A Software Engineer by the name of Vijay Pandurangan created an interactive infographic showing how colors have evolved in movie poster from 1914 to today.
Click on the large color graph on his site, if you then click on any of the years, it will take you to a pie chart showing the breakdown of movie titles/colors. The pie chart has a slider at the top that you can then drag to go from 1914 to 2012.
How he did it:
"I downloaded ~ 35k thumbnailed-size images...from a site that has a lot of movie posters online. I then grouped the movie posters by the year in which the movie they promoted was released. For each year, I counted the total number of pixels for each colour in the year. After normalizing and converting to HSL coordinates, I generated the visualizations."
Why he did it:
Who the f*ck knows.
Thankfully, there's been an obvious shift away from that gawdawful magenta and blue trend from late 80s! What were they thinking?
Posted by: Crocket and Tubbs | Tuesday, August 21, 2012 at 10:14 AM
" I also wonder whether moviemakers have become better at figuring out the “optimal” colour distribution of posters over time"
That's laughable at best!
Posted by: Duck Phillips | Tuesday, August 21, 2012 at 10:52 AM
so, movie posters have become more cool over the years?
Posted by: sonjay | Wednesday, August 22, 2012 at 12:04 AM
this guy obviously has never worked w/hbo or he wouldn't have time to do this.
Posted by: c-ray | Wednesday, August 22, 2012 at 09:02 AM
Obviously, that speck of white on the top-right represents "Forrest Gump"
Posted by: Neptune's Net | Wednesday, August 22, 2012 at 09:41 AM