Design analysis- TRON

1) What is the picture about?

            This picture is a poster of the Disney movie “Tron: Legacy”. The movie is about a science fiction story of Sam Flynn, a 27 years old bad boy who is searching for the reason of the mysterious disappearance of his father who is a famous creator of a video game. During his researches, he has been imprisoned in a video game and found that his father was imprisoned too. They, both of them, with a girl “Olivia” had to fight for their freedom in a virtual world created by Sam’s father.

            2) Content and analysis of the picture:

            Concerning the content and analysis of the poster, the dominant colors are black, white and different scales of blue, which represent melancholia and tragedy. First, a representation of a white beam composed of light is important and represents a vertical focal point in the poster. This white color represents purity and seems to appear from the main characters. Those characters are in the center of the poster and make them important, and also the fact of putting them close together creates a feeling of a strong relationship between them. The male character has his arms up to the sky and gives the impression of being strong, protector, and the leader of the story. On the other hand, the female character is looking for protection by looking down and being at the level of the male’s breast character. Moreover, there are two white lines that go from the bottom of the movie poster to the center of it and circle the two main characters, and this give them more importance.

            Concerning the background, it is composed of a sky that is grey and stormy, and represents the complexity of the story with difficulties and a lot of strong and violent actions that create mystery. We can notice few lines in orange at the left of the poster, and we might think that these lines are important in the story.

            The color orange gives a strong contrast with the dominant blue in the poster. We have also in the back the representation of a futurist city where we can notice big buildings with a little bit of light. There are also kinds of highways that create a sensation of complexity to arrive to the futurist city.

            Concerning the typography in the poster, we can notice the logo of “Disney” at the top of the title, and it lets people think that it is made by one of the famous film production company, and gives the impression of a fiction story. The title “Tron” is written in a decorative style which inspires futurism and the light color used perfectly matches with the blue dominant color.  The second part of the title “Legacy” gives the impression of history and past story, so maybe it refers to the first “Tron” movie of the 80’s or maybe it has its importance in the movie itself. Concerning the information at the bottom of the page, it says that the movie is in 3D which perfectly matches with the futurist concept of the film and gives more added value to it.

            3) Critics of the picture:

            I am going to start a critic analysis of the movie poster by following the main principles in design. The first question to ask is what is the big idea? Can we understand that it is a science fiction movie? In my opinion, the colors, effects, and the light make it obvious. Even if the two characters in the center of the poster are close together, it doesn’t give the sensation of a love story because there is too much effects in the back.

            Knowing that images are the best friends of the audience in terms of attention getting, we first pay attention to certain elements more than others. In fact, the white beam of light attracts first the attention, and then our eyes go to the two main characters, and finally to the title of the movie. So, we can say that the three main elements are: the straight white line, the two characters, and the title. Moreover, in terms of scale, the size of the different elements increases their importance.

            The straight white line creates symmetry in the poster, and the fact of putting the two characters in the center of it, makes it balanced. In fact, a well distribution of elements are done because we can distinguish the bottom part of the poster composed of text and information, and the upper part is dominated by the straight line.

            Concerning the proximity between elements, we don’t feel that the poster is too crowded. Elements are separated, and even the highways in the background are distinguishable.

            The stormy sky and the constant and distinguishable highways create a texture in the background and make the poster denser. We feel an empty space on the top of the poster, but this empty space is broken by the straight white line in its middle.

            In terms of unity and harmony, we really feel the homogeneity of the poster because it respects all the properties of design.

            Concerning the use of colors, we can notice a good contrast of colors because the designer used shouting ones: Blue/ orange, and used black and white as another contrast. When I think about science fiction movies and think scales of green and black. So, the use of blue is maybe used to represent the sad side of the story.

            The typography is also used in a contrasting way. I mean by that, there are different types (decorative for the title, and sans serif for the second part of the title), different size in order to give importance to certain elements.

            If we talk about the 6 elements of contrast, we see that there is different size in the different elements, different weight, a good structure in the poster, different forms and types of typography, I am not sure that there is different directions, and the colors are creating a good contrast.