Serifs, Scripts & Screens: 8 television shows and movies with a spectacular use of typography

Even when we’ve got something good to watch after a long day, us designers are starkly reminded of our profession as soon as we find ourselves paying more attention to the titles, credits and subtitles than everything else. Googling the typeface before the story even has a chance to get going. We’ve probably all been there! In fact, after some painstaking ‘research’ (watching a lot of Netflix), we’ve compiled a small list of productions whose type choices compelled us to do some further digging. It’s hard to imagine the film Lady Bird without the title’s powerfully biblical blackletter typeface. The font had been a part of the film’s identity for a long time – chosen for director Greta Gerwig’s pitch deck to align with the film’s Catholic School setting. When it came to designing the opening titles, Gerwig worked with New York-based design studio CHIPS alongside artist Leanne Shapton to develop something with a more ‘handmade’ quality. Simple and clean, but “rough around the edges.” Despite many ideas and experiments, blackletter would be the final choice, effortlessly winning out for its historical and ornamental character. Shapton handpainted the lettering, which was paired alongside a loosely-spaced and simple sans serif (also hand-painted). For those eagle-eyed type spotters, the Joan Didion quote at the start of the film is set in the bookish serif, Electra. Set in an unsettlingly brightly-lit, stark-white corporate abyss, Severance is the workplace sci-fi thriller that pushes ‘work-life boundaries’ to their limit. The aesthetics of Lumon Industries, where the bulk of the show’s story takes place, drew inspiration from a plethora of sources; from 1960’s office spaces to pharmaceutical companies. Part of Severance’s worldbuilding is formed through the carefully considered typography choices, which set the tone of Lumon. The pairing of Manifold Extended CF and Forma DJR appear frequently in the show as the two main typefaces. Balancing cold technicality with warm neutrality, the pairing embodies the pristine veneer of the exploitative employer. Hermann Zapf’s humanist sans serif Optima appears in gold on the spines of Lumon’s ornate Compliance Handbooks, suggesting the tradition and history of the cult-like business. Meanwhile, technical coding aesthetics are referenced  with the use of David Jonathon Ross’ Input Sans. Finally, the show’s title is aptly set in Helvetica, the ubiquitous sans serif, calling back to the no-fuss and sterile aesthetic of modernist corporate identities.