LWLies Six­ties Presents… Lilies of the Field reimagined

LWLies Six­ties is part of #99DaysOfDesign, from 99designs by Vistaprint. Check out all the posters in the series and dis­cov­er more at 99de​signs​.com

Sid­ney Poiti­er famous­ly won his sole Acad­e­my Award for his lead turn in 1964’s Lilies of the Field, mak­ing him the first African-Amer­i­can to receive one of the two top act­ing Oscars. Watch­ing the film today, it’s easy to see why he was recog­nised by his peers back then – as trav­el­ling odd-job man Homer Smith Poiti­er deliv­ers a mas­ter­class in act­ing from the first moment he appears on screen.

Con­tin­u­ing our part­ner­ship with 99 Days of Design, a cel­e­bra­tion of the pow­er of design from 99designs by Vistaprint, Florid­i­an design­er Phil Poole has cre­at­ed a bold graph­ic poster for direc­tor Ralph Nelson’s time­less sto­ry of faith and heal­ing in the south­west­ern Unit­ed States.

Poole says of the project, ​“My favorite thing about ​’60s design is the way min­i­mal­ism was used to cre­ate such strik­ing­ly mem­o­rable imagery. An entire plot could be implied using just a few sim­ple lines, shapes and col­ors – very impres­sive, and chal­leng­ing to attempt.

“With no pre­con­ceived ideas about the design sur­round­ing the film, I was free to watch it for the first time and be inspired by the film itself rather than a design I had seen before. I began with three very dif­fer­ent ideas: A poster cel­e­brat­ing the last few years of the black-and-white film era, one that resem­bled a small off­set lith­o­g­ra­phy print that was enlarged to poster size, and one that looked hand-paint­ed with ink.

“I think the ink idea came togeth­er the best, with the con­trast of the poster reflect­ing the con­trast­ing char­ac­ters in the film. The imagery and text work togeth­er seam­less­ly to cre­ate a unique piece that is sim­ple, yet visu­al­ly arresting.”

Check out all six LWLies Six­ties posters and dis­cov­er more about 99designs by Vistaprint at 99de​signs​.com