THE FIFTH ELEMENT was a science fiction epic from French director Luc Besson and starring Bruce Willis. In the 23rd century, a mysterious evil force threatens humanity. The only way to stop this menace is the Fifth Element, which comes to Earth with stones representing four elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.
Working on teaser movie poster designs, we were given an existing logo created for the film: a triangular formation of five beams of blue lights. Every teaser poster concept was required to use some variation of this logo. At that time, various aspects of the film were a secret, including what exactly was “the Fifth Element” in the plot, which was not to be revealed in any advertising. This was not a problem for a teaser poster, which can be ambiguous.
For this teaser poster concept, I diverted from the solid beams of the original logo and recreated them with stars. This “pixie dust” concept was eventually dropped in favor of a poster with a tiny version of the original logo combined with a large number 5 graphic taken from the teaser movie trailer.
Client: Columbia Pictures
Unused movie poster concept
