An unseen archive of movie poster artwork is… | Little White Lies

Posters

An unseen archive of movie poster art­work is being published

12 Jan 2021

Words by Adam Woodward

Monochrome illustration of characters from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, featuring a central title and a variety of characters, ships, and environments from the film.
Monochrome illustration of characters from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, featuring a central title and a variety of characters, ships, and environments from the film.
The Fer­ef Col­lec­tion includes rare alter­na­tive designs for Star Wars, Aliens and more.

Even if you’ve nev­er watched a Star Wars film, chances are you’ll be famil­iar with the above image – but you won’t have seen this exact one before. That’s because it’s part of a mas­sive archive of movie poster art called the Fer­ef Col­lec­tion, a ver­i­ta­ble trea­sure trove dat­ing from the company’s incep­tion in 1968, which until now has nev­er been avail­able to the public.

The vast col­lec­tion con­sists of thou­sands of pieces – from con­cept art to fin­ished art­work – span­ning more than half a cen­tu­ry. Many of the designs are alter­na­tive and unused ver­sions of clas­sic posters you know and love, such as The Empire Strikes Back and Aliens (which was orig­i­nal­ly sub­ti­tled The Return’) – but there’s also hun­dreds of more obscure titles, mak­ing this a fas­ci­nat­ing look back at cinema’s for­got­ten history.

When our friends at Fer­ef, one of the world’s lead­ing film mar­ket­ing agen­cies, reached out to us about the project we knew we had to share it with our read­ers. They’ve launched a crowd­fund­ing cam­paign to turn the archive into a deluxe cof­fee table book, bring­ing this unique visu­al record to life.

The pur­pose of the Kick­starter is to cre­ate a hard­back book that cel­e­brates this incred­i­ble archive and the process, craft and immense cre­ativ­i­ty of the artists involved,” says Cre­ative Direc­tor Tim Reeves. Fer­ef were instru­men­tal in the cam­paigns for the orig­i­nal Star Wars tril­o­gy; these ear­ly illus­tra­tions for The Empire Strikes Back were cre­at­ed by Eddie Paul (one of the E’s in Fer­ef) from pro­duc­tion stills.”

Check out more images from the archive below and find out more at kick​starter​.com

Monochrome image featuring characters and ships from the film 'Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back', including the iconic Darth Vader figure. The film's title is prominently displayed in the centre.
Black-and-white poster for the film "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" featuring Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and other characters.
Star Wars film poster - characters, vehicles, and text in black and white
The Empire Strikes Back: A black-and-white illustration depicting two characters from the Star Wars franchise, holding blasters and posing in front of an icy backdrop with the film's title.
A black and white film poster for "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" depicting a person wielding a chainsaw.
Aliens film poster. Striking blue and white graphic design featuring an imposing alien figure looming over a human figure. Bold text reading "ALIENS THE RETURN" dominates the image.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.