Since we’re now in the final leg of the One Week Job documentary, it struck me that the film still didn’t have an official poster.
To fix the situation, I tapped the skills of Vancouver graphic artist and illustrator Amanda McCuaig.
After approx 2 weeks of back and forth collaboration, the final result is, in a word, awesome. So awesome that I wanted to share with you the step-by-step process we took to make the vision a reality.
The Evolution of a Movie Poster
The first step was coming up with the general concept. I knew we needed to hint at all the jobs Sean tried over the year, but it had to be in a way that was still visually pleasing (without being overly complex). Amanda sketched her ideas out first:
Afterwards, she applied the sketches above a photo of Sean from the journey:
Then, we added the blue sunburst effect (which we use throughout the graphics in the film):
I wasn’t a big fan of Sean’s jumping photo (it’s fun, but too darkly shadowed), so we decided to swap in a photo of Sean hitchhiking:
Next, we realized the range of jobs weren’t clear. To compensate, we added a few tags like “Fashion Buyer” “Baker” and “Stock Trader”:
Now we’re getting somewhere! At this point, the title “one week job” seemed a bit too boring, in comparison to Amanda’s awesome “hand-sketched” feel. So we decided to replace it with hand-drawn text:
The poster was almost there… but something still wasn’t quite right. Sean’s hitchhiking photo was nice, but didn’t convey the idea of “searching for your passion.” We decided to do a last minute photo shoot to try a few more poses. The result (along with the tagline and crew titles):
Lastly, we realized the final touch was adding the epic words “1 man. 1 year. 52 jobs.” And with that, the poster was complete:
