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shortly before the cannes film festival last year we were asked to create the title sequence for a film called aftersun. caspar was headed home to england for a bit after having been robbed of his computer and camera in paris, when the email from pastel came in: would we be able to make titles for a film on its way to cannes in just four or five days? caspar picked up a new laptop in london and we asked to see the film. those who have seen the film can imagine what it must have been like to consider whether to work on it or not, even with very little time to do good work. the film is a remarkable thing by any stretch of the imagination, and one that touched caspar particularly for a number of reasons.

caspar sent the director, charlotte wells, some typeface ideas based on the film’s overall mood and his experiences of growing up in the 90s. charlotte picked the typeface—base mono—that you see here:

caspar then began work on customizing and animating the typeface in a fashion that charlotte and he felt appropriate to the tone of the film; dissolving the sharp edges of each letter and making them flicker in and out of focus as if light was coming at us from behind each word; all the while treating it as if our eyes could not quite focus on it because it was too bright. meanwhile caspar’s brother josiah got to work on creating the end crawl, and needless to say we made the deadline. caspar then headed to cannes to see the work on the big screen.

art of the title is a remarkable website run by lola landekić, that’s dedicated to celebrating film title sequence design and animation. in fact here’s director david fincher (se7en, fight club, zodiac, the social network) talking to lola on the subject:

“I love the site. It’s really beautiful. I would much rather have anything and everything about the title sequence be on Art of the Title than in USA Today or any publication like that. Your site is the proper context for this conversation.”

we’ve referenced title sequences in the extensive and beautifully presented art of the title archives many times in our work, and to see that yesterday the aftersun titles were posted to art of the title was incredibly moving, not to mention flattering.

thank you so much to adele romanski, charlotte wells, lola landekić and everyone else at pastel and a24 films. we remain endlessly thankful for these opportunities to work on such beautiful films.

today marks the 100th anniversay of the birth of saul bass, whom in our book is one of the greatest graphic designers there’s been yet. to celebrate this day criterion collection—amongst other things—interviewed a few living title designers about the impact saul bass has had on their work. caspar was included in the selection and wrote about saul and his wife elaine’s work on the west side story title sequence. here is an excerpt from what caspar had to say:

“Around that time, I attended an exhibition of his work in London and heard a recording of Bass talking about an argument he’d had with Otto Preminger while creating the title sequence for The Man with the Golden Arm. It was from hearing about that particular fight that I started to learn about the nature of good collaboration in graphic design, and also about how much can be said with so little material.”

and here’s another:

“The part of this sequence that means the most to me is where Saul and Elaine wrote their initials into the graffiti on the background wall not once, not twice, but three times. At least one of those times, their initials are written inside a heart. For me, it’s this desire to include personal touches like this that often makes good work exceptional. Their joy and their care for what they did is present from start to finish, to the point where they’ve included a piece of their personal lives within it.

As a graphic designer and filmmaker, I’ve always had the goal to not only make everything I do by hand (even the typography) but to film live-action title sequences when possible. That requires immense trust from the directors and producers.”

a huge thank you to hillary weston, andrew chan and all at criterion.