IMP Awards

A famous movie poster website

Screenshots

Looking for high-definition original posters from the 1930s silent film era for design reference, I checked several domestic stock sites but found nothing. In the end, I relied on IMP Awards to get them — this is exactly the problem I encountered last week.

Where can you find original resources of old movie posters from 1912 to the present?

Official website: http://www.impawards.com/

Last week, to create a vintage film-themed poster design, I needed a high-definition original promotional poster for The Jazz Singer (1927). Several domestic stock sites only had blurry reprinted images, or couldn’t find anything at all. Then I remembered IMP Awards, which a colleague had mentioned before, so I clicked in to try — this is a long-standing movie poster site founded in 1996, having accumulated over 350,000 resources so far, covering movie, TV drama and game posters, and even early silent films have never stopped updating. It’s truly a must-have resource database for professionals and film fans.

The specific process of searching for The Jazz Singer can cut your image-hunting time in half

I directly clicked on the “Search by Year” option on the page, selected 1927, then filtered for the “Silent Film” category. In less than 3 seconds, I found two original posters of The Jazz Singer, with 4K resolution — even the tiny wear marks on the poster edges were visible, so there was no need for high-definition restoration at all.

Previously, I had to check three or four sites and deal with blurry images to find a poster, but this time the efficiency was far higher.

After all, for design work, clarity is a key requirement. All posters on IMP Awards maintain high resolution; for popular films like Eternals, even the embroidery details on the characters’ costumes can be zoomed in and seen. For designers, there’s no need to spend extra effort finding high-quality source files — they can be used directly.

If you want to accurately find a specific film’s poster, what more efficient methods are there besides searching by name?

People who first use this site may only search by film name, but in fact, its category search function is really useful. Later, when I helped a friend find a poster for The Long Season, I directly selected three filters: “China”, “2023” and “TV Drama” — this allowed me to locate the official poster faster than searching by name, and I could also find promotional materials for similar Chinese TV dramas.

Moreover, its coverage is really wide — not just Hollywood blockbusters, from early silent films in 1912 to newly released films, even posters for niche Chinese films are included. Earlier, when I was looking for a poster for an old Chinese animation from the 1980s, I couldn’t find it on other sites, but here there was an original scan, even retaining the small printing flaws from that era — perfect for creating vintage-themed content.

There’s also an easily overlooked feature: it has the world’s only short film poster database, ShortFilmPosters, which is dedicated to collecting posters for niche short films. For example, award-winning short films from film festivals can all be found here with their corresponding promotional images — it’s a dedicated resource library for those creating independent film-related content.

If you want to know which movie poster is most worth seeing this year, where else can you find industry references?

Besides finding images, IMP Awards also holds annual awards for the best and worst movie posters — these results are considered a small trend indicator in the industry. Among last year’s best posters, several indie film designs are used by many designers for inspiration, while the worst ones help people avoid some design pitfalls — it’s a free industry observation window.

Last year, when I was doing design work, I referred to the layout logic of the best posters in its awards, and the final design was praised by the client for its creativity. This award is not chosen randomly; it’s voted on by site users and professionals, so the content is quite reliable without much exaggeration.

The site is still being updated continuously; official posters for new films are usually uploaded within a week of release. Last month, when I was looking for a poster for Oppenheimer, I found it here on the fifth day of release — two or three days earlier than on other stock sites. Whether you’re a designer looking for inspiration or a film fan wanting to collect posters, this site’s resources and functions cover all needs; it’s the most hassle-free movie poster platform I’ve used so far.