Ozan’s finished
Alphas
poster.
Alphas is a science fiction TV series about a group of people with superhuman abilities who work to prevent crimes committed by other Alphas. Ozan Karakoç, a Senior Art Director, was subsequently born into his own family of creative superpowers. He is the son of an illustrator father and a graphic designer mother, the nephew of a 3D animator, the grandchild of an interior designer and the brother of a successful young photographer.
Ozan worked on the the Alphas advertising campaign at motion picture ad agency Iconisus L&Y in Culver City, shared his design process with us.
What was the initial direction for the project, and what were your influences?
We received the brief for Alphas and it seemed like a very interesting show. The challenge was to maintain a human ‘look’ while treating the campaign as a science fiction ‘super-hero’ show. We had to include all six people in the main cast. They were heroes, but also ordinary people, so the poster shouldn't look like Fantastic Four or Iron Man.
What’s the difference between the Iron Man look and Alphas?
The difference is in the typical perception of the ‘super-hero’. The character should look as heroic as possible to impress the audience. He or she should even look a bit unreal. There are suits, explosions, special effects and all that. In Alphas, we were supposed to emphasize the human effect. Obviously, we could have added lights coming out from a character’s eye, or we could have shown one of them flying above the buildings, but that was not the exercise.
Can you tell me about the creative challenges you encountered?
The client wanted an iconic poster to include the main cast members and feature their extraordinary powers. Creating an iconic poster is a great exercise if you have a powerful story. However, doing that with five to ten characters is extremely challenging. That was the most difficult part of Alphas project. Of all of the creative presentations designed for both seasons of the show, the selected direction was the one which clearly showed the faces of each of the cast members.
As a designer, you might want to create iconic pieces, but one has to be aware that the show has a specific target audience. You must be realistic. If the cast is a strong selling point of the show, you cannot deny the need for including them in the poster.
Alternate design directions for the poster.
Alternate design directions for the poster.
Alternate design directions for the poster.
The existing logo of the show and the corporate identity of the channel influenced the whole presentation. They’ve got a very specific style and a very nice brand identity. Since the show is connected to that strong brand structure, it was not hard to choose the right typeface and the typographic vibe.
The characters are ordinary people, they don’t wear special suits with vivid colors, but they have super powers… the typeface should reflect that. An italic, super sci-fi font with sharp edges was not the solution, so I chose Intro, which is a very modern and energetic, yet serious and strong typeface.
Alphas posters, part of the advertising campaign.
Alphas posters, part of the advertising campaign.
Alphas posters, part of the advertising campaign.
To view more of Ozan’s work, view his portfolio at Behance at be.net/ozankarakoc. All visuals are the properties of SyFy (a division of NBCUniversal).
