The Nutty Professor
Design Studio
BLT Communications
United States, founded 1992
Creative Director
Dawn Baillie
Art Director
Dawn Baillie
Designer
Steven Stewart
Photographer
Bruce McBroom
Client
Universal Pictures
Artist
Peter Tangen
Date1996
MediumOffset Lithograph
Dimensions39 3/4 x 26 3/4 in. (101 x 67.9 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LineGift of Dawn Baillie, Poster House Permanent Collection
Object numberPH.8156
DescriptionAs this poster was made while The Nutty Professor was being filmed, design agency BLT did not have access to Eddie Murphy in costume. To create the character’s inflated body, the BLT team rented a giant, latex prop balloon and taped extra- large men’s clothing around it. The goal was to make his figure a graphic element within the design. Since Murphy did not pose for a special shoot for this poster, the image of his head came from 35mm unit photography and was photoshopped into the composition. The jacket also had to be added after the poster was designed, as the original photograph showed the actor wearing a blue suit and the production was insistent that it include his tweed jacket. This splicing and warping of images resulted in a quality discrepancy within the poster. This is an early example of typography set in Photoshop rather than sent to a type house and set from specs (drawn and traced instructions on how the type should look so that it prints correctly that the typographer then matches). Billing blocks, however, were created in Quark (the only vector software before the introduction of Adobe Suite); today, they are created in Illustrator because of the many detailed components that have to be stacked.
On View
On view
