Today, he balances his commercial key artwork with his self-generated output, which has taken the form of his James Bond series—for which he designed a poster for every single film in the canon—and his Oscars Best Picture series, which he has been doing for a decade.

He says he loves the dichotomy between the commercial and creative aspects of the same medium, and ultimately the watered-down nature of many mainstream studio posters is one reason he started creating his own Oscars posters. He attributes the lackluster aesthetics to stars’ contracts—some stipulating that said celebrities must appear in approved poses, in a certain order and certain size, down to the percentage—marketing algorithms, and established genre formulas and frameworks (“superhero clusterfucks, red text/white background for comedy, etc.”). Needle says it’s indeed possible to work within these parameters—but ultimately posters often suffer death by committee in the boardroom.“This, in turn, leads to a homogenized output, which cultivates a sense of familiarity for the general public, so they instantly know what they are getting . . . but at the same time, it’s so painfully dull,” he says.