Devious Design

I loath Stephanie Meyers “Twilight” books. And the movies. And the fact that they’re so undeservingly popular right now. (And the fact that this weekend the midnight showing of “New Moon” beat the Harry Potter’s opening night record…)

However, anything “Twilight” that isn’t directly related to the plot about mopey teenagers and sparkling vampires (don’t even get me started on my vampire rant) is pretty darn good. I’m talking about the soundtrack, the online marketing campaign, the brand – the whole franchise.

The Soundtrack

The soundtrack is full of really good indie rock musicians. But it bothers me to no end that Radiohead’s Thom Yorke wrote a song for the “New Moon” soundtrack. My only hope is that it will introduce all the young and impressionable listeners to some quality music. Hopefully they’ll at least listen to Yorke’s “The Eraser” or Radiohead’s “In Rainbows,” although I highly doubt a 12-year-old girl would find any of the tracks on “Kid A” very appealing.

Here’s the “Twilight” soundtrack:

1. Supermassive Black Hole (Muse)
2. Decode (Paramore)
3. Full Moon (The Black Ghosts)
4. Leave Out All The Rest (Linkin Park)
5. Spotlight (Twilight Mix) (MuteMath)
6. Go All The Way(Into The Twilight) (Perry Farrell)
7. Tremble For My Beloved (Collective Soul)
8. I Caught Myself (Paramore)
9. Eyes On Fire (Blue Foundation)
10. Never Think (Rob Pattinson)
11. Flightless Bird, American Mouth (Iron & Wine)
12. Bella’s Lullaby (Carter Burwell)

And the “New Moon” soundtrack:

1. Meet Me On The Equinox (Death Cab For Cutie)
2. Friends (Band Of Skulls)
3. Hearing Damage (Thom Yorke)
4. Possibility (Lykke Li)
5. A White Demon Love Song (The Killers)
6. Satellite Heart (Anya Marina)
7. I Belong To You (New Moon) (Muse)
8. Roslyn (Bon Iver and St. Vincent)
9. Done All Wrong (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club)
10. Monsters (Hurricane Bells)
11. The Violet Hour (Sea Wolf)
12. Shooting The Moon (OK Go)
13. Slow Life (Grizzly Bear)
14. No Sound But The Wind (Editors)
15. New Moon (The Meadow) (Alexandre Desplat)

The Online Marketing Campaign

Summit Entertainment exercised almost every online outlet to market “New Moon.” Its use of Twitter and iPhone apps were especially effective. A few of the actors also had very vocal Twitter accounts.

@Twilight – Twilight by Summit Entertainment
@Peter Facinelli – Dr. Carlisle Cullen
@BillyBurke – Chief Swan
@Ashley Greene – Alice Cullen

Facinelli and Burke also release their own iPhone App – which is kind of cool if you care about any of this.

The Brand

The “Twilight” brand is really well developed. The main font they use, “Zephyr,” was a great choice. It’s simultaneously cute and dark/edgy, which really fits the whole “Twilight” philosophy of taking scary, sex-infused things like vampires and watering them down to sparkly vegitarians that appeal to 10-year-old females. “Zephyr” is a perfect font for that.

The rest of the branding does the same thing: It takes images of cute teenagers, desaturates the images and puts a dark, hazy cloud behind them. “Look! We successfully made these kids look spooky and approachable at the same time! YES!”

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It’s just sad that all this cool stuff came from a couple of incredibly poorly written books with a flaccid storyline and boring, whiny, undeveloped characters.

It’s time for some color analysis. I’m not going to chat about color theory (you can learn that here) or different palettes or patterns (if you’d like some of those, check out this spiffy blog) — I’d just like to offer another perspective on how color plays a part in perception and how that’s always applicable to design.

We all know that people infer different meanings and emotions from different colors. Red = angry/stop/love, blue = calm/sad/water, green = money/go/natural, yellow = happy/caution/cowardice, black = evil/death/classic, and so forth. Because of this, it becomes very important how you use colors in your artistic or professional creations.

For example, you may notice that places like Panera and Starbucks color their walls and promotional materials in warm shades of yellow and orange, often accompanied by a muted shade of green. They make customers feel cozy and comfortable and hungry. Places like schools and hospitals are often white or a light tan to look clean and to keep people focused. Other places like artsy bars or music venues can paint their walls black to appear upscale or sophisticated.

On the contrary, improper use of color can give people the wrong message. You wouldn’t want to paint your hospital blood red or black, which would imply sickness and death. You probably wouldn’t want to paint your law office lime green and pink because no one would take you seriously as a lawyer since your office would wind up looking like a day care.

The same concepts apply to your Web site. Bright colors improperly used will look childish, and on a light-colored background they will be hard to read. Very dark colors are hard to use on Web sites because cheap monitors have a hard time displaying them, so any different values will look much darker than you, as designer, initially envisioned. Take this very blog, for example — it looks lovely on my Mac, but when I look at it on other computers, I sometimes have a really hard time reading the text. Be expecting a new theme sometime soon. Part of the reason Facebook outlived MySpace is because it looks cleaner and more professional. MySpace signed its own death certificate by allowing users to redesign their own pages, bringing in all sorts of misused colors and images and flaming logos and animated gifs. Ew. For Web sites, it’s probably best just to stick with a white background, dark text (shades of grey are great), and an accent color or two that fit your image — your site will be clean easy to read. Dark backgrounds are a good way to go for things like galleries or portfolios so your work is what stands out as the most striking thing on the page.

One group that has really mastered their use of color is the movie industry. Movie producers know what they’re doing when it comes to color. Directors like Guierrmo Del Toro sketch out full books of how they want to use colors in their films – different shades for different scenes, bright, over-saturated colors to show good memories, dark to show fear and suspense. Some shoot entire films with different filters to make their movies look moodier. For example, the “Underworld” films have a blue filter applied to almost every scene, which makes the film seem darker and more dramatic. Some may think this is cheesy, but it works. Other movies like “Man on Fire” is very yellow. All of Baz Lurhman’s big films like “Romeo and Juliet” and “Moulin Rouge” are overly bright, giving the whole picture a very whimsical feel.

So please, think about colors before you use them, and make sure your product is readable. Thanks!