To call John Alvin's poster work iconic is really an understatement. Just looking over a gallery of his work brings back a flood of memories of watching the movies he produced posters for. Sadly, John passed away this week. He will be missed.
Considered the pre-eminent movie campaign artist of the past 35 years, Alvin's career began in 1974 with his creation of the iconic movie poster for Mel Brook's "Blazing Saddles." He most recently contributed design ideas for the campaign for Disney Studio's "Enchanted." In a career that encompassed multiple projects for such directors as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Blake Edwards, Mel Brooks and Ridley Scott, Alvin was considered by many studios as the go-to artist for movie poster and campaign art. John Alvin said that his work "created the promise of a great experience" and in that he never failed.
A great loss for those who love great movie posters. He had done some classic stuff, everything from Alien to Blade Runner (that's his poster on the new release) to E.T and even Darkman (if you go to his site you see a great poster design for Darkman that I have never seen and is the best one I've seen so far).
He and Drew Struzan had very similar style and it's no wonder they were to two main poster guys for Lucas and Spielberg.