Star Wars — The Bid Brochure Force Awakens!
It’s 1977, Beverly Hills California. A messenger drops off an envelope from 20th Century Fox. I open it and start looking at 35mm color slides of rusty old space ships, weird characters with white helmets and suits that are very ominous looking. And, what’s this?…a big hairy looking guy/ape with a space gun? Then, more images, only now there are what looks to be regular people in costumes that I’ve never seen anything like before.
I was an art director for a design studio which created many of the motion picture campaigns for the various Hollywood studios and I had been given the project of designing a bid brochure for a new film called “Star Wars”. A bid brochure, back in those days, was a marketing brochure designed to get a buzz going out about an upcoming film and was sent to theater managers across the country giving them a sort of print preview of the film.
At the same time, a fellow designer, Suzy Rice was designing the Star Wars logo and at one point I was asked to jump in with her and help finalize it. Suzy really had it 95% done and I think I might have suggested a slightly different shape to a few of the letters. I had a heavy typography background and had already designed many film logos so that’s why I was asked to collaborate.
Jump to last night!
“Star Wars — The Force Awakens” is about to open and there was some strange vibrations moving through my home. I traced where it was coming from and I saw it!! One of my portfolios in my storage was jumping about in a strange manner. I held it down and opened it. Almost being blinded by the light, I saw the cover — STAR WARS! The original bid brochure I designed back in 1977 hovered in front of my face and then shot into my living room where it lay vibrating until I opened it.
As I looked through the pages I remembered why I designed it in a very simple template and where the photo images could have the impact they deserved. As spreads and with very little copy, they presented the film in a majestic way and each photo was almost more powerful than the previous.
The font I chose was the Eurostile font family. It just seemed to work well with the images. Also, back then, we didn’t have photoshop so whenever we had to apply a glow or create an effect we would have to use our airbrush artists. I believe the one I used for the fighter fire was Charlie Wilde. I remember trying to explain to him that the client (George Luca’s team) had described the glowing beams that the fighters had when shooting at another spacecraft. We eventually got it correct after 3 or 4 tries.
One of my fondest memories about Star Wars was a fellow art Director and I had been invited to see a screening of the film at Fox about a week before it came out. We sat in a theater on the Fox lot and from the moment the huge space ship flew into the frame we couldn’t stop poking each other in the ribs and saying ” this is gonna be a monster hit!” And of course it was and still is. I had friends who saw it over 30 times when it was released!
I was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time and being able to have contributed to the success of Star Wars is something I’ll always be proud of. I can’t wait to see the new film this weekend.
Below are pictures of the bid brochure. Unfortunately, it’s not in brand new shape….as it was and still is always looked at and handled, as it should be . It’s to be enjoyed.
May the force be with you…….
- See more at: http://www.shereshevsky.org/star-wars-the-bid-brochure-force-awakens/#sthash.SkqZIqWu.dpuf
