'Do It Like the Title Sequence'

I was always very aware of the opening credits of television programmes. Before I was old enough to follow the plots and appreciate the programmes themselves, I was still able to enjoy the title sequences, some of which were cooler and more exciting than the programmes they preceded. They did more than entertain: they gave me an appreciation of graphic design long before I knew that such a phenomenon existed, and they introduced me to some of the 1960s’ most striking and iconic typefonts.

I was always a sucker for packaging. Anything that came in a cool box, with a good logo was always intriguing, even if the products weren’t aimed at children. I loved all examples of what we now call petrolania – the signage one saw at petrol stations – and would also marvel at the colourful boxes one saw on trips to the supermarket. Fonts were what really drew me in, and I had a particular affinity for all the modern sans serif variants, some of which were appearing in public for the first time. In this respect, a basic rule of thumb could be applied: if a font had been used by Gerry Anderson, it was instantly cool. It didn’t have to be on the series’ titles: it could be one of the fonts used on the vehicles seen throughout his marionette adventures. For this reason, I still like fonts such as Grotesque No. 9, Futura and Eurostile, all of which can be found across the Gerry Anderson universe.

I was making my own comics and annuals featuring Gerry’s creations from around the age of eight, and some of these have survived. In the case of a series like Fireball XL5, I would take care to use the same title treatment one saw on screen, copying it from any available source, in this case the various annuals based on the series. When, many years later, I finally had the opportunity to design the packaging for a DVD release of Fireball XL5, I did it as an homage to those old annual covers, re-creating the painted cover using photographic elements. To this day, I find it hard to tell my cover apart from the original annual when viewed as thumbnails on a site like ebay.

Unused variant of the sleeve for the 40th Anniversary DVD of Fireball XL5,
based on the 1963 Annual cover

Starting in 2004, I was tasked with providing cover designs for most if not all of the well remembered filmed TV series from the ITC stable: titles including The Saint, Department S, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and The Prisoner. Many of these shows had their main titles designed by a firm called Chambers+Partners, and I closely followed their styling, re-creating elements from both beginning and end titles for use on sleeves and other promotional items. Sometimes I would take the easy option and use frame grabs, working over them in photoshop to produce high resolution versions. On other occasions, I rebuilt items from scratch. The end titles of Randall and Hopkirk featured ghostly handprints overlaid across an A-Z map of London (one can see the ‘crown copyright’ credit on the map if one looks closely). The title cards themselves were unusable, as they were covered with text, but I was able to recreate them using photographs of my own hands and a period correct copy of the London A-Z, sourced off ebay, which I scoured for the map elements used in the R&H end title cards. 

 

Re-creation of the end title cards from Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and source photo of my hand!

In the case of The Prisoner, a series whose iconography was, if you’ll excuse the pun, inescapable, I had no choice in the matter of which font to use. The series titles employed a ‘kerned’ (ie. altered) version of a font called Albertus, much beloved by serious publishing houses like Faber&Faber. I’d owned a special modified form of this font, called Village, on a disc of fonts I was given many years earlier, and now was the time to use it. Aside from the title treatment, the other iconic element in the Prisoner titles was the pennyfarthing bicycle, which I made use of in its stylised variant, worn as badges by the numbered villagers. But what else to include? The series was such a kaleidoscope of memorable and vivid imagery, that I began by creating a montage, attempting to illustrate the madness of McGoohan’s vision. This didn’t get the thumbs-up from label boss Tim Beddows, who had to sign off on all sleeve designs and felt it was ‘too busy’ (a common complaint). I looked around for an alternative solution and hit on what I thought was a sound strategy: if I based the design on something I knew Tim already liked, he’d probably approve it. I thought back to the paperback TV tie-ins we’d both collected in the 1970s and remembered one based on another ITC series, Strange Report. The cover design featured narrow strip photographs of the series’ stars, against a black background. Taking this as my template, I did something similar with The Prisoner. My strategy worked, and Tim approved it for use. He, as you’ll realise, was Number One...