Promotional Material

The promotional material is a key component to promoting and marketing our game on social media websites. In order to generate interest in the project, we want to create eye-catching posters and artwork that would attract audiences. To do this, I created a couple of posters that would be featured on twitter and our website.

The first piece was designed to mock a classical, 1970s movie poster to match the theme and setting of Disco is Dead. It is integral that the poster was pleasing to look at while still capturing the essence of the game. To begin, I chose a dark colour palette to portray the horror aspect of the game. Colour can affect us psychologically and physically, often without us being aware, and can be used as a strong device to tell a story. Knowledge gives you control, and control means I can manipulate and use colour to give my work a powerful and beautiful edge. Analogous colors sit next to each other on the colour wheel. They match well and can create an overall harmony in the colour palette. The cooler blue colours do not have the contrast and tension of complementary colours.

Analogous colours

Attention

As a designer, the next step was to focus on attention by grabbing the gaze of onlookers and encouraging them to look. By incorporating the game’s main characters and major plot point – zombies – I can establish some degree of the plot while still gaining the attention of viewers. The bright neon pinks and purples are eye-catching and the imagery was inspired by 1980s arcade games.

Iconography

Next, the most effective game and movie posters are iconic, presenting the themes without directly explaining the plot. Contrast and spacing help grab your attention, and the zombie imagery is marketed to casual observers and horror fans. The 80s-themed characters also help to spark interest.

Interest

Because the game is a narrative-driven, comedy-horror arcade game, it is not simple to explain with just iconography. Therefore, I had to create an incentive to play the game. Who are the main characters? What caused the zombie outbreak? What is the setting of the story? All these questions can be influenced by observing the poster.

Style

What separates effective posters from their rivals is that they’re consistent with style, in both the game’s promotional materials and throughout the game itself. The consistency is not just a good marketing tool, but also a recognizable image across our social media websites. By studying 1950s movie posters, I noticed some commonalities. For one, the composition varies from minimal to extreme use of negative space. Thus, I left plenty of breathing room for the eye to rest.

Typography

William Lebeda, creative director of The Picture Mill, Hollywood, describes film titles in recent years, saying, “they are really becoming more integrated with the film, and they’re doing multiple jobs in that they are doing more narrative work, not just setting the mood and establishing the stage for the story that you’re about to see.”

The same rule can apply to games. The posters use mid-century style illustration with saturated color, strong portraiture and playful typography to convey the movie’s 1970s vibe.