There is no other film quite as anticipated as TENET
It's the now eleventh film of the highly regarded director Christopher Nolan,
who already proved with works like THE DARK KNIGHT, INCEPTION, INTERSTELLAR, DUNKIRK and PRESTIGE
that he can satisfy the taste of a wide audience as well as the critics.
Warner Bros. has now officially announced that TENET will be released in cinemas in Germany and a few other countries on the 27th of August 2020.
Because of the previous delays there is not much information about the film itself,
but it is certain that TENET will be an extremely important example
as to how the future of the movie industry will be influenced by the current Corona crisis.
The first Teaser Trailers, Trailers and Artworks are already providing some exciting discussions among film fans.
Does it take place in the same universe of INCEPTION?
Is the film so complicated that you'll need secondary literature to understand it?
Is Nolans favourite subject of time an important factor?
These questions are causing wide debates and speculations on the internet and everywhere else.
Reason enough for us as passionate Movie Poster Designers and ardent fans of Christopher Nolan
to look at the Teaser Artwork of TENET and find out what we can learn about the film itself from it.
So we analyzed the poster with our knowledge of the important design rules in an artwork.
And now without further ado we welcome you to the first video of...
First of all, let's look at the composition.
It is clear that the poster has a strong perspective
and that it is dominated by straight lines and geometric shapes.
This style has also been used in other artworks for Nolans films.
Typical as well is the presentation of the main character in relation to the world around them.
This technique was used for example for
DUNKIRK, THE DARK KNIGHT and INCEPTION.
For TENET, this becomes apparent through the two main axis
with which all elements except the character and the title are being mirrored.
The straight running lines of the pictured architecture are integral as well.
Additionally, notice the central perspective or central orientation.
All lines lead in the direction of the character and the title in the center
in order to direct our focus on these two important elements.
This effect is reinforced through the positive areas
which are the areas of the poster with content. 
(in this case the architecture)
Even though these areas get contrasted by negative areas
which are the areas with no important content,
(in this case the clouds and sky)
it becomes apparent that they too help to create the central perspective with the formation of the clouds.
At the center of the artwork we can see the main character, played by John David Washington
and the TENET title treatment.
Important here is the division of the character
and the slanted arrangement of both elements.
First of all we concentrate on the character.
We can see:
His gun, he is facing in our direction, and his right foot has no ground contact.
He is moving in our direction and therefore looks dynamic.
We can often see this in the action thriller genre.
The lack of ground contact is used as a surreal element
which can be interpreted as the character or the film having no contact with the real world.
In contrast to this is the character on the right side of the artwork turned away from us.
Here he does have ground contact and no gun in his hand.
Also, his head is turned to the left so we can see a respiratory mask on his face.
The dynamic and surreal character components on the left side of the poster are seemingly lacking here,
but looked upon in it's original 180 degrees rotation,
it's clear that the rotation itself is the surreal element of the right side.
It follows that both character sides combine surreal and real elements.
We are now going to show that these elements combined reveal a watch.
The background forms the clock face,
while character and title form the clock hands.
This becomes especially clear when we rotate the artwork clockwise.
After we have found action thriller elements and the surreal approach to time in the artwork,
we'll now have a look at the coloring.
The designer has implemented a strong complementary contrast. More accurately the Orange and Teal look.
From that we can derive a cold-warm contrast.
This contrast results from the combination of the colors orange and teal.
It can be found in many fields of color design for film.
It's implementation for TENET becomes apparent through a circular warm tone gradient starting from the center.
This circle again underlines the clock layout.
Going outward to the edge of the artwork the colors become colder, resulting in prevalent blue tones.
Through this the character looks like a hero despite his serious facial expression and weapon,
in a cold, dark and menacing world.
In combination with the clock, both in layout and color
and the aforementioned surreal elements of the artwork
can be derived that John David Washington as the protagonist
will fight to make the world a better place or avert danger from it,
and that time travel or time manipulation will play a big part in this.
This interpretation can be supported by the choice of title and typography.
TENET is a palindrome.
That means the word can be read forwards and backwards.
The used font is the Acme Gothic Extrawide Regular, which was designed by Mark Simonson.
It is part of the Adobe fonts and heavily geared towards symmetry.
The first versions of the title treatment tried to underline the clock theme even more,
through building the title as an ambigram.
"English ************ do you speak it?!
That means that the title could be rotated, without it changing.
So the title treatment in the foreground would have worked exactly like the artwork does itself now.
One more seemingly small but important detail for the plot and the expectation of the audience
can be found in the USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and the credits.
The USP is very present in the upper left corner of the artwork
and only contains the director Christopher Nolan.
This is a clear indication for the strong market value of the name Christopher Nolan alone.
The potential audience already knows his past work and does not need a reminder of the themes he often works with.
We can again derive that time will play a role,
because this director like no other uses this theme in almost all of his work.
In contrast, the credits are situated in the lower right corner
which creates a balance that again shows the contrast between the other design elements,
and adds yet another element to that.
In the end it can be said that the artwork includes many aspects that help to conclude the plot of the film,
in accordance to the Trailers and Teaser Trailers.
Although nobody can say for sure what will happen in the film,
but it is certain that it will be an action thriller with the element of time travel or time manipulation in it.
The promo material released so far does not allow any other conclusion.
Especially the exciting and coherent artwork shown here.
We have shown with our analysis on the basis of design rules
that all of the design elements like composition, color and typography
and further information like title, USP and credits harmonize and therefore no other conclusion allow.
It's now time to wait and see if TENET can meet the rising expectations of the fans
and if Nolan can once again show that he is one of the greats.
We are eagerly awaiting the chance to finally see a real blockbuster in the cinemas again
and hope that the release will commence without problems.
We thank you for your attention!
We hope it was fun for you and we are looking forward to bringing you many more poster analyses.
If you liked the video we would really appreciate a positive rating
and we are looking forward to your feedback.
But most importantly please tell us how you liked the artwork!
And with that we say goodbye and see you soon
here on...
