News & Blog

I recently completed a poster redesign for Logan’s Run, as part of the Now Showing exhibit curated by Darren Firth/Wear It With Pride and on display at the Cosh gallery in London until the 16th of June 2008.

When Darren invited me to participate I immediately chose Logan’s Run. It’s one of my favourite science fiction movies and a prime example of the dystopian theme in SF movies that were so typical of the 70s – think of Westworld, Silent Running, Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, THX 1138, etc…

Logan’s Run stood out to me, because while it presents a grim future, its also sexy, camp, and very stylized in terms of production design and presenting the future. As an aside – I’ve always felt, and still do, that The Future looks more alien in films from that decade, than, lets say, Minority Report. Back then it seemed they really tried to come up with visuals that were really *out there*, never mind if they were actually feasible, as opposed to the current trend in SF (in movies at least) where they try to make it all believable – resulting in visions that still impress, but they don’t look alien to us.

Logan’s Run 1 sheet, 1976

Anyway, back to Logan’s Run. What was I going to do? The original 1976 one sheet is a classic and so synonymous with the film that I wanted to avoid any similarities with it. Instead of presenting the typical collage shot of the movie, I wanted to pair it down to the single element that ran through the movie: the life clock.

For those who have never seen Logan’s Run (shame on you), the core element of the movie is that life ends at 30 years. When you get born, every human being gets a crystal implanted in the palm of their left hand (the palm flower) that starts at white/translucent, and cycles through yellow, green and red as you age. 10 Days before you turn 30 it stars blinking red-black. When it stops blinking and stays black you’re time is up. That, above all other elements in the movie stood out to me and the cycle never really gets addressed fully in the movie.

My interpretation of the Life Clock

I based my design on the grow rings of a tree. A circular design (as in the palm flower), but with the aging process reversed. Instead of ‘growing’ outward, I reversed the principle so that everything ends up in the centre, or the Carousel.

Carousel in Logan’s Run

The diagram was then populated with references to the film, the settings and the characters – and that would create my main image.

The logo, however, was a whole different animal. The movie uses Avant Garde for its title and end credits and a customized version of it in the posters, so I wanted to avoid that at all costs.

Logan’s Run title card

My attempt at the Logan’s Run logo

My initial idea was based on a custom typeface I designed last year that I modified for the poster. However, it didn’t fit with the design at all, and was threatening to overtake it while also ruining my very information-led poster design. So I dropped that idea quite fast and decided to set the whole poster in Univers 47 Light Condensed and Univers 57 Condensed:

Logan’s Run poster A

GREAT! Job done! Well… I wasn’t happy with it.

OK, I liked the idea behind it, but the execution lacked. It all felt a bit déjà vu to be honest (I have a weak spot for circles ya know) and in the end the poster didn’t feel like Logan’s Run to me anymore.

This was around the 24th of May. The exhibit opened on the 29th. Faaaan-tastic.

Exterior of Selfridges in Birmingham

I’d worked myself in a corner and was pretty much just going to go with my design (I really wanted to participate in the exhibit), until my wife Liz mentioned the Selfridges store in Birmingham designed by Future Systems and remarked that the shape and exterior of the building could be something from Logan’s Run, telling me it’d be interesting to create an image of an object that is as much sensual as dangerous – alluring to the poster’s tag line. I asked my brother Tim to come up with a “kind of red rubbery studded ball in 3D” as the main image for the poster. With the ball being a metaphor for all kinds of things – pleasure, pain, the palm flower, Carousel, the domed city,…

This turned the whole design of the poster around. Instead of the dark colours of the first design I opted for a clean/clinical white space with the ball floating in the middle. This, I believe, is much more truthful to the atmosphere of the movie. To round it up I changed the typography quite drastically from the rigid Univers to Futura. This switch made the poster look a lot more 70s Sci-Fi, and I replaced the ‘O’ with a glowing circle – another hint at the palm flower and the main protagonist (Logan is a ‘Red 5′ in the movie).

The final result

A huge thank you to Darren Firth, who did a splendid job of putting the exhibition together (and coming up with the concept!), but mostly for managing to get my poster printed and included in the exhibition after I delivered past the deadline!

The poster is available as a 50cm x 70cm Giclée print on Da Vinci Archival Art Paper in an edition of 25 priced at £115, available from Wear It With Pride.

Add article to: