Why Is Every Movie Poster Orange and Blue?

Have you gone to the movies and asked, “Why are all these posters orange and blue? And also, am I bothering anyone by asking this out loud?” We can’t speak to that last part. But we can help explain the phenomenon of orange-and-blue movie posters…

The Bourne Identity

First, a bit of color theory 101 for this movie title. Flesh tones in cinema often fall into an orange range of colors. And if you look at a standard color wheel, you’ll notice a blue range of colors lies on the opposite end. In color theory, these types of opposing colors are called “complementary.”

Jumper

When the human eye sees complementary colors next to each other, it’s naturally pleasing. The colors “pop.” Another common example of this phenomenon is purple and yellow. Red and green are also complementary.

The Empire Strikes Back

So if orange-ish people are the subject of films, and designers want them to pop as much as possible in the films and their ads and posters, it makes sense to use complementary shades of blue. But that’s not the only design trick in the book. So how did this spread and multiply everywhere?

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Blame technology. For decades of film history, a movie’s natural photographed image received a photochemical color grade.

In other words, the final filmstrip you saw projected in theaters got its colors from tactile, touchable, physical chemicals, not unlike the process of developing film in a darkroom.