at the STAR WARS Celebration, Chicago (2019) when Emperor Palpatine made a surprise appearance onstage and uttered “Roll it again!” with a mic drop.

This whole thing started with a gift I received. It triggered a chain of events that converted four souls of my family (including me) to believe in ‘The Force!’ Thank you again, Dr. Kate Raynes-Goldie and Matt Willson.

Poster Composition

• Background layer showing space
• Logo layer showing STAR WARS
• Text layer group with the list of movies
• Graphics layer group with the timeline and
• Anchor image layer showing the LEGO Blacktron Cruiser

I opted for a vertical timeline than a horizontal one for this poster. A suitable dark, blue background showing the space with a few stars was downloaded from FreePik.com created by Pikisuperstar. The highlight color of yellow was taken from the STAR WARS branding. The list of the movies was grouped into prequel trilogy, standalone films, original trilogy and sequel trilogy and was color coded for easy recognition.

I have taken two photos of the LEGO Blacktron Cruiser. I selected the top-down photo and it is edited to bring in visual continuity and I also added a very basic motion blur to it. Then it is placed over the STAR WARS logo for the visual impact.

I briefly considered adding a perspective effect to the text, mimicking the intro story scroll of STAR WARS movies — but I abandoned it as it affected the readability of the first few lines on this long list of films.

I also created a version of the poster with a monochrome space background; but a ‘highly unscientific survey’ among my kids proved that the target audience prefers the current version with the blue tint!

What is your experience in watching the STAR WARS films? Did you watch the Saga in the order of movie release dates or just like my preference, watched it in the order of story chronology?