Kids' Movie Poster Project Ideas

You see them whenever you go to the multiplex -- movie posters. If you are teaching a class in graphic design, then a movie poster is a great project to assign your students. Making a movie poster allows your students to flex their technical skills and creativity, without having to worry if the poster content will be appropriate for a school environment.

A movie poster project that will allow your students the most latitude in exercising their own creativity would be to imagine their own movie, then to make a poster for it. The students should come up with a full synopsis for the film before they undertake making a movie poster for it. This will ensure that the students are not simply making a picture, but advertising the spirit and themes of a film.

The imagery on a movie's poster comes to define how the public perceives the film. However, just because the poster for a movie was imagined a specific way does not mean that it was the only way to brand the movie. To illustrate this, have your kids take an existing film and design a poster for the film that uses an entirely different theme and imagery. The poster should still be expressive of the film itself, simply a different expression than the artists who designed the original poster used.

Movie posters sell a movie to a target audience. One interesting exercise for your students will be to have them take a film whose target audience is grown-ups, and make a movie poster that uses themes and imagery which would appeal to kids. Making your students select a film that was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture will ensure that the students are advertising a quality film.

One exercise which both gives students experience designing movie posters for kids and lets them learn more about history is to take a figure who made a significant impact on history, then design a poster for a movie about his life. Your students will need to research the figure's life so they will know what themes the movie poster will convey to the kids, along with coming up with the ways in which the imagery will make these themes attractive.