Criterion Collection Art Director Breaks Down the Designs

Criterion Collection‘s art director Eric Skillman is constantly collecting names.

Skillman is the mastermind behind finding the artists who design or illustrate Criterion Collection’s DVD artwork, and that’s why he has thousands of artists in an archive.

He’s always looking for new artists, but he’s also looking for the perfect match. Speaking with Variety over Zoom, Skillman explains the process of matching artist to project. “I find out the upcoming schedule a month or two before I need to assign. Sometimes I’m scrambling to watch the movies I have seen before we assign.”

Having access to great films allows Skillman to find the best illustrators and artists around the world. Sometimes it’s a simple composition, other times, it’s looking at a scene and distilling that into an illustration. And when possible, it’s a collaboration with the filmmaker.

“It’s who fits this project,” he says. “The films have not gotten repetitive to me yet, they’re still so diverse and interesting and have so many different new things about them that there’s just new people to discover who are the right fit for new projects all the time.”

Skillman speaks with Variety about the process of the cover art coming together, and below he breaks down the ideas behind some Criterion designs and illustrations.

How involved are the studios or filmmakers in the artwork of a Criterion Collection film?

We’re much more engaged with the filmmakers and their preferences than we are with the studios. Per se. Our process engages with the filmmakers directly. If there’s something that they love that was made before, we generally go with their preference. But for the most part, we’re excited to make new things. We think that there’s just a slightly different story to be told about a movie when it’s coming out for the first time, you have to introduce it to a new audience, versus a movie that’s been around…