Game of Thrones: Title Credits – A Designer’s Dream!

Anoth­er in NCD’s series study­ing design in movies, tele­vi­sion and com­mer­cials. Besides being fun, if you are pro­mot­ing a prod­uct, brand­ing or re-brand­ing your­self, it’s impor­tant to study how visu­als have been used to influ­ence and affect the con­sumer — one seg­ment of which is also your customer!

Game of Thrones: Tilte Credits — A Designer’s Dream

The cur­rent era of binge-wor­thy tele­vi­sion series has brought qual­i­ty writ­ing, act­ing and direct­ing, sto­ry lines you can sink your teeth into, icon­ic char­ac­ters and open­ing cred­its — that are a design­ers dream — to the medium.

Long a prized part of the movies, open­ing cred­its are as impor­tant as any first impres­sion – they set the mood and tone, pre­pare the view­er for what’s to come, and leave a defin­ing imprint on the audi­ence. It plays a big part in brand­ing both the series and the net­work that pro­duces it.

Out­side of movie sequels, open­ing cred­it design is a one shot deal for most projects, but series cred­it open­ings are unique in that the same one is seen each episode often for as long as the series lasts (which is an unknown enti­ty at the time they’re being designed).

The chal­lenge for their design­er is to cre­ate enough stim­u­la­tion in rough­ly 30 sec­onds that they will hold inter­est –and stay rel­e­vant to how the sto­ry lines devel­op — for as long as the series lasts. On rare occa­sion the cred­its do get changed.

HBO’s Game of Thrones title sequence is a per­fect exam­ple of both, and has won an Emmy for doing it so well.

Essen­tial­ly it is a map of the worlds that show the var­i­ous king­doms involved in each episodes to a robust, rolling theme song much like the music made by hors­es gal­lop­ing. The details (build­ings, roads, ter­rain) of each are com­plex, built from gears, wood, and met­al which move almost like toys from flat into 3‑D, named in a goth­ic font. The cam­era sweeps above and through them as it takes us trav­el­ing like a bird or a winged god. When one burned, it was shown in ash­es in the open­ing from the next episode. These change based on where char­ac­ters in the episode are and what hap­pens to each king­dom, as the cred­its for those char­ac­ters flash on the screen in dif­fer­ent places. Through­out you see sym­bols such as a drag­on, a deer with majes­tic antlers, a lion or a wolf, which, you come to real­ize, iden­ti­fy fam­i­ly names or crests. At the end it wraps into a burn­ing globe sur­round­ed by a met­al ring that shows the four sym­bols, con­clud­ing with the episode’s title card.

Com­pare the sub­tle and obvi­ous dif­fer­ences between the cred­its from the first in 2011…

…to the more recent Sea­son Six.

So much detail to look at that a view­er could watch each sev­er­al times and still not take it all in! What a great, cre­ative, ongo­ing gig for a designer!

Do you want to bet­ter reach your customer’s heart, pique their curios­i­ty, or tap into — or actu­al­ly cre­ate — their want or need for your prod­uct or ser­vice? Con­tact Nicte Cre­ative Design. It’s our specialty!