Stephen Burdge - Film Poster Designer

CV

Stephen studied graphic design at St Martin's College, London. He worked at design company The Creative Partnership for 5 years, then set up Empire Design where he has worked on posters for films as varied as Toy Story, Trainspotting, Fargo and Snatch.

When are you approached?

At different stages. We have two types of clients. Distributors like Columbia Tristar, for example, who come to us with finished films needing a theatrical campaign, as well as sales agents and producers who may be looking for a poster to take to a film festival, or even an image to help them get funding.

Do you have to see the film before you design a poster?

Often we don't get the chance, though obviously it's better if you do. We read the script or the book, if it's based on a book. Sometimes a photographer will be sent on set but images for posters can be very different from images that a stills photographer on set might acquire.

Why don't you use the US posters if it was released there first?

The UK market is different. Toy Story for example was perceived in the US purely as a kiddies film whereas here we were targeting the student population as well, this being the reason we used character posters for Buzz Lightyear and the others. Hercules was another example, which is an animated movie based around heaven and hell. In the US they went for the fluffy clouds and so on, whereas here we focused on the whole James Woods as Hades thing, the kind of thing that hooks in eight year old boys!