• The graphic artist has been inspired in the sign painting style and the tags that can be witnessed in the urban art of the streets
• The letters get all the attention in a design created in black, orange and navy blue

Cinema Jove unveiled last night the poster for its 36th edition in a presentation held at the Sala 7 of Teatre Rialto. The image of the International Film Festival of Valencia, organized by the Institut Valencià de Cultura, has being designed by the lettering and calligraphy specialist Joan Quirós (Valencia, 1982), who has worked in a design of big visual impact “for the letters to get all the attention, not taking in account the usual support of photography and illustration”.

The result is a poster inspired in traditional signing, or ‘sign painting’, distinguishable because it’s handmade. The iconography of the 50s usually has a big importance in the work of Joan Quirós, who has considered specially the signs that combine lettering and geometrical symbols in motels and dinners on the USA roads. This ‘vintage’ gesture is linked in the poster with the urban art, because the letters are similar to the ones on the tags we can find in the streets of every town.

In the image we can see a chromatic combination of white, orange and navy blue, where the letters stand out to gain readability. “When I work I’m not only considering the esthetical but also the practical sense. I look for colors that create impact being also complementary, so the reading is easier”, says Quirós.

The calligraphy gets all the attention in a poster that offers repetitions in order to “create a visual game, generate dynamism and create a feeling of animation”. With this resource, the Valencian designer wanted to represent Broadway neon signing.

The work of Saul Bass, responsible for the image of classic Hitchcock movies like ‘Vertigo’, ‘Psycho’ or ‘South by southeast’, hasn’t been a direct influence for Quirós, “but it has been in terms of composition, because of the importance he gave to typography and letters”.

Another model has been the film credits of classic noir movies. From there the use of brown paper to give a bit of grain to the background of the poster. “It’s a material with a lot of particles, which generates a visual noise close to the one of movies. The intention has been to give presence to the analogic texture, imitating in a way the grainy effect of the hairs that get stuck in the projector”.

Joan Quirós is an independent professional that through his career has helped improve the communication of brands, institutions and firms of international trajectory through calligraphy. The Valencian designer has worked in advertisement, editorial design, packaging design and corporate identity.

Harper Collins New York, Austral Editorial / Planeta, El País, Cornelia James, Amstel, Thorntons, BBVA, Santillana y Samsung are some of the brands that have collaborated with him.