Poster of the Month: The Dawn of Man

The first poster I ever bought seriously was the 1968 U.S. One-Sheet for 2001: A Space Odyssey — the Style A design created by Robert McCall. It is an image that many people recognise instinctively: the vast orbital “Space Wheel” gliding above the curve of the Earth, a vision rendered with the crisp futurism and optimism that defined the late 1960s. McCall produced two posters for the film, but this one became the definitive visual language of 2001: a quiet promise that technology, imagination, and human curiosity might one day converge in grace rather than chaos.

From a factual perspective, the one-sheet format (27x41 inches) was the standard for U.S. theatrical displays of the period, folded at the printer and circulated directly to cinemas. McCall’s artwork belongs to a tradition of mid-century American space illustration—clean lines, luminous gradients, and a sense of scale that dwarfs human presence. His work echoed NASA concept art of the era, and that affinity is part of why his style became almost synonymous with a certain way of imagining the future: orderly, elegant, full of possibility.

But for me, this poster is less about the future and more about a beginning.

I encountered 2001 at a time when I was learning to appreciate slowness, ambiguity, and the kind of storytelling that leaves more unsaid than said. The film’s opening sequence, “The Dawn of Man,” stayed with me long after my first viewing — the silence, the rhythm, the sense of something ancient waking up inside something new. When I found McCall’s poster years later, it felt like the visual counterpart to that feeling: not the drama of the film’s final act, but the sense of standing at an origin point without fully knowing where it leads.

Buying the poster marked the moment my collecting stopped being casual and became intentional. It was no longer about owning an object from a film I admired; it was about learning how images travel, how they speak across countries and decades, and how they hold the cultural hopes of the time in which they were printed. This one-sheet opened a door. Through it came German Expressionist re-releases, Thai painted posters, Japanese tatekans, British quads, and everything in between. It was my own small “dawn” — the beginning of a journey into cinema’s paper memory.

And even now, with a growing collection behind me, this poster remains a reminder of why I started: an image of humanity looking upward, wondering what comes next.