New York Times Features Awesome Retro Friday The 13th Posters

There have been a lot of "vintage" or "retro" posters created for the original 1980 Friday The 13th over the last couple years by fans in hopes of recapturing the 1970's and 1980's look and feel of that time period's poster art. Let's face it, posters created for today's films are heavily Photoshop'd and lack that personal touch that artists put into poster and VHS box cover art from thirty years ago. Although today's artists do a great job of recapturing the vintage look of those old poster designs, they inevitably fall into the trap of adding a hockey mask onto the poster. It seems like it just cannot be helped by artists as they feel a need to incorporate the hockey mask into their design to help signify the film franchise they are illustrating

We always conclude that these posters look fantastic, but adding the hockey mask seems to miss the point of creating a vintage poster for the original film. How can it be vintage representing the original 1980 film when you have an icon such as the hockey mask included in the art and it was never part of the movie to begin with? With that being said, we found a fantastic set of new "retro", "vintage", or "minimalist" posters created by some top designers that in there own way try to capture what Friday The 13th is.

The New York Times commissioned six artists to create their own interpretation of a poster for the 1980 slasher classic as part of celebration of the release of the new book "The Slasher Movie Book". The book features poster art for all of the beloved slasher films from the aforementioned time period of films. Out of the six designs commissioned, we thought two in particular were very worthy of mentioning and especially one that truly captures the heart of the first Friday The 13th.

The first poster comes from artist JP Zuviate (byswears.com) and is one of the best ideas for a poster for the first film we have ever seen.

JP explains his motivation for his design:
Fans of "Friday the 13th" really inspired me. The idea of capturing Jason underwater looking up at Alice Hardy, the camp counselor in the canoe, really seemed interesting. I also wanted to include fun things in the poster like camp counselor whistles, a rotten Camp Crystal Lake sign and an arrow at the bottom of the lake.




The second design comes from Vince Evans (vinceevansart.com) and is the perfect 1970's poster for Jason and Friday The 13th. The one problem is adult Jason and hockey mask are not in the original Friday the 13th, but we still really dig the design.

Vince explains his motivation for his design:
I wanted to show Jason as an action hero, which is how we used to watch those films. It’s almost no different than a “Rambo” movie. I went toward a more absurd Blaxploitation style, although that may not be obvious. But he is going after the counselors, the authority figures of the camp. You go to watch Jason kill people.




So, what do you think of these two designs? They are both fantastic looking for us at the website. To see the other designs, please visit the New York Times slideshow for the posters and see what you like the best!

Source: New York Times

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