Star Wars poster

In 1977 the first film to open with the opening words «A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…» was shown in cinemas all over the world. This film was initially entitled Star Wars, a text declined in all languages, Guerre stellari in Italian, La Guerre des étoiles in French, Krieg der Sterne in German. In 1981, after the release of the sequel The Empire Strikes Back, which occurred the previous year, the film was subtitled Episode IV – A New Hope.

There are many posters that advertise the film release and one of these has tickled our imagination: it’s the Style C, mainly used for the western foreign market and designed by the British artist Tom William Chantrell. Originally conceived horizontally and for the British market, it was so popular that it was also used in portrait format and both in the United States and in other European countries.

As can be seen from the images, the setting of the light rays generated by Dart Vader’s lightsaber and the weapons of Ian Solo and Leila Organa seem to originate from a central point located on Luke Skywalker’s right side.

However, this setting is not continued by the other elements in the illustration. We therefore wondered what the effect would have been like, if all the other elements had also been positioned this way. We have therefore created the Style X poster visible and available for download below, both in the Italian and in the English version.

As you can see, the Dart Vader lightsaber has been corrected, the Death Star has been made more similar to what is present in the film, the Obi-Wan Kenobi and Wilhuff Tarkin characters have been reworked in full length, the Devastator Imperal star destroyer and the Millennium Falcon have been added, and finally, as anticipated, all the elements have been aligned with the bundle of lines originating from the central point.

The title text has remained as the 1977 original, as well as the title font, the ITC Serif Gothic, designed by Herb Lubalin and Tony DeSpigna in 1972. The peculiarity of having two different \E in the word DE LUXE.