film titles

Special Co-Branding

Oreo’s Homage to “Game of Thrones”

By Delphine Hirasuna |
From upper left to lower right: House of Stark, the Night King, House of Targaryen, and House of Lannister

For the two or three people in the modern world who don’t know, Sunday April 14thmarks the start of the eighth and final season of “Game of Thrones” on HBO TV.   Based on the adaptation of “A Song of Ice and Fire” book by George R.R. Martin, “Game of Thrones” is a medieval fantasy epic that chronicles the violent dynastic struggles of noble families vying for the Iron throne in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.  The HBO series, created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, is predicted to attract more than one billion viewers worldwide in its final season. 

For the two or three people in the modern world who don’t know, Sunday April 14thmarks the start of the eighth and final season of “Game of Thrones” on HBO TV.   Based on the adaptation of “A Song of Ice and Fire” book by George R.R. Martin, “Game of Thrones” is a medieval fantasy epic that chronicles the violent dynastic struggles of noble families vying for the Iron throne in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.  The HBO series, created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, is predicted to attract more than one billion viewers worldwide in its final season. 

Season eight provided the perfect opportunity for Oreo to issue special edition cookies that would appeal to “Game of Thrones” fanatics. Instead of showing its brand as a friendly chocolatey snack, Oreo emphasized the stark black-and-white appearance of its cookies and stamped them with the crests of the fictional warring families. The packaging, too, showed the sinister-looking iron throne.  Oreo and HBO took this brand pairing a step further by teaming with Elastic Creative to substitute the show’s title sequence with a cookie-built version made entirely out of 2,750 Oreos.  The brand campaign is so imaginative that the limited edition offering is selling out as fans join in the fun of munching on “Game of Thrones”-themed snacks.

Oreo packaging with the Iron Throne
Film

Of Saul Bass and the History of Film Titles

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Years ago designer Saul Bass explained how he approached film title sequences to me when I interviewed him for an article. “Find an image that will be provocative, seductive yet true to the film,” he said. “It has to have some ambiguity, some contradiction, not only visually but conceptually. Not just isolating the prettiest frame, but finding a metaphor for the film.“

Beginning with his 1955 work on Otto Preminger’s “The Man with the Golden Arm,” Bass transformed the way film title sequences were perceived forever. He approached the task with a graphic designer’s eye, so that stills from his title sequences easily translated into a powerful iconic poster for the movie.

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Animation

“Bored to Death” Animated Type Title Sequence

By Delphine Hirasuna |

The new HBO comedy series “Bored to Death” created by novelist Jonathan Ames is about a fictional writer named “Jonathan Ames” who hires himself as a private detective. For that kind of story line, the opening title sequence had to reveal a lot of background information – namely that the show somehow involved a novelist, fascination with words, a central character who lived a “noir” fantasy life, and a comic book quality. Tom Barham, title sequence director for Curious Pictures, found a way to weave all of this into the opening sequence by animating typography and using it to carry viewers from scene to scene and letting characters interact with letterforms as they walked across the page. The “flashlight” effect with darkened edges of the book also created a nice noir touch.

In an interview with artofthetitle.com Barham explains, “I wanted to do a combination character and flip-book animation to move the Jonathan character from location to location in a book format. Additionally, since the characters were made from text contained within the book where they exist they needed to move and interact with each other as if they were emitting or leaking letterforms or words.” The title sequence uses words from Ames’ original story and illustrations by comic artist Dean Haspiel, who is also the basis for the Ray Hueston role, played by Zack Galifianakis.