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this year marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of version industries. we never imagined we’d last this long. to mark the occasion it feels fitting that the posters we made for tim sutton’s feature film taurus and alexandra stergiou’s short film the act of coming out have just been acquired by the kunstbibliothek (art library) of the staatliche museen zu berlin (state museum in berlin), germany. we will post a link to their digital record of the acquisitions the moment they appear.

there’s a chance also that one or other of the posters will be featured in their forthcoming großes kino: movie posters from twelve decades show. the show opens november 3rd of this year in berlin. here is what they say about it:

Großes Kino – we’re talking about cinema with a capital C, about motion pictures that leave you feeling overwhelmed or in awe. A good movie poster, too, is designed to be remembered: it captures the film’s mood, alludes to storylines, evokes feelings. The drama and narrative of a long film are condensed into a single image. The exhibition “Großes Kino” presents around 100 original movie posters from the 1900s through to the 2020s from the Kunstbibliothek’s collection of graphic design.

The twist is that the selection is not made by the inhouse curatorial team alone, but in collaboration with thirty people connected with the film industry – including actors, directors, cineasts, historians and designers. In the exhibition, an audio guide with the guest curators’ commentaries will inform visitors about the background to their poster selections. Thematic sections provide additional perspectives on the medium of the movie poster, such as its birth at the turn of the 20th century, Berlin as a city of cinema, and current graphic design trends for films. The exhibition will be accompanied by an education and outreach programme as well as a symposium that examines the topic from a critical perspective.

either way a huge thank you to christina thompson and christina dembny at kunstbibliothek for finding and acquiring these posters. we are greatly honoured to have our work in such a museum’s permanent collection; a collection that includes the work of one of our heroes, hans hillmann.

shortly before the cannes film festival last year we were asked to create the title sequence for a film called aftersun. caspar was headed home to england for a bit after having been robbed of his computer and camera in paris, when the email from pastel came in: would we be able to make titles for a film on its way to cannes in just four or five days? caspar picked up a new laptop in london and we asked to see the film. those who have seen the film can imagine what it must have been like to consider whether to work on it or not, even with very little time to do good work. the film is a remarkable thing by any stretch of the imagination, and one that touched caspar particularly for a number of reasons.

caspar sent the director, charlotte wells, some typeface ideas based on the film’s overall mood and his experiences of growing up in the 90s. charlotte picked the typeface—base mono—that you see here:

caspar then began work on customizing and animating the typeface in a fashion that charlotte and he felt appropriate to the tone of the film; dissolving the sharp edges of each letter and making them flicker in and out of focus as if light was coming at us from behind each word; all the while treating it as if our eyes could not quite focus on it because it was too bright. meanwhile caspar’s brother josiah got to work on creating the end crawl, and needless to say we made the deadline. caspar then headed to cannes to see the work on the big screen.

art of the title is a remarkable website run by lola landekić, that’s dedicated to celebrating film title sequence design and animation. in fact here’s director david fincher (se7en, fight club, zodiac, the social network) talking to lola on the subject:

“I love the site. It’s really beautiful. I would much rather have anything and everything about the title sequence be on Art of the Title than in USA Today or any publication like that. Your site is the proper context for this conversation.”

we’ve referenced title sequences in the extensive and beautifully presented art of the title archives many times in our work, and to see that yesterday the aftersun titles were posted to art of the title was incredibly moving, not to mention flattering.

thank you so much to adele romanski, charlotte wells, lola landekić and everyone else at pastel and a24 films. we remain endlessly thankful for these opportunities to work on such beautiful films.

our poster for alexandra stergiou‘s the act of coming out has been included on both jason kottke’s and posteritati’s best movie posters of 2022 lists. posteritati also included our poster for jane schoenbrun’s we’re all going to the world’s fair on their list.

stan at posteritati had this to say on the matter:

I’m always happy to see a new movie poster by Caspar Newbolt on the TL, it’s sure to be something totally unexpected that eschews current design trends, and these two are no exception. And I love that his inspo for The Act of Coming Out was Waldemar Świerzy’s Polish poster for Blow Up. Read Adrian Curry’s MUBI interview with Caspar. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair released by Utopia.

once again we are incredibly thankful for this level of recognition and support. particularly when the act of coming out is a short film and everything else on these lists are feature films, not to mention oscar contenders.

our posters for jane schoenbrun’s debut feature film we’re all going to the world’s fair and alexandra stergiou’s hybrid documentary the act of coming out have been selected by adrian curry to be amongst his 10 best movie posters of 2022. adrian wrote the following text for his mubi notebook column to justify his thinking in this regard:

“The posters in my list this year are those that do what any poster worth its salt should do: they stopped me in my tracks. These days those tracks are less and less likely to be along a city street or even inside the lobby of a multiplex and more likely to be on a virtual stroll (or scroll) through a streaming service or social media feed. The received wisdom is that this will result in a dumbing down of poster design, leading to work that is less complex and easier to take in in a one-inch high thumbnail. In other words, more big heads. But the 30 posters below, most of which I likely saw first on a phone screen, give the lie to that doomsday prediction. They are posters that not only work on first glance but reward repeated viewing. In other words, you could hang them on your wall. One footnote: there are a lot of pairs in this year’s collection, partly because I couldn’t fit all my favorites into a top ten, partly because I love graphic coincidences, and partly because two of a kind is sometimes better than one.”

“Another designer I have interviewed recently is Caspar Newbolt of Version Industries who, as I said back in July, has for the past ten years been stealthily creating some of the most adventurous, expressive, and unusual film posters out there. It was this beautiful and unique poster for the short film The Act of Coming Out that prompted me to contact him, but his deceptively lo-fi design for the online horror movie We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is also one of the year’s very best, especially in its motion version in which the design comes eerily to life.”

you can read the rest of the article here. a huge thank you again to adrian curry and to everyone at MUBI for the continued support.

our poster for alexandra stergiou’s hybrid documentary, the act of coming out, was selected as MUBI’s movie poster of the week today. to accompany the selection caspar was interviewed by adrian curry about the making of the poster. you can read an excerpt from the interview here:

NOTEBOOK: As with A Confucian Confusion, your poster feels as if you should be able to step back from it and a face will start to appear, but only a very vague sense of a face forms. Is there an actual face in there or is it a multitude of faces mashed together?

NEWBOLT: There is an actual face there but much like standing very close to a large painting by Seurat, when you are close to the poster you end up seeing only a cloud of colors and thus having the vaguest sense of a face or a multitude of faces as a result. That said if you squint your eyes, even close up, you’ll see the face much more clearly.

It will perhaps remind people of that famous scene in John Hughes’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) where they visit Chicago’s Art Institute and Cameron Frye ends up transfixed in front of Seurat’s painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1886). The picture was painted exactly 100 years before the Hughes film came out, and this particular scene in the film hit me very hard when I first saw it.

I am the son of two painters and grew up in museums and art galleries around the world. I knew every word of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off by heart by the time I was 14, inspired largely I’m sure by this moment Cameron has with the Seurat. I myself had stared in just such a way at just so many paintings as a kid. I love that in the director’s commentary for the film John Hughes describes Seurat’s pointillistic painting style as being like filmmaking, in that: “You’re very very close to it. You don’t have any idea what you’ve made until you step back from it.” (You can see the scene and hear Hughes’ commentary here.)

It was important to Alexandra and I that, because of the film’s narrative, you could not clearly tell the gender or ethnicity of the person in the poster. The film presents a series of queer and trans actors of various ethnicities exploring what Alexandra describes as “the never ending process of coming out,” and if you look at the LGBTQ flag you can better appreciate the color field we created for the poster. We strove therefore to create an image of a person with a visage comprised of these many shifting colors.

you can read the rest of the interview here. a huge thank you again to adrian curry and to everyone at MUBI for the continued support.

our poster for jane schoenbrun’s debut feature film, we’re all going to the world’s fair, was selected as MUBI’s movie poster of the day today. a huge thank you to adrian curry for his continued interest in and support of our work.

the film stage just selected caspar’s poster for tim sutton’s feature film, funny face, as their 8th best poster of 2021. jared mobarek, writing for film stage, had the following to say about the poster:

“Caspar Newbolt and (version_industries) traverse an inspired path to give frequent collaborator Tim Sutton’s film Funny Face a printed counterpart. The subject is a revenge-seeking man who serendipitously discovers a plastic mask, donned more as a talisman of confidence than means of anonymity. Was its appearance fate? Has this surreal shield served others before him? Newbolt looks to amplify that potential by delving back through history to discover another artistic work with empowered figures perfectly suited to become this character’s progenitors. His selection of Caravaggio’s Salome with the Head of John the Baptist proves a magnificent partner both thematically and tonally. You want to laugh, but it’s all too sinister to risk the ensuing wrath. For all you know, that face might just find you next… already affixed to another’s head.”

thank you jared and everyone at the film stage for this vote of confidence.

creative review magazine have included caspar’s poster for tim sutton’s feature film, the last son, in their round up of the best film posters of 2021. daniel benneworth-gray, writing for the magazine, had the following to say about the poster:

“With a wry nod to its star’s name – Machine Gunned Kelly? – Caspar Newbolt avoids the usual grizzled-faces-and-dusty-vistas approach for Tim Sutton’s modern western, opting for something more abstract. As with many on this list, a more conventional poster was also used, but strong visual identities like this are essential for standing out among streaming services’ endless carousels of content.”

a huge thank you to creative review and to mr. benneworth-gray. you can see the poster in question below.

our poster for tim sutton’s sixth feature film, the last son, has been acquired by the margaret herrick library of the academy of motion picture arts and sciences. two copies of the poster now exist in their collection in los angeles, california. you can view their digital record of the acquisition here.

after 10 years of working to make the best and most original film posters we can for everyone, we wanted to celebrate by opening a print shop at shop.versionindustries.com to provide physical copies of those posters to anyone anywhere.

our mission is simply to make sure those that want these posters can have them and for the cheapest price possible. during the 2020 global pandemic we worked out a way to print posters “on demand” and deliver them worldwide whilst keeping our overheads very low. as you can see, we’re talking around $25 at most for a full-size 27×40 inch US one-sheet or A0 poster on good paper, plus shipping. what small profit margin there may be will hopefully cover the overheads of running an online store of this kind.

we trust that this offers us a way to make sure the films we have worked on can be remembered beyond the festival and theater releases, on the walls of those who really loved them. the funny thing is this is so often not the case; film posters only get printed a handful of times and then they’re just the result of google image searches and that’s that. this goes against the entire point of making posters of course.

thank you in advance for your continued love and support for independent cinema, and for the work that we do to celebrate the films and filmmakers we’re lucky enough to work with.