“The Dark Side” references the way in which Star Wars shows the opposition between light and darkness, iconically expressed through the saga of Darth Vader.
These days I’ve been into the single-art-piece-that-makes-a-statement look. I still have lots of love for the gallery wall, but much less patience for the moving and arranging that it takes to really make it look good. The Thin Gold Line is the brainchild of three French-Italian brothers: Audric Dandres (a.k.a. Plus Minus) is the designer, Lénaïc does the conceptualizing and writing, and Arnold manages the business side of the project. The trio wanted to created posters that referenced four favorite iconic movies, in an abstract minimal way: Star Wars, the Matrix, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings. I’m totally into this idea of subtle nod to a favorite movie rather something more overt. It makes the artwork a piece with a hidden story.
“The Red Pill” references how The Matrix manifests the opposition between Reality and Illusion.
With such a minimal design, the materials become the real stars. The brothers chose an Italian paper made by Fedrigoni, a firm that has been producing paper in Italian since 1717. They are using Sirio Ultra Black, chosen for the lack of carbon black in the paper’s pigments, which makes it resistant to oxidation. It also happens to be the blackest paper on the market. The only other element in the design is gold foil, which is produced by Kurz Luxor, a German company founded in the late 19th century and known creating gold foil for luxury brand packaging.
“Final Frontier references the way the Star Trek series expresses humanity’s desire to grow, to conquer new frontiers.
After an extensive search for a firm that could produce the posters using a hot foil stamping technique that would preserve the thin, intricate lines of the design, only an Italian firm in Verona was able to provide the level of precision on a large scale (each poster is about 28″ x 40″). (And don’t miss the beautiful video of the process below. Warning: it’s totally trance inducing in the best way possible.) The hot foil stamping is the only technique that results in a high luminosity on black papers—a crucial component to a project, which plays with the conceptual idea of light.
‘One Ring’ references The Lord of the Rings and conceptually expresses the battle between light and darkness that finally resolves with the victory of Light and Good.
There’s so much to love here. The graphic and material emphasis makes this a visually appealing project on its own. But if there’s a movie buff in your house, this might just be a must-have. I’m already thinking ahead to Christmas. I have a few names on my list who could use a little “one ring to rule them all.”
These posters are being released through a Kickstarter campaign that launched this week so it’s really not too early to start checking those names off your Christmas list!
“The Dark Side” references Star Wars and Darth Vader.
