This article is from WeChat official account:Story FM (ID:story_fm) , Narrator: Liu Zhizhi, Anchor: Kou Aizhe, Producer: Kou Aizhe, Sound Design:Sun Zeyu, text: Kou Aizhe, Liu Yi, caption picture from: provided by the narrator
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Liu Zhizhi’s studio “Initiation Ban” accepted the invitation of the Beijing International Film Festival last year to design a poster for the upcoming 10th Beijing Film Festival in 2020.
In the end they made two dynamic posters. The first one is a windmill blade representing the tenth anniversary, which rotates into a windmill; the second one is a colorful lens with different lengths and lengths of the camera lens, which is stacked in the poster to form the appearance of the Temple of Heaven.
The first picture: Windmill blades representing the tenth anniversary
Second picture: Stack up camera lenses of different lengths to form the appearance of the Temple of Heaven
But after the design was completed, when the poster was published on the official Weibo of the Beijing Film Festival, comments flooded in like a tide, countless people criticized it as ugly, and many designers in the industry supported Liu Zhizhi. Comments become polarized.
Generally speaking, whether a design is well done or not, there are generally disputes and professional discussions in the industry, which rarely enter the public’s field of vision, and the public does not care. But in this event, the public’s discussion was so enthusiastic that the “North Film Festival Poster” event even rushedHot search on Weibo.
Liu Zhizhi has a very close relationship with Story FM. The logo of Story FM, including the previous first edition and the second edition now in use, are all from Liu Zhizhi. Today, we invited Liu Zhizhi to sort out the ins and outs of this incident.
controversy
My name is Liu Zhizhi, a graphic designer born in the 1970s and a teacher at the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
It was Tuesday morning, and when I got up I found that WeChat had exploded. Most of the WeChat messages I received still said “It’s refreshing”, but suddenly I saw a message saying, “It’s okay, don’t be sad, there will be arguments about everything.” I felt a little strange at the time, I felt like a message of condolences from all walks of life.
So I hurried to the official microblog of the Beijing International Film Festival. They posted the festival’s leading poster, and the comments were all “It’s so ugly”, “How can it be so ugly”, “Can you design the text”, “This student did it”, “Why are the colors so vulgar and so dirty”, etc., and some purely curse.
Some comments on Weibo
accept the invitation
Speaking of which, as early as about seven or eight years ago, the Beijing International Film Festival collected posters from the society. They are also cooperating with Beijing Design Week, hope to use the platform of Design Week to collect posters from those who follow the design week.
Because I have not only my own studio, but also a member of the “International Graphic Design Alliance”, a world designer organization, so some events in the design industry often invite me.
At that time, I happened to be cooperating with Design Week, so they asked me to tell the film festival what a poster is.
So I went and talked about some of my own works. It seems that I also commented on the works of the previous editions of the Beijing Film Festival. I can’t remember the details, but we got to know each other.
We have been in contact, and they have been inviting me to say, “Could you please come out and do it.”
As a result, there was a “Cauliflower Incident” at the 9th Beijing Film Festival last year.
The thing is like this: Because the Beijing International Film Festival has a grand prize called the Temple of Heaven Award, their poster was designed last year as a goddess waving silk. This silk constitutes a temple of heaven, and the goddess is treated as a tree trunk. Above is a tree with lush foliage.
The main problem with them is that since the canopy is directly trimmed from the pictures found in the gallery, the whole tree looks like a cauliflower without a certain light source. .
Some previous posters of the Beijing International Film Festival. Among them, the ninth poster (middle of the upper row) has been shaped by netizensRong Wei “Looks like a cauliflower”
The comments at the time were overwhelming criticism. I also asked them what was going on. They explained to me that they did not find a professional designer, but probably a young designer who was a brand strong>. Moreover, I have been making changes after finishing, and the leaders are satisfied only after changing more than 30 drafts.
So when they were preparing for this film festival, they wanted to work with me even more.
I thought to myself, people have been chasing you for so long, and it’s inappropriate not to agree, not to mention that no matter how bad it is, it should be no worse than “cauliflower”, and I also think it’s quite fun.
As a purely official project, I think I can add some new things and some possibilities, because like ordinary purely official posters, it’s basically a silk around the Chinese watch and children Flying pigeons, or blue sky and white clouds, or the red walls of the Forbidden City, but I think there should be some provocations in the design, which can stimulate the mediocre society or this established paradigm. This is a concept of my personal design. Then I agreed.
Design process
After I accepted the invitation, the Beijing Film Festival also made some requests.
First of all, this year is the 10th anniversary of the Beijing Film Festival, and they hope to have the concept of “ten”.
Secondly, there must be a windmill. Before the North Film Festival, there was an image of a windmill made of film. This windmill has seven blades, as if film is the seventh art.
Then the color requires Colorful. The organizer likes colorful and rainbow colors. My analysis is that there is no error in this way. Too green or too red, or any color, may be understood as biased towards a certain group. So simply colorful, all colors are available.
Finally, because the Beijing Film Festival will award a Temple of Heaven award, it is required to have a Temple of Heaven.
So when we made the proposal, we divided it into 5 different ways according to the concept and performance methods, and then we selected them for the organizer.
Outdoor renderings of posters
In fact, when we first started designing, we designed in the direction of the main poster. But the organizer may feel that our style and approach to leadership may be difficult to accept. So on the premise of respecting me, they finally made a compromise and told me: This set of posters is not used as the main poster, but as a more conceptual pilot poster.
What is a pilot poster? Generally, the film has not been edited yet, and may even have just entered the stage of shooting. In order to build momentum, a poster will be released first. This is the pilot poster.
So the leading posters can be more artistic, without stars. It is more like a theater poster, more intentional and artistic.
The other party is Party A after all. They think it is suitable as a lead poster, and there is reason for them. I don’t have to argue that I must be the lead poster, so the final decision is made, as the lead poster.
In fact, everyone was selected in the end, the windmill and the Temple of Heaven were two posters. This is actually not a static poster in the true sense. In fact, it is an animation, it is a dynamic poster.
Design Concept
The first poster of the windmill, because it was the 10th Beijing Film Festival, the “ten” turned to form a windmill.
In the second poster, we want to use the lens as an element. Because all the images we shoot are shot in and projected through lenses, this is a movie. Both the shooting and the projection of the lens in the movie are made up of lenses. For example, Leica 35f2 classic lens, we would say that there are 8 jade, 8 jade is 8 lenses.
And we found that the Temple of Heaven is layered, so we put