A series of posters for Stanley Kubrick's movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The film deals with humanity's encounters with mysterious black monoliths, devices made by a highly advanced extraterrestrial civilization who through these monoliths triggered the evolution of intelligence in mankind. In 2001, such a monolith was found on the moon and the signal emmited by it was traced to Jupiter. Consequently, a mission was set up to the signal's destination, led by Dave Bowman, the primary character of the story.

In one of the most vivid scenes of the movie, while approaching Jupiter, Dave travels through a tunnel in space, a sort of gateway to a higher dimension and is transformed into a transcendent being. The concept behind the poster series is based this scene, the idea of reaching beyond the phyisical limits of existence.

During the design of the posters, a restriction was to be followed: the type was to be an integral, inseperable from the image (although two of my posters ended up not having type at all).

The first two of the posters are composed based on mandalas, the religious symbols in Hinduism and Buddhism. Mandalas represent the universe, and in some traditions they are used as an aid in meditation which is how they are connected to the idea of transcendence.

The third, black and white poster was designed during the second part of the assignment, keeping the original concept as a starting point, while taking into account two additional obstructions: 'information overload', and 'use as few elements as possible'. I chose to set the title in Wim Crouwel's barely legible typeface, the New Alphabet; its inaccessibility mirrored the mysteriousness of the black monoliths in the movie. By offsetting its outlines vertically, the resulting image became both overwhelming and minimalistic, fitting to the two extra obstructions.

The last poster is actually the result of an accident, but ended up in the series, as it reminded me of The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley's book about his transcendental experiences with psychedelic drug, mescaline.