Design I Like

There are a lot of things I find interesting and compelling about the design scheme of Quentin Tarentino’s “Kill Bill” films. This poster advertisement perfectly captures the comic book aesthetic of violence: violence that is stylized and aesthetisized, made beautiful in a way. The poster uses very few colors: bright yellow, bright blood red, big black boldfaced (very legible) typography. The design is extremely simple, and I think that makes it more powerful. The image of an assassin proudly displaying her weapon of choice is strong enough that the poster would be overwhelmed by a lot of other visual flourishing. The simplicity of the image and typography, the highly saturated colors, and the sharp contrast are all elements that make this poster visually engaging. Its overall message is accessible to the viewer. The woman is making direct eye contact with us - and she’s wearing a yellow jumpsuit! She’s a femme fatale, and femme fatales have demanded our attention since the dawn of American media. Whether you feel positively or negatively about the poster’s aesthetization of violence, the image strongly demands your attention regardless. Whether you're a wannabe sniper or a peace&lover, either way the advertisement has succeeded in its task, because it has made you look.



While the poster portrays its subject as a perpetrator of violence, the image seems to exude its own aesthetic code and ideas about what is beautiful. The violence portrayed in the design is an expression, like the way a painter expresses him/herself on canvas or a dancer expresses him/herself through movement. The dynamic in this Kill Bill poster – between the perpetration of violence and strong artistic vision – suggests that art permeates all aspects of life, including the domain of violence. Blood and guts are a part of Quentin Tarantino’s aesthetic ideal. The poster portrays this alternative aesthetic code with the effect of demonstrating that there’s no such thing as objective beauty. As the cliché goes, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”