A Visual History of All the Official ‘Star Wars’ Posters

As Star Wars: The Force Awakens has finally debuted the film’s official poster, we have yet another entry into an iconic line of movie-themed imagery. Star Wars posters have been some of the most impactful and memorable artwork in movie history with artists and designers like Drew Struzan, Tom Jung, Roger Kastel and many more (the new Force Awakens poster was designed by relative newcomer Bryan Morton) creating works that have stood the test of time for many years. (Interesting to note that many of the early Star Wars posters were designed by classic 1930s Hollywood posters. The Empire Strikes Back, specifically, was modeled after the original Gone With the Wind poster.) To help celebrate this new poster, we decided to take a look back the posters Lucasfilm has commissioned over the years, including some posters you’re immediately familiar with, and some you may not be.

The Star Wars posters above are presented in chronological order with the very first poster — an advance piece of artwork from 1976 that includes the original Star Wars logo — and ends with the most recent. We stuck to posters that were commissioned by Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox or Disney, so Mondo posters, fan art, etc. don’t qualify. We also avoided international posters, because that’s another massive list we’ll have to put together one day.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in theaters on December 18.