The Alan Sugar of Warwick University

The Tab sat down with up and coming and possibly one of Warwick’s finest and successful entrepreneurs, Andrew McGee, the creator of Paradigm Posters. You may have seen his posters around campus…


Mark Zuckerberg, Alan Sugar and Andrew Mason. All of which started businesses at a young age. At Warwick, first year Film and Literature student Andrew McGee has followed their footsteps with his innovative company, Paradigm Posters, which he sells round campus. The Tab fired a few questions at Warwick’s very on Salvador Dali.

Andrew McGee is a first year Film and Literature student.

When did you first start the business?

Through Paradigm Posters, I sell original and unique minimalist posters on A3 and A4, based on films, games, and TV. These include Doctor Who, Portal, Batman and Tarantino inspired designs, and the site is regularly updated with new posters. Have a look at www.paradigmposters.weebly.com – I’m selling them for £3.50 on campus since there’s no postage costs involved, so please contact me if you’d like one! I first created the website about six months ago, but it’s mainly been in the last three months that it’s really taken off.

Andrew’s posters are simple but effective and can be picked up on campus at prices as low as £3.50.

How did you get the idea?

Initially I was just drawing and painting for my own enjoyment; I’m into films and gaming, so most of the designs were related to those interests. I’m not great when it comes to creating anything too detailed (hence the minimalism) but I took inspiration from the artist Olly Moss, whose created some really great minimalist film posters. After a while I began submitting a to a site called Qwertee, where users upload their designs and the most voted ones get printed onto t-shirts. One of them was popular enough to be printed (the Batman/Reservoir Dogs crossover), and I thought some of them might instead look pretty cool as posters, so I made a website!

A crossover of Batman and Reservoir Dogs was popular on Qwertee and was later printed due to it’s high popularity.

Give us some of your memorable moments and how you felt.

One really great moment was when the Cornetto Trilogy poster (based on ‘Shaun of the Dead’, ‘Hot Fuzz’ and the recent ‘The World’s End’) was tweeted by the director himself, Edgar Wright. I’m a huge fan of his, so I was overjoyed that he’d seen it!

I was also contacted by a guy in America who’s directing a short film at the moment, from the screenwriter of the recent horror film ‘Sinister’. He asked me to make a poster to promote it at film festivals, which I did. I’m not sure if it’s still going to be used, but it’s nice to know that I potentially have an extremely loose connection to Hollywood!

One of the most surprising moments was recently, when one of the posters went viral online. It was the end of last term and I’d stayed around for the weekend to finish an essay I’d left a bit too late. I got distracted (again) when I thought of a way to improve an old poster, based on a game called Shadow of the Colossus. After about ten minutes in Photoshop, I uploaded it to DeviantArt and Reddit along with my website link, and got back to the essay. When I went online again to see if it was getting any attention, I saw that it had exploded virally, and had even made it to quite a few major gaming sites. After only a few orders every other week, I suddenly had over eighty in one weekend, and only twelve postage tubes. Seeing the site stats spike from about 3 views to 3500 was something I had never anticipated when I started the site! It was all a bit overwhelming, especially since I had to juggle 3000 words while writing out the order addresses.

It’s also really gratifying to know that people think my posters are good enough to buy and presumably display, so I appreciate every order.

This innovative Cornetto poster could the attention of Edgar Wright.

And what does the future hold for you?

I’d like to continue running and updating the site throughout uni, since it’s something I enjoy doing and it’s a nice way to make some money. I’m going to keep trying to come up with new designs, and I hope to improve as much as I can. I was thinking of expanding the business a bit by getting someone in America to print and send the posters, since most of the buyers are in the US and it would be a lot more convenient. Once I’ve finished my degree I hope to get into the film industry, with the goal of eventually becoming a director. I’d like to think that the site could potentially be helpful in that regard, but in the end I just hope to enjoy whatever I end up doing, whether it’s making films or posters!