New movie poster trend: Grey and gold

Hollywood movie poster design is a lot like fashion: it's driven by trends.

A few years ago, you couldn't go to the cinema without seeing movie posters bursting with orange- and blue-tinted designs, while earlier in 2012, you might have been overwhelmed by designs featuring dark backgrounds and shadowed characters. There seems to be an unspoken set of rules amongst the people who create marketing materials like posters and box art for mainstream movies: comedies should always have white posters with big red text; action movies or thrillers should always have posters that feature the characters walking towards or facing away from the viewer, etc.

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But a new poster trend might be emerging, as revealed by a fortuitous screen shot from the Internet Movie Database home page that showed up on Reddit over the weekend: grey and gold. Say hello to the future of movie poster design!

It appears as though Louis Letterier's magical heist movie "Now You See Me," the "Bond 50" 007 movie box set, and David O. Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook" are all using the grey-and-gold colour scheme. Just a coincidence? Or did a Hollywood focus group determine that this set of colours was the way to go this year? Other movies, including "Django Unchained" and "Evil Dead" are playing with the grey poster formula a little bit by using blood red instead of gold (not a surprise given their directors and genres), but there is no doubt that the aesthetic is the same.

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The next time you're at the theatre, be sure to take a close look at the posters on the wall. The movie industry has helped turn marketing into an exact science. If a movie poster catches your eye, there's probably a reason; they know what they're doing. Be a discerning poster admirer though and see if you can spot some of the hilarious similarities and clichés that run rampant in modern movie marketing designs.