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Tim Burton Timothy Walter Burton 1958-Present (May 27, 1911 - October 25, 1993) was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic performances in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.

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Pioneering futuristic film noir & cyberpunk

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The visual influence of Ridley Scott's 1982 masterpiece has only grown over the last 35 years.

Over the last 50 years of filmmaking, there are very few films that have influenced modern filmmaking like Ridley Scott's " Blade Runner." Unlike other landmark films that changed Hollywood - ranging from "Easy Rider to "Jaws" - Ridley Scott's 1982 film was a box office disappointment. Of course, the lasting impact of "Blade Runner" was also quite different than these films that became instant cultural phenomenons.

"'Blade Runner' is simply one of those cinematic drugs, that when I first saw it, I never saw the world the same way again," said Guillermo del Toro told one interviewer, when describing why "Blade Runner" was one of his five favorite films of all-time.

Del Toro wasn't alone. For a whole generation of filmmakers - including the cinematographers, productions designers and visual effects artists - a direct line can be drawn between "Blade Runner" and the imagery of modern sci-fi movie. In the 35 years in which "Blade Runner" has gone from "cult classic" to the most anticipated franchise sequel of the year, it's hard to find a futuristic film in 2017 that isn't in some way rooted in the visual world building of this seminal film.

Here are five ways Ridley Scott's masterpiece changed the look of Sci-Fi movies forever.

The Cyberpunk Look

"'Blade Runner' changed the way the world looks and how we look at the world," science fiction author William Gibson told Wired. Gibson's books, specifically "Neuromancer" - which came out a year after "Blade Runner" - are viewed as being the defining stories of what became known as the cyberpunk movement. The popular science fiction sub-genre juxtaposes a technologically-advanced future with the breakdown of social order (in other words, a technological dystopia).

The exploration of the moral and philosophical quandaries that would come with computers and artificial intelligence was present in science fiction books dating back to the '60s and '70s - including Phillip K. Dick's 1968 novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?," which "Blade Runner" is based on. What made "Blade Runner" groundbreaking was it created the visual look, atmosphere and world of cyberpunk. Ridley Scott and his team of incredible technicians built a futuristic Los Angeles that was the perfect extension of the near-future dystopia sci-fi authors were writing about in their books.

As the role technology plays in our daily lives has grown exponentially since the '70s and '80s, the themes of the cyberpunk movement have permeated all aspects of popular culture. As a result, the international film market has increasingly gravitated toward this futuristic setting defined by technology - bleeding into genre re-defining superhero movies ("Dark Knight"), action movies ("The Matrix") and anime ("Ghost in the Shell") - for which "Blade Runner" is the visual touchstone. It's a connection that filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, The Wachowskis and "Ghost in the Shell" visionary Mamoru Oshii readily acknowledge.

"When you create a film dealing with humans and cyborgs, you have no choice but to refer back to Ridley Scott's 'Blade Runner,' as this movie is probably the foundation of movies with this theme," said Oshii in 2004 interview.

A Recognizable Los Angeles

© 1982 The Blade Runner Partnership, All RIghts Reserved

Often one of the first things that is written about "Blade Runner" is that despite its cold, emotionally distant future, the film feels nostalgic. There's an element of melancholy incorporated into the story, one that's deeply rooted in its visual design. A great deal of this is credited to the unique approach of visual futurist Syd Mead (that's his official credit on "Blade Runner"), who collaborated closely with Scott and his artisans for months before production.

"I do not claim to 'define the future," said Mead in interview with Design Trophy about his influential work. "What I do is to think about why things are the way they are now, combine that awareness with how things were, are now and may be brought into reality. This defines the look' of 'future' stuff. My scenarios are fanciful guesses that are the result of combining several layers of awareness and supposition."

The idea of technology changing the look a world was nothing new to sci-fi, but Mead's early sketches and work with VFX artist Douglas Trumball and production designer Lawrence G. Puall projected a vision of the future on top of Los Angeles - showing how the recognizable architecture, buildings and history of Los Angeles would provide a base that the future was built on. The widely copied "Blade Runner" aesthetic is often referred to now in rather reductive terms of "trash-chic" - that sense that the antiquated artifacts of the world we know would become the crumbling facade or urban decay of the future. It's not only that we recognize Los Angeles, but ingrained in the production design as the backstory of how the world has changed.

Neon Asia is the Future

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Scott and his collaborators embraced neon colors as a key aspect of the "Blade Runner" palette. Although the film was set in Los Angeles, it was very clearly touching upon a recognizable future based on the abundance of neon that dominated commercial districts of '80s Asian cities like Hong Kong. The strong connection between cyberpunk movement and urban areas of Japan, Korea and Hong Kong - which is now our accepted visual understanding of urban living in the future - was solidified in "Blade Runner."

Unorthodox and Unmotivated Light Sources

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Fitting with this neon world, cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth embraced unorthodox light sources that hadn't been used in films before. Xenon lights - at the time more closely associated with large boats - became a key lighting source on a major Hollywood movie for the first time. The appearance of these untraditional lighting sources came to signify the futuristic look in many movies going forward.

The unusual source lighting, which created areas of light and shadow, were often unmotivated, meaning that they did not imitate real light sources. Cronenweth's lighting design served to activate a layer of the unknown that laid beyond the set. These lights lent credence to the sense that control was in the hand of unknown forces in a chaotic world. The cinematography alone conveyed the cyberpunk idea of technology leading to social decay.

Texture and Atmosphere in Vast Sets

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Cronenweth's lighting was noir in the sense that its strong, directional source light created sharp areas of darkness in the frame, but there were many more light sources than was typical of noir. The result was that it created numerous pockets of light and shadow in a single setting. The textures emerge from thick smoke, rain and neon glow.

The same concept was incorporated in the enormous "Blade Runner" sets and matte backdrops. From a distance, the world looks impressively vast, but once the camera got tighter at moments of drama there were little nooks that could feel intimate in the production and lighting design. This gave Scott the ability to create incredible atmosphere and detail with longer lens compositions so the world didn't simply look empty, but could contain dramatic scenes.

In later years, as the pressure to create digitally-enhanced worlds increased, "Blade Runner" still serves at the model of how to create atmosphere and make these backdrops seem real.

"From a pragmatic point of view, 'Blade Runner' is actually one of the most successful films of all time in terms of constructing that reality using sets," said Nolan in a Forbes interview, talking about he made the massive sets on "Batman Begins" seem real. "We started to throw [elements of 'Blade Runners' visual style] into the mix of how you can help the look of something, how you can create texture, as Ridley Scott has always been the absolute master. Creating a texture to a shooting style that maximizes the impact of the set, and minimizes the artifice - the feeling that this world has edges to it that you would see at the edge of the frame... really envelop your audience in the atmosphere of the world you're trying to create. We definitely tried to emulate that style, and I think in doing so we actually created homage."

He wasn't alone. It's safe to say that the bulk of modern visual effects in big budget sci-fi filmmaking owes a great debt to "Blade Runner," and with the sequel opening this week, that's not changing anytime soon.

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5 Ways 'Blade Runner' Changed the Look of Sci-Fi Forever

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The visual influence of Ridley Scott's 1982 masterpiece has only grown over the last 35 years. Over the last 50 years of filmmaking, there are very few films that have influenced modern filmmaking like Ridley Scott's " Blade Runner."

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Stanley Kubrick graphic design visionary

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Stanley Kubrick graphic design visionary

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From totally nailing it to sometimes occasionally getting it wrong

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Imagining what the future will look like is never easy. Does anything go out of date faster than someone's idea of what décor, fashion and hairstyles will look like ten, one hundred, or a thousand years from now? But there was one artist who got it perfectly right: Stanley Kubrick.

Inspired by Jessica Helfand's recent post here on the peculiar graphics of the Apollo space program, and intrigued by an article on Kubrick's archives in the , I went back and watched 2001: A Space Odyssey. From the moment the prehistoric bone-as-weapon turns into the floating spacecraft (the best jump cut in the history of cinema), you know immediately you're in the hands of a master. And 35 years later (plus three years past due), it all looks better than ever.

As a graphic designer, I was interested to learn from the Guardian article that Kubrick was obsessed with typography, with a special affection for Futura Extra Bold. This font is so strongly associated with 2001 that I was surprised to realize that it appears only in the promotional material for the movie; the main titles are a kind of cross between Trajan and Optima, and I regret to say this is as horrible as it sounds.

In space, however, all is forgiven. In film after film, Kubrick proved himself to be a poet of the horrors and pleasures of boredom, and I mean that in a good way. The little boy going round and round on the Big Wheels in The Shining, the exquisitely slow zooms in the vast landscapes of Barry Lyndon: these are some of the most memorable images ever put on film.

In 2001, the everyday banality of space travel gets its own special treatment that will ring true with any Wallpaper-toting frequent flyer. Buck Rogers histrionics are rejected in favor of the simple pleasures of the low-cost flight to Fort Meyers; my eleven-year-old daughter, seeing the seat back video screens on the film's space shuttle, exclaimed, "Just like Jet Blue!" Graphic design provides the grace notes. 2001's vast space station is fully colonized by corporate brands, some still with us (Hilton), some still with us but a little more unlikely (the glamorous-sounding Earthlight Room is operated by Howard Johnson's) and some, alas, gone forever (Bell Telephone, Pan Am). Each logo is deployed with understated precision, contributing to the sense of place no less than the red Olivier Mourgue "Djinn" chairs and the Saarinen occasional tables.

Kubrick knew well the power of brand name as mot juste. My favorite line in Dr. Strangelove is delivered by Keenan Wynn as he grudgingly permits Peter Sellars to shoot off the lock of a soda dispenser to get enough spare change to make a phone call to the president to call off World War III. "If you don't get the President of the United States on that line, you know what's going to happen to you?" he growls as if he's delivering the biggest threat of all. "You're going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola Company." There, in one sentence, you have the DNA from which was to spring both Davos and Adbusters.

Kubrick's sense of humor in 2001 is more subdued, but no less evident. In The Making of Kubrick's 2001, a great out-of-date paperback edited by Jerome Agel (of The Medium is the Message fame), the space shuttle's daunting instructions for its Zero Gravity Toilet are identified as the film's "only intentional joke," and in Eurostile to boot. In an age where few of us can access the advanced features of our cell phones, it still gets laughs. Kubrick understood so well that the everyday hallmark of the 21st century would not be the wonder of technology, but our day-in, day-out struggle to master it.

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Stanley Kubrick and the Future of Graphic Design

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Stanley Kubrick's attention to the nuances of graphic design, typography, and branding went far beyond his well-documented obsession with Futura Extra Bold. 2001: A Space Odyssey in particular projects a perfectly designed vision of the future that has never been topped.

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Learn how to make graphic props for filmmaking
My Domestika course is now live: 18 lessons in researching, designing, and crafting graphic props for high-budget movie design. You can take the course at home, online, in your own time. Link here:

DESIGNING GRAPHIC PROPS FOR FILMMaking
{Occasionally Asked Questions} How did you start working in graphic design for film?
My first job after I graduated was on the third series of The Tudors and no job since then has been as exhilarating as that first season I spent on a set, surrounded by beautiful princesses in corsets drinking coffee out of styrofoam cups. At first, it didn't make sense to me that they'd be looking for a full-time graphic designer on a series that was set in a time before graphic designers existed. But just because there were no graphic designers in the court of Henry VIII didn't mean there wasn't any graphic design: it was just that, at that time, craftsmen produced the graphics. So, if the king wanted to chop his wife's head off, for example, he would need a death warrant, and if he needed a death warrant, he would need a calligrapher. Today, in filmmaking, it's the graphic designer's job to imitate what that calligrapher might have created-or, at least, to hire a real calligrapher to help us out.

Yes! Anyone who works in film and tells you it's not exciting is just pretending to be jaded, don't worry. We're all here for the thrill of it: nobody is here for the health benefits. You do get a little more used to it as time goes by, but seeing your work on a cinema screen, even fleetingly, even in the blurry background, never stops being exciting.
How much of your work is seen by the cinema audience?
I would say hardly any of it. Maybe 90% of what we make for a film belongs firmly in the background. If the audience is focussing on the props then "we're doing our job wrong", as the prop master Robin Miller said here. It's just that these things need to be finely detailed in order to disappear. And sometimes what we create isn't actually for the cinema audience at all. Film sets don't look like the beautifully composed pictures we see on the cinema screen: the reality is that they're full of cables, floodlights, and crew members standing around in North Face jackets-so, dressing this weirdly artificial environment with some small authentic details can help create a more fully realised world for the actors to work in.

What is your favourite period to work to?
I love all period filmmaking and prefer it to anything contemporary-and I definitely don't like science fiction (it took me a long time and one failed attempt at futurism to realise that). What can I say-I just really like antique documents and old shopfront signage. My speciality is in creating lettering that looks like it was painted up by a layperson rather than a professional designer. It's tricky designing something that doesn't look like it was made by an art department when you're in the art department: you really have to shake off your digital instincts and step in to the shoes of the character-or the time or place-that you're designing for. I love that challenge. If something was made by hand at the time, then I try to make it by hand now.

Should I move to Hollywood?
Oh no, I've never set foot in Hollywood. We made Penny Dreadful in a little seaside town in County Wicklow, so you never know what's going on right around the corner. I think you have a better chance of employment starting local than you do hopping off a bus on Sunset Boulevard with your CV and your backpack, which is how I'm imagining you now, wistfully. Part of me is wishing you a wonderful adventure and the other part of me is thinking look, come on, you should really be at home categorising your serifs, no?
But I only want to work on big box-office movies...
Er, you might want to reconsider why you want to be a graphic designer for film. Is it down to your love of old-fashioned prop-making using a variety of tangible and traditional graphic materials, or is it because you want to stalk Bill Murray? The thing is, it doesn't really matter if you're on a small TV show or a cinema blockbuster, learning how to make this stuff is what's important. My most fun job was on a show called Camelot which you will have no recollection of whatsoever, but I got to make some rather convincing ancient tombstones by carving Roman lettering in to soft, wet clay.

What was it like working with Wes Anderson?
Wes Anderson is the most experimental and hands-on director I've ever worked with, and I worked closely with him and his production designer, Adam Stockhausen every day. The Grand Budapest Hotel was my move from TV to film, and it was an incredible rollercoaster from the moment I got the first call from the producers, to the winter I spent with the cast and crew in the fictional Empire of Zubrowka, to the day I sat down in the cinema to watch the movie for the first time. I doubt I'll work on a more beloved film that pays so much attention to graphic design again in my lifetime, so not a day goes by when I don't thank my lucky stars (and Wes and Adam!) for that opportunity.

Where can I read more about graphic design in film?
My first book, Fake Love Letters, Forged Telegrams, and Prison Escape Maps: Designing Graphic Props for Filmmaking is now available! Published by Phaidon, it's a look at the process behind designing graphic props, with some of my favourite personal stories from working on the sets of films like Grand Budapest. You can order a copy or ask your local bookseller about it.

If you're looking for interviews about film design then this conversation with It's Nice That is a good place to start, as well as Roman Mars' 99% Invisible podcast. My page has some other interesting links, too, or you can sign up for my newsletter , which goes out roughly every seventh week.

My Domestika course is an in-depth tour in creating graphic props for film and is available to buy .
(I'm really sorry that I can't give any student interviews at the moment, but the links above should answer all of your questions and you are welcome to quote anything you see fit in your essays. Good luck!)

I'm starting my first film job tomorrow, any tips?
Huzzah! Wear old clothes, be in bed by 10pm every night, and never, ever use glue on a cutting mat.

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Learn how to make graphic props for filmmaking My Domestika course is now live: 18 lessons in researching, designing, and crafting graphic props for high-budget movie design. You can take the course at home, online, in your own time. Link here: {Occasionally Asked Questions} How did you start working in graphic design for film?

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Use of (graphic) design within film in contributing to the ‘mise en scene’ … ‘genre’ and ‘auteur’ style

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Use of (graphic) design within film in contributing to the ‘mise en scene’ … ‘genre’ and ‘auteur’ style

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Mention movie titles to any designer in the know, and undoubtedly the name Saul Bass will come up. Saul Bass (1920 - 1996) was an American graphic designer and movie title sequence designer whose innovative approach virtually transformed the entire genre in the 1950s. Although he designed many iconic logos - many still in use - he is most known for his title sequences and related materials. He designed movie titles, trailers, and posters for more than 40 movies. His best known works include a series of unforgettable posters and title sequences for films such as Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and Otto Preminger's The Man With The Golden Arm and Anatomy of a Murder.

Although Bass was creative director and designer of all these pieces, he did not do most of the lettering. Robert Trogman, a typographer who has first hand knowledge about the process, says "I worked with Saul Bass for two and a half years along with with Art Goodman and his assistant Dave Nagata. Main titles were usually hand lettered. Dave was a master lettering artist, and most of the comps were done by him while Art Goodman cracked the whip. In the movie Man With the Golden Arm, Art Goodman's crippled arm was the model."

Saul Bass was equally known for his work in corporate branding. He created some of the most famous logos and corporate identity campaigns of the century, including those for major companies such as AT&T, United Airlines, Quaker Oats, and Minolta.

In 1955, his wife Elaine Bass (née Makatura) joined Saul Bass & Associates, and after 1960, much of Saul Bass's title design and film work was done in collaboration with Elaine. Toward the end of his career, Saul Bass was "rediscovered" by James L. Brooks and Martin Scorsese, who urged the Basses to return to main title design. For Scorsese, Elaine and Saul Bass created title sequences for Goodfellas, his remake of Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence, and Casino, their last title sequence. Bass said, "I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares, as opposed to ugly things. That's my intent."

Here is a sampling of some of Bass's most well-known and enduring creations:
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) Vertigo (1958)
The title sequence and poster for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo are totally different from each other, but both are classics. The creepy sequence features Kim Novak's horror-stricken eye that fills the screen, and then blends into spirographic imagery - all accompanied by a sinister score. The poster is Bass's trademark graphic style, with its hand-lettered, all caps type, as well as the black, foreboding drawing in the middle.
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
The opening sequence for Otto Preminger's crime drama, Anatomy of a Murder, suggests tension by means of paper cutout shapes of body parts. These dismembered shapes interplay with the simple type treatment, which plays second fiddle to these intrusive cutouts - all in black, white and gray and accompanied by a stylish score. The movie poster is slightly different in that it introduces color as well as more expressive typefaces to create an eye-catching, dramatic still image that mirrors the mood of the film.
West Side Story (1961)
The credit sequence for West Side Story, a Romeo & Juliet-themed movie that takes place in the slums of Manhattan, appears at the end of the film. It mirrors the gritty, gang-related graffiti from the movie, with typeset copy superimposed. The poster is the more iconic of the two, and creates a grid-like arrangement of the distressed, stencil title blended with illustrative elements from the story.
Advise & Consent (1962)
I included this sequence from Advise & Consent for its use of a stylized yet personal handwriting paired with an all-cap neutral sans setting. It is notable today because although there were no handwriting fonts at that time, this personalized treatment has become extremely popular today in both font and hand-written forms. Perhaps Bass's handling of this sequence was a forerunner of this ever-popular treatment...?
Bunny Lake is Missing (1965)
Bunny Lake is Missing is a film about an emotionally disturbed individual involved in the disappearance of a child. Most frames of the dramatic title sequence consist of a man's hand tearing back black paper to reveal the credits. The last tear transforms into the shape of a small, cutout paper doll. Quite a simple concept, but the torn, jagged edges set the mood for this film which deals with a complex topic.
Film and Non-film Posters
Saul Bass made his mark on many other posters, both for film and non-film. Here are some of his most notable works of that genre:
Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design (Book)
If you want to know more about Saul Bass and how he worked, check out one of the few, and most complete books on this design legend: Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design. Designed by Jennifer Bass, Saul Bass's daughter, and written by distinguished design historian Pat Kirkham who knew Saul Bass personally, this book is full of images from the Bass archive, providing an in depth account of one of the leading graphic artists of the 20th century.

You can also check out The Saul Bass Poster Archive.

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Saul Bass, Master of the Movie Title Sequence - CreativePro.com

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Mention movie titles to any designer in the know, and undoubtedly the name Saul Bass will come up. Saul Bass (1920 - 1996) was an American graphic designer and movie title sequence designer whose innovative approach virtually transformed the entire genre in the 1950s.