Movie poster designs sometimes feature some amazing art. And despite globalisation they can still vary very wildly around the world. Sometimes poster designs are done locally to ensure maximum local appeal, and sometimes they're needed for not entirely official releases.
A particularly exuberant take can be seen in movie posters from Ghana, where artists have produced some strikingly vibrant and sometimes quite hilarious hand-painted film posters, and some of them are truly a joy to behold (they should really be in our pick of the best poster designs).
From Predator and The Godfather to ET and Mrs Doubtfire, there's a treasure trove of hand-drawn Ghanaian movie posters out there. Sometimes they take a few liberties with the content of the film (see the complaints about misleading movie posters), and sometimes they apply an impressionistic approach to depicting the movie's main actors and a lot of artistic freedom when it comes to proportion and perspective (we love Marlon Brando's enormous cat in the Godfather poster). But they're a genre of all of their own.
In an age when many movie posters feel like carbon copies of each other, with floating head photographs of the lead actors arranged in pecking order, it's refreshing to see this more visceral and artistic approach. Some have compared the style to that of Joe Coleman others to MAD magazine art.
Movie poster designs from Ghanaian video clubs can be found in the Collection of Karun Thakar and the late Mark Shivas and at Deadly Prey Gallery, a Chicago-based travelling art gallery that works with 10 artists in and around Ghana's capital of Accra and boasts an archive of thousands of posters dating back over three decades.
The publishing house Perfectly Acceptable has published a book compiling some of Deadly Prey's collection, including work by artists Heavy J, Salvation, Stoger, Mr. Nana Aguq, and Leonardo and essays by Terry Zwigoff, Kofi Ghartey, and Brian Chankin. For more inspiration see our pick of the best movie posters of 2023 (so far).
