Typography is not just aesthetic, it is narrative. Especially in films and theatrical settings, typography becomes a character in its own right. It signals time, tone, emotion, and even the logic of a fictional world. Whether it’s signage, ephemera, or telegrams, the way letters appear on screen can evoke decades, emotions, and even imagined geographies.
“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 into the shoes of the character or the time or place that you’re designing for. If something was made by hand at the time, then I try to make it by hand now.”
—Annie Atkins
When type becomes storytelling
In films like The Grand Budapest Hotel, typography is not just style it’s scenery. The iconic lettering above the hotel, inspired by historical signage, was originally hand-drawn with period-accurate kerning that reflected the inconsistencies of its time. When the metal letters were cut and installed with perfect alignment, director Wes Anderson insisted they be adjusted imperfect again, to preserve the feeling of a forgotten era.
This wasn’t graphic design. It was world-building.
In fictional spaces like Beetlejuice, type behaves even more wildly. Since the world isn’t anchored to a single decade or geography, the typography follows suit, chaotic, contradictory, emotionally heightened. That’s the point. In surreal and absurdist films, signage doesn’t clarify reality it bends it.
Typography as historical texture
If a film is set in Victorian London, then the typography must align with what a Victorian dentist might promise: “Painless Tooth Extraction!” (even when history tells us it was anything but painless). The absurdity becomes part of the texture.
Typography is a vessel of time. Get it wrong, and the spell breaks. Get it right, and the audience doesn’t notice but they feel it.
Typography as historical prop
Some typographic objects carry the weight of class, protocol, and tragedy.
Take the original menus printed for first, second, and third-class passengers on the RMS Titanic. Each menu had a distinct layout, paper stock, and typographic hierarchy. The second-class version was printed on the back of a postcard perhaps meant to be mailed home. The third-class menu included a warning at the bottom about where to report complaints about the food or incivility hardly a comforting note for what would become history’s most famous maritime disaster.
To recreate these today for a film, designers must go beyond style. They must understand period printing methods, ink behaviour, class hierarchies, even tone of voice.
Typography in this context is not decorative. It’s evidence.
Final frame
Type has always been emotional. But in fictional worlds, it becomes something more: a time machine, a character, and a plot device.
