ROHIT SINGHIndependent Designer

WorkGraphic Design

Long Take

Posters and campaign pieces for an imagined season of slow cinema, where the running time is the graphic idea.

Discipline
Poster & campaign design
Year
2026
Three posters for a fictional slow-cinema season called Long Take: a red poster with the word Long set vertically, a paper poster with bars for each hour of a film, and a black poster reading Nothing happens. Beautifully.

01Context

Long Take is a season of very slow films that I made up, including the films themselves. It is a personal exploration, the kind of project I give myself to keep working on type at large sizes.

Film posters usually promise action. The fun of this subject is that these films promise the opposite, and the design can be honest about that with a straight face.

02Objective

Develop a poster series with real variety between its pieces, while keeping it recognizable as one season across a program, tickets, and social posts.

Creative direction

Make the length the joke, and the beauty.

Each poster takes the idea of duration literally. The word “Long” runs the full height of the sheet. A seven-hour film gets seven solid bars and one short one. A film in which little happens gets a very large amount of nothing.

A tight palette of cinema red, near-black, warm paper, and ochre holds the series together when the layouts do not.

03Design approach

  1. 01

    One idea per poster

    If a poster needed explaining, I removed something. Each one had to work from across the street with only its main element visible.

  2. 02

    Serif against heavy sans

    A soft, tall italic set beside a very heavy grotesque creates the tension the subject is missing, and gives the name a recognizable shape.

  3. 03

    Writing as part of the design

    “Bring a cushion.” “Nobody will check on you.” The small lines of copy carry the same dry tone as the layouts, and I wrote them alongside the visuals.

A Long Take poster composed into a lightbox on the wall of an empty red cinema.
In context: composed into a lightbox on a cinema wall.
Open program booklet for the Long Take season: a red cover beside a schedule of invented film titles and running times.
The program. All film titles are invented.
A wall of old wooden letterpress type blocks in dark, worn colors.
Reference for heavy, physical letterforms.
Social media set for the Long Take season: a vertical story, two square posts, and a ticket.
Story, square posts, and a ticket.

04Typography & color

The system

  • Cinema red

    Lead color

    #A8281C

  • House lights off

    Type and ground

    #15120F

  • Program paper

    Secondary ground

    #EDE6D8

  • Projector ochre

    Rare accent

    #C98F2E

  • Instrument Serif Italic

    The long, soft voice

    Long

  • Manrope ExtraBold

    The short, heavy reply

    Take

  • IBM Plex Mono

    Running times

    7 H 18 MIN

05Final design

Where it landed.

The series works because each piece makes one small, confident joke and then gets out of the way. Seen together, they look like they come from the same dry, patient voice.

Long Take is a personal exploration, with no cinema, client, or real films behind it. I include it because it shows the part of my graphic work that is about ideas and typography rather than about following a template.

Photography from Unsplash: Christine Zhang, Bruno Martins.

Next project

Tideline

UI/UX design

Like the way this was approached?

Let’s talk aboutyour project.

Your project would get the same attention to detail. Tell me about it, and I’ll get back to you about the next steps.

Request a Project QuoteView My Services