Setting the stage: Should there be an Oscar for title design?

How do we get our first impressions of a film? Is it the trailer? The poster? Some blink-and-you’ll-miss-it social media effort? And how do these items pave the way to Oscarland? These days, a film’s identity is a multipronged and prolonged affair, its essence taking shape over a period of months, even years, before release.

“There is a Greek word which makes more sense to it,” says designer Vasilis Marmatakis on a video call from his studio in Athens. “Apospomeno,” he says. “It means detachable.” Much like their central heroine Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), the posters he designed for the Oscar-winning Poor Things have been travelling the world under their own steam. They’ve been listed in countless year-end best-ofs, and brought him more attention than he’s used to. “It's nominated for so many Oscars and so many times it's the poster that represents the film. People do see those graphics more.” But there is no Oscar for Outstanding Title Design – and there may never be.

The 2023 Yorgos Lanthimos film (based on Alasdair Gray’s book of the same name and, by all accounts, a rollicking modern telling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) was up for a whopping eleven Oscars and won four including three of the design categories: costume design, makeup and hairstyling, and production design. Featured prominently in the posters is Bella, dolled up in balloon-sleeved Victorian garb or smeared with paint. The images are striking. They focus on one person and they elicit a sense of mystery and the absurd. Their energy is enigmatic but also accessible and evocative. They invite you in.

The title font lettering was done by Vladimir Radibratovic and Danae Tzotzos with direction from Marmatakis. It’s handwrought and idiosyncratic, an organic touch in its elongated lines. It’s the same lettering seen in the film itself, introducing each chapter and adorning the edges of the opening like more maximalist set pieces.

It can be difficult to get Hollywood distributors on board with such a singular design style. “It's usually shot down for like two big heads and some basic typography!” says designer Marlene McCarty who, along with Teddy Blanks, created the titles for the recent Netflix hit May December. She should know. After all, she’s been in the business of designing posters and titles for films for several decades. She’s become the go-to designer for directors including Todd Haynes and Kelly Reichardt. “We have a very long relationship, Todd and I,” she says. “We've known each other for 30-some years. We kind of grew up together when the art world and the film world and the music world and the design world were more entwined. Everything's really siloed now.” What she means is that nowadays, it’s rare that a title designer will also work on the poster or other promotional materials for a film. On larger budget films, marketing teams at various levels often call the shots regarding trailers, posters, merch and other audience-scooping mechanisms. But some relationships poke through the mesh of that machine – McCarty’s connection with Haynes among them. “Now it’s at this point where Todd's like, ‘Here's the title.’ He's not even like, ‘Do you want to do these?’” she laughs.

For the opening to May December, a film about an actress (Natalie Portman) who spends time with and observes a couple with a scandalous past, McCarty collaborated with Blanks, another designer. They placed pale condensed typography atop soft, dim footage of a butterfly landing on a flower. A delicate creature being closely watched. The typography is imposing and cold like steel bars. “[The characters] are emotionally claustrophobic and so we wanted to make it more pictorially claustrophobic,” McCarty explains. “I was thinking a lot about how trapped Joe and Gracie are, how they are in that situation and the fact that she had been in jail. That he was now locked into a domestic jail of his own.”

The end credits for May December are also highly stylised with large typography in various shades of gray and little room to breathe. It’s somewhat reminiscent of her end title design for Reichardt’s Night Moves, which features similar typography on a background of shifting colour. Here, she says, “It was about it being this very severe typography and nothing colorful.” Her sensibility shines through, though. It still has that McCarty feeling to it. “A couple of people have emailed me and been like, ‘I couldn't find your title credit but did you do those?’” she laughs. “Yes. You know, I've only had one credit upfront all these years and that was, I think, for Safe. And that was a vicious negotiation. Because we, especially in those days, never really got paid much for anything. But title designers rarely get any credit.”

The main title that appears in the film was made by LA-based studio Filmograph in collaboration with designer Heather Brantman. “The one that’s in the film, it’s on screen very briefly, and it doesn’t have the same bouncy optimism to it. It’s much quieter.” It speaks to the heavier side of the story, she says, whereas her bespoke, 70s-inspired lettering brings audiences to the door. “I think they do kind of work together,” says Hische. Her lettering is the de facto brand for the film, however, and the logotype that viewers will most remember.

“Graphic designers actually have a big impact on how people perceive a film,” says Hische. “We have this responsibility to best communicate what people are meant to experience when they’re in the theater so that those expectations are aligned, which will make the whole experience more positive for them.” Things can get thorny when a viewer’s expectations are incongruous with the film experience, so marketing has to be handled adroitly. The promotional materials often become the lens through which a film is first experienced and then remembered.

If there were an Oscar for Outstanding Title Design, Marmatakis’s work for Poor Things would surely have been nominated. But he doesn’t believe in awards. “Ideologically I’m against it,” he says. “It's a bit tricky for me. I mean, I’m really happy for Poor Things and of course I follow the Oscars but overall, I’m against any form of awards.” For him, the stance is philosophical and political. He quotes lines from Against, a poem by Dinos Christianopoulos, translating from the Greek: “I'm against awards because they undermine the dignity of human beings… Getting an award seems to say that I accept spiritual bosses. And one day, we should get rid of bosses from our lives.” He does, however, take joy when his work is named on best-of lists or otherwise praised, of course.

Another designer that surely would have been nominated if an Oscar for Outstanding Title Design existed is Katie Buckley with her work for Emerald Fennell’s psychodrama Saltburn. For the film, Buckley worked with design assistant India Paparestis-Stacey to painstakingly hand-paint the opening credits. Fennell took to Twitter to praise their work and shed light on the process, saying: “Each frame of the opening titles was hand drawn, gilded & painted by our incredible graphic designer Katie & her assistant India, then applied in stop motion. It took months to make as a single frame took half a day, but it encapsulates everything: a beauty that drives us mad.” As Fennell says, Buckley was actually the graphic designer on the film and was responsible for creating many of the items that appear on screen such as “the wonderful Catton ‘Dancing Pierrot Box’, the family crest, and every wine label, cigarette box, and book you see in the film, among many other beautiful things.” This is the first time she has designed a title sequence but it will likely not be the last.

“Obviously I haven't done titles before and the difference in attention with titles and just doing the graphics for a film is huge,” says Buckley. When creating graphics for a film, they should blend into the scenery, she says. The elements – whether storefront signage or handheld props – should feel like natural parts of their environments. The title sequence is so very visible, though, setting the stage for everything to come. She admits that she hadn’t really thought about the importance of a title sequence much before working on one. “It really does set the tone of a film – or can do so,” she says. “There should be a bit more recognition for some of the amazing title designs that are out there.”

Though an Oscar for Outstanding Title Design may not be on the horizon, those working in the field agree on one thing: recognising and highlighting how the work functions, what it means for the film industry, and acknowledging the blood, sweat and tears that go into its creation are paramount. How would we step into these tremendous imaginary worlds without them? How would we boldly go? Marmatakis relates a story about attending a screening of a David Cronenberg film with a friend to illustrate the point. “When my friend saw Crash, in the first five minutes the letters were approaching. She was like, ‘I want to leave. I don't want to see this.’ I was like, ‘What?!’” he laughs. “The titles are that powerful.”