The Evolution Of Movie Poster Colors Throughout Film History

Vijay Pandurangan wondered how color choices in film advertising had changed over the years. He decided to create a chart that shows the evolution of colors in movie posters over the history of film (or since 1914). The data was compiled using 35,000 posters spanning a wide array of genres, and black and white colors were ignored. Here is his conclusion:

First off, it is true that movie posters are much more blue, and much less orange than they used to be. This page also talks about the blue/orange colours in movies. This does appears to be a steady trend since 1915. ... earlier posters were all illustrated/ hand painted, with fewer colors and less variation in tone. Perhaps the fact that white and black have become more prevalent is due to the change from illustration to photography. Painted skin might also over-represent orange and under-represent other hues that happen in real life.

You can see more of his data on his blog.

via: boingboing