The design of BSMR

I recently launched a youtube channel. It’s called Brad’s Silent Movie Review. I review movies, without saying a word. The most challenging part of this project was designing the look of the videos. It’s a combination of all the different facets of film that I love.

I initially designed the BSMR logo to look like a blank VHS tape logo. A serif font with some lines cut out of it. The icon of a person whispering was a natural fit. From there I tried to hone in on what makes a silent film title screen.

Researching tons of classic silent film screens, I created a reusable template that could contain different movie title names. I tried a few different visual border ideas, but nothing grabbed me. I noticed a lot of early silent films didn’t have any, so I dropped the idea for now. I’ll try again for season 2! I used an old italic liquor store font for the movie titles to help it stand out from the other fonts used in the title screen.

To tie in my channel name, I created a fake 1950’s style advertisement for Perfecide, to be the sponsor of my BSMR videos. This will help my branding across all platforms that I use. And to wrap up the design of the title screen, I used a vignette to age the imaging a little.

For the main content of the videos, I found a restored font from 1916 that was originally used for silent film. This really helps drive the vision home. My reviews are for all types of movies and genres. This helps combine different eras of film and design and melds it all into one. To wrap the project up, the ending screen uses a large western style slab font. The weight of the font really pushes the final impact of the video.

And that’s how I went about designing the BSMR videos. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoy making them.