The Boxer Movie Poster

It’s been while since we’ve had a Tuesday movie poster review (TuVie Day) so let’s kickstart the habit with a film I recently caught on Sky Movies called The Fighter. Staring Mark Wahlberg (famously known for performances in flicks such as Ted), Amy Adams, and the best Batman in history Christian Bale; this film is one for you aspiring boxers out there who love to see inspiring true life stories reach the big lights of Hollywood.

Image courtesy of BLT Communications, LLC

The Storyline

The film follows the story of Micky Ward – a junior welterweight professional boxer, and the journey that lead to his professional career as a boxing superstar. What captured my attention most was the relationship between Micky and his brother Dicky, who was said to have trained Micky all the way through to his professional status. With family problems being a persistent theme throughout the movie, the reality of the story and performance of the actors makes you feel closer to the characters rather than the rose-tinted nostalgia of the Rocky series, which fails to captivate you on the same emotional level but is set around the same time period.

Movie Poster Critique

The Boxer’s poster is a personal favourite due to the fact that I am a gigantic photography geek and a fan of monochrome imagery. The artist’s choice of presenting the lead character in the boxing ring at the moment he has been awarded the win from a bought with one of his challengers gives a simple, clear pre-cursor of what to expect from this movie – as you can tell from previous articles I’m not a huge fan of mystery. The typical display of main characters by using angled headshots is nothing new at the head of the poster, although the contrast between the clear typography and the grainy effects of noise added to the images creates an old vintage feel mixed with modern day style – an excellent way to show that the storyline is of historical content.

Summary

Overall I’d give the film a 4 out of 5 as the quality of the actual boxing scenes disappointed me. It’s possibly because I am used to the edginess of fighting scenes such as those in Warrior and The Bourne series. Just in case you haven’t seen the film before here’s the trailer:

What is the Purpose of a Mini Business Card?

I was having a read through Squidoo this afternoon and came across an article that specified the standard sizes of business cards (http://www.squidoo.com/standard-business-card-size), as I’m thinking of getting some printed soon now that I’ve become more competent at designing in Photoshop – mini project visuals to follow soon.

After reading through it I got thinking about the mini business cards that printing companies provide and wondered what is the purpose of them? To me it says that all that extra margin around your copy isn’t needed from a standard-sized business card, however, fitting a mini card into your wallet could lead to it getting lost amongst the receipts and more.

If you are carrying a business card then these mini ones are easier to have on you at all times without occupying too much pocket space but other than that I’d like to know what the real benefits of them are?

Leave me your thoughts in the comments below and explain the purpose of a mini business card from your point of view.

Adobe CS2 Available for Free Download

Many people in the design community may already know about this but I thought I’d spread the word for those who fancy having a copy of Photoshop CS2 for free to learn the basics.

A friend of mine told me about it so I thought I’d do a bit of research and truth be told you can download Adobe’s Creative Suite 2 for free on their official website here: http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/index.html. If you don’t know what you are doing with these files then I recommend you read through the installation guide first: http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/MLTI/CS2_install_Win.pdf.

I can say from firsthand experience that I downloaded CS2 this evening via these links and obtained Photoshop and Imageready CS2 with Adobe Bridge chucked in of course. The serial key is provided on the download page so be sure to use that when it asks for one – worked fine for me! What is worth noting though is that CS2 is a package that dates back to 2005 so your operating system may or may not impact its functionality. I fortunately have a Windows Vista laptop which I installed it on successfully. Other operating systems may have different experiences.

There have been a number of blogs saying that Adobe has said that this is not a free download of CS2 (e.g. http://www.itworld.com/consumerization-it/334669/free-adobe-creative-suite-cs2-maybe-maybe-not), however, I can say with confidence that I have been able to use the software this afternoon and if you’re looking to get your hands on a copy for yourself, well you know where to find it. This whole thing is definitely beginning to sound like a scene from Tron Legacy when Sam Flynn gives away Encom’s new operating system for free:

From London to Mexico and Back

Hello to all of our readers and a happy New Year! As you may have noticed we took a brief break from the world of Inspiring Print in December. Why I hear you ask? Well the answer is simple…we went to Mexico!

If you are considering taking a winter break in Mexico to get away from the grim weather of the UK then I strongly advise you give it a go. We took a long break in the wonderful Playa del Carmen where the clear skies got up to 30°C (over 10 times hotter than the day we said goodbye to Gatwick). The full review is definitely more suited for another type of blog so let’s talk about some design related stuff.

Whilst out there we took in as much of the culture as possible and seeing as the supposed end of the world was nigh, we decided to indulge in some Mayan-style history by visiting the two closest ruins to us which were Coba and Tulum.

These great structures were clearly devised by some intelligent people and commonly featured a prism form of some sort with a chamber at the top. Also there was a gigantic staircase to climb, located on one face of the building (which you are permitted to climb at Coba).

As well as learning about the local history we also adored some of the unexpected visual pleasures, one of which appears very touristy because of the shops we found them in, however, we liked it because of the Mexican people’s celebration of death:

In Mexico they celebrate Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead) every year, which is a tradition linked with Catholicism that here in the UK we’d celebrate as All Saints’ Day. It is a way for those who have lost loved ones to remember them in a celebration that glorifies the life they had, which results in some beautiful artistic skulls such as those shown in the image above.

That’s just a little taster of things to come this month that glorify Mexico and its artistic beauty. If you’ve experienced it differently we’d love to hear from you in our comments below!