Poster Battle: New sheets for Marley and The Dictator

The Dictator poster - Detail

It’s all about giving good face on these two recently arrived posters, the first for Sacha Baron Cohen’s comedy The Dictator and the second for documentary Marley on Reggae legend Bob Marley.

The first uses PhotoShop to weave elements into Cohen’s already familiar visage, wrapping the US flag ironically (or perhaps just randomly) through his sunglasses as his disembodied head floats over New York City.

The poster for Marley uses a similar digital technique, but to lay out hundreds of little symbols – including a map of Africa, a love heart, a record, a tropical island and of course, marijuana – to make up the silhouette of Marley. It is not dissimilar to the poster for The Words,  but it manages to capture everything you need to know about Marley in a singular gesture.

Which is your favourite? Let us know in the comments below.

The Dictator poster

Over at Rama Screen,Swedish artist Viktor Hertz goes into detail on the poster design: “The idea behind the pictogram mosaic portrait, is to somehow show the complexity and all the different things that made the man behind the music. For example, I inserted 11 baby pictograms in the mosaic, depicting his 11 (official) kids, and also a football player and a gun chamber (depicting the two gun wounds he got). There is also a van (which I saw in the movie trailer, actually) hidden somewhere”.

Marley poster