In my opinion the Casablanca movie poster is one of the greatest movie posters of all time. Designed by Bill Gold for the 1942 film, it is one of Hollywood’s most memorable posters. It’s a masterpiece that combines illustration and typography. I love the arrangement of figures with Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart central to the scene. Bogart’s looking off into the distance, poised excitingly with his gun held up and ready to act, meanwhile Bergman is looking just past the camera, but close enough to it that she invites us, the viewer, into their world to find out just who these characters are and how their story goes. The light and shadowed tones of the illustration show the grit and mystery of the drama. There’s so much feeling and emotion etched into each character’s face.
Then comes the typography. The classic “Casablanca” scrawled large over the bottom 3rd of the poster in a brilliant red script. No-one will forget the name of your film when you present it like that. A fun fact about the 3 first names of the actors at the very top of the poster is that “Humphrey”, “Ingrid” and “Paul” were actually written in Bill Gold’s own handwriting.
Now we’ve talked about the poster, let’s discuss the legend behind it, Bill Gold (1921 – 2018). Gold was THE film poster designer from the 1940s – 2000s. His iconic work spanned 60 years! Just some of his prolific poster’s include that of: A Clockwork Orange, The Exorcist, Dirty Harry and My Fair Lady. Not a bad legacy.