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Robtober 2022 Design Notes

How to design a ransom note

Happy Halloween! Here are a few quick notes about this year’s design for Robtober, my annual horror movie marathon.

The ransom letters

The ransom note concept for the title screen came to me in the middle of the night, and I don’t remember if it was inspired by something specific. But in my subsequent research, I read the entire Wikipedia article about the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, so if that’s a knowledge hole your pub trivia team needs filled, hit me up.

In lieu of emulating that particular ransom note, however, I decided mine would use letters from horror movie posters. Robtober is about movies I haven’t seen before, but since ransom notes are designed to obfuscate their author, I purposely chose posters from movies I have seen. Filtering my well-tended Letterboxd profile by genre/horror made finding the right posters a snap, and for the sake of variety, further filtering by decade ensured no two letters were from the same time period. The eight posters I sourced, in order of appearance, are Dracula (1931), Psycho (1960), Basket Case (1982), Tremors (1990), Zombie (1979), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Planet Terror (2007), and The Leopard Man (1943):

Eight letters, eight horror movies, eight decades.

I issued a challenge on Twitter to see if anyone could identify all eight letters, and unsurprisingly, Nick Sherman nailed it.

The responsive title screen

I was happy with how the title screen turned out, but its horizontal orientation had a lot less impact when it was squished onto a mobile device’s vertical screen. So I rearranged the letters to make a vertical version, activated in the browser by a max-aspect-ratio media query.

I think this is the first time I’ve used an aspect-ratio media query and it certainly won’t be the last. When the viewport is taller than it is wide, each letter in the title, which is rendered in SVG, is translate’d to its alternate coordinates:

@media (max-aspect-ratio: 1/1) {
  #logo__r1 {
    transform: translate(57.23px, -92.64px);
  }
  #logo__o1 {
    transform: translate(58.76px, -77.82px);
  }
  #logo__b1 {
    transform: translate(61.68px, -47.67px);
  }
  #logo__t1 {
    transform: translate(20.47px, 3.44px);
  }
  #logo__o2 {
    transform: translate(-36.39px, 10.28px);
  }
  #logo__b2 {
    transform: translate(-45.56px, 54.79px);
  }
  #logo__e1 {
    transform: translate(-56.34px, 72.76px);
  }
  #logo__r2 {
    transform: translate(-57.82px, 82.35px);
  }
  #logo__2022 {
    transform: translate(-15.39px, 70.08px);
  }
}

The animation that got away

The title screen was also supposed to be animated, but I’m still all thumbs when it comes to Intersection Observer, which is necessary to trigger the animation at the appropriate time. I couldn’t get it working reliably across browsers in time for publication.

The sequence isn’t going to win any motion design awards, but it does give the title a more cinematic feel, and I especially like the blunt effect of the blood droplets at the end. Hopefully someday down the road I’ll come back to it and get it properly working, but until then, we’ll always have the video above. I didn’t change the code, but it seems to be working now!

All posts in this series

Robtober 2011

A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake

Every October, I try to watch as many horror films that I haven’t seen before as possible.

Hostel

Eli Roth (USA, Czech Republic, 2005)

Three backpackers head to a Slovak city that promises to meet their hedonistic expectations, with no idea of the hell that awaits them.

Saw

James Wan (USA, 2004)

Two men awaken to find themselves on the opposite sides of a dead body, each with specific instructions to kill the other or… See more →

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Robtober 2012

A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake

Every October, I try to watch as many horror films that I haven’t seen before as possible.

Corman’s World

Alex Stapleton (USA, 2011)

A documentary on DIY producer/director Roger Corman and his alternative approach to making movies in Hollywood.

Not of This Earth

Roger Corman (USA, 1957)

An alien agent from the distant planet Davana is sent to Earth via a high-tech matter transporter. There, he terrorizes Southern California in an attempt to acquire blood… See more →

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Robtober 2013

A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake

Every October, I try to watch as many horror/suspense films that I haven’t seen before as possible. This is the first year the films were somewhat carefully selected and scheduled in advance. They span seven decades and eight countries. Dates and times (subject to change) are listed for any friends who want to join me.

Don’t Look Now

Nicolas Roeg (UK, Italy, 1973)

A married couple grieving the recent death of their young daughter are… See more →

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Robtober 2014

A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake

Every October, I try to watch as many horror/suspense films that I haven’t seen before as possible. Dates and times (subject to change) are listed for any friends who want to join me.

The Devil’s Backbone

Guillermo del Toro (Spain, Mexico, 2001)

After Carlos – a 12-year-old whose father has died in the Spanish Civil War – arrives at an ominous boys’ orphanage, he discovers the school is haunted and has many dark secrets which… See more →

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Robtober 2016

A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake

Every October, I put together a sizable schedule of horror/thriller/exploitation films, most of which I haven’t seen before. Dates and times (subject to change) are listed for any friends who want to join me. Also available as a handy Google calendar!

Don't Breathe

Fede Álvarez (USA, Hungary, 2016)

Three delinquents break into the house of a war veteran who is blind to steal his money. However, they discover that the man is not as defenseless as… See more →

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Robtober 2017

A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake

Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films, most of which I haven’t seen before. Films, dates, and times (all subject to change) are listed for any friends who want to join me, and ticket links are included for public screenings. The schedule is also available as a handy Google calendar and as a Letterboxd list.

Below the schedule you can find a bit about how it’s curated as well as a roundup… See more →

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Robtober 2018

A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake

Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films, most of which I haven’t seen before. Films, dates, and times (all subject to change) are listed for any friends who want to join me, and ticket links are included for public screenings. The schedule is also available as a handy Google calendar and as a Letterboxd list.

This year, Michael Myers’ imminent return to the big screen has inspired me to binge my way… See more →

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Robtober 2019

A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake

Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films, most of which I haven’t seen before. Films and dates (all subject to change) are listed for any friends who want to join me, and ticket links are included for public screenings.

This year, I’ve set aside a weekend to plow through the entire Nightmare on Elm Street series (I’ve only ever seen the first three). I’m also finally finishing off (the current version… See more →

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Robtober 2020

A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake

Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films to watch, focusing mostly on ones I haven’t seen before. It’s usually a mix of home viewings and public theatrical screenings, and the schedule is published both for posterity and for the sake of anyone who might like to join me. This year, sadly, the pandemic will keep me out of theaters, and guests won’t be able to join me for home viewings. But… See more →

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Robtober 2021

A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake

Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films to watch, focusing mostly on ones I haven’t seen before. The schedule, a mix of theatrical screenings and home viewings, is published for posterity and for the sake of anyone who might like to join me.

This year’s batch is a little less focused than usual, drawn from new releases, repertory screenings in Philadelphia, recent additions to Time Out’s “100 Best Horror Films,” Criterion… See more →

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Robtober 2021 Design Notes

The making of a custom-designed blog post

Robtober is what I call the horror movie binge I do every October. After I redesigned my site in 2017, I started documenting the event each year with a horrifically custom-designed blog post, getting a little more elaborate each time. This post goes behind the scenes of the 2021 edition.

The data

I generate my site with Jekyll, and a custom-designed post like Robtober gets its own unique layout file. To keep things tidy, all the… See more →

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Robtober 2022

A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake

Every October, I broaden my cinematic horizons by putting together a big schedule of horror movies I haven’t seen yet. Alas, this year’s plans have been upended by my abduction, and for some reason, my mysterious captors aren’t interested in money. Instead, their ransom demand is that people watch the movies I’ve scheduled. These dudes seem like they mean business, so if you can help me out, I’d really appreciate it. But if you’re too… See more →

Go to this post

Robtober 2022 Design Notes

How to design a ransom note

Happy Halloween! Here are a few quick notes about this year’s design for Robtober, my annual horror movie marathon.

The ransom letters

The ransom note concept for the title screen came to me in the middle of the night, and I don’t remember if it was inspired by something specific. But in my subsequent research, I read the entire Wikipedia article about the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, so if that’s a knowledge hole your pub… See more →

Go to this post

Robtober 2023

A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake

Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films to watch, focusing mostly on ones I haven’t seen before. The schedule, a mix of theatrical screenings and home viewings, is published for posterity and for the sake of anyone who might like to join me.

I’ll often use this month as an opportunity to catch up on a franchise, and this year, for reasons surpassing understanding, the new, tenth installment of the Saw… See more →

Go to this post

Robtober 2024

A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake

Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films to watch, focusing mostly on ones I haven’t seen before. The schedule, a mix of theatrical screenings and home viewings, is published for posterity and for the sake of anyone who might like to join me.

This year I seem to be nostalgic for the age of Satanic panic, as I’ll be doing concurrent, chronological deep dives on The Exorcist and The Omen, two… See more →

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