Hong Kong Cinema Poster × Thai Hand-Painted Film Poster and Billboard

A neighbouring painted cinema-front tradition; shares the billboard scale and saturated action.

From the research on Hong Kong Cinema Poster (Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest era)

Mix them and make something Hong Kong Cinema Poster Thai Hand-Painted Film Poster and Billboard

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Thai Hand-Painted Film Poster and Billboard, their arrangement from Hong Kong Cinema Poster, the finish from Thai Hand-Painted Film Poster and Billboard. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Hong Kong Cinema Poster (Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest era) Thai Hand-Painted Film Poster and Billboard

Type from Hong Kong Cinema Poster: Hand-lettering
Type as image
Colour from Thai Hand-Painted Film Poster and Billboard: Full polychrome
Flat fields
Form from Thai Hand-Painted Film Poster and Billboard: Naturalistic depiction
Composition from Hong Kong Cinema Poster: Diagonal axis
Collage & layering
Surface from Thai Hand-Painted Film Poster and Billboard: Painterly brushwork

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Hong Kong Cinema Poster

Wow

Shippori Mincho, standing in for Brush-style kaishu title lettering

Text · Thai Hand-Painted Film Poster and Billboard

Cinema advertising painted by hand at the largest possible size on billboards and on touring pick-up trucks, copied from lobby cards and posters and enlarged with the grid method. Painters fuse a film's selling scenes (faces, romance, action, menace) into one crowded, saturated, collage-like montage in brush and bold colour, giving imported films raw emotion and dramatic impact. The tradition continues in southern Thailand.

Oswald; Thai Hand-Painted Film Poster and Billboard used Hand-painted Thai display lettering and Painted Latin title lettering

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Thai Hand-Painted Film Poster and Billboard, with a counter-accent from Hong Kong Cinema Poster. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Hong Kong Cinema Poster (Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest era) Thai Hand-Painted Film Poster and Billboard

#f2e6cf ground · 36%
#1d1a1a ink · 14%
#f6c026 accent · 18%
#d7263d accent · 14%
#e8742a accent · 10%
#1b4f9c accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2e6cf;
  --ink: #1d1a1a;
  --accent-1: #f6c026;
  --accent-2: #d7263d;
  --accent-3: #e8742a;
  --accent-4: #1b4f9c;
  --font-display: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
  --font-text: "Oswald", sans-serif;
}

The two styles

A painted martial-arts poster shows a swordsman thrusting a blood-streaked blade toward the viewer beside a woman holding a sword, with two bearded men pictured below. Large red Chinese lettering cuts diagonally across a yellow field above a crowded sword battle outside a fortified gate, with mountains and a yellow sun in the background.

1958–1995 · East Asia Hong Kong Cinema Poster (Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest era) The film posters of the Hong Kong studio era, pairing hand-drawn martial-arts and melodrama scenes with bold Chinese title characters. Characters are often drawn in symmetrical groups under a deep red sky, in vibrant tones, with the title sometimes set as a symbolic shape such as a sun; the Chinese-character title and the martial-arts or melodrama subject set it apart from other painted film posters.

A densely painted adventure-horror poster centres on a sword-wielding man and a woman in red, with a huge blue-green supernatural face looming behind them. Surrounding scenes show Thai temples, a Buddha statue, armed men, a monk, boats in rushing water, skulls, waterfalls and charging elephants, with large red-and-yellow Thai lettering across the lower middle.

1953–present · Southeast Asia Thai Hand-Painted Film Poster and Billboard Cinema advertising painted by hand at the largest possible size on billboards and on touring pick-up trucks, copied from lobby cards and posters and enlarged with the grid method. Painters fuse a film's selling scenes (faces, romance, action, menace) into one crowded, saturated, collage-like montage in brush and bold colour, giving imported films raw emotion and dramatic impact. The tradition continues in southern Thailand.

More combinations

With Hong Kong Cinema Poster

With Thai Hand-Painted Film Poster and Billboard

Every style combination