Wowie Part 2 is a low-budget art-house short filmed on 16mm, about an obsessive postman who plots to seduce the object of his desires. The title sequence is a glorious hotch-potch of home-made horror, proving small budgets can produce brilliant results too. Maybe not everyone's cuppa, as some of your comments on the titles for Wowie Part 1, posted about a year ago suggested, but at Watch the Titles, we believe that title design can take on many forms and shapes. Nevertheless, we love to know what you think!

French Fridays on Watch the Titles features the opening credits for Roman Polanski's first color feature, designed by one of the most important French creators of the last decades, André François. François was one of the first title designers who played with the logo of a major studio. In the lovely hand-drawn opening credits for The Fearless Vampire Killers, he replaced MGM's famous lion by a cartoony vampire. The drop of blood that trickles down from its fang connects all the elements in the sequence.

Together with This Is Pacifica, Filipe Carvalho translated R2's graphic design into a strong, punchy animation that introduces the headliners for Porto’s 2010 Alliance Graphique Internationale conference, AGI Open 2010. A process described by Carvalho as “a humbling experience”, this abstract, miniature masterpiece opens with an impossible-to-ignore audio distortion which calls our immediate attention. We asked Carvalho about just how the magic happened…

We get too few Asian title sequences on Watch the Titles. Why? Because it's not a norm for local (Asian) filmmakers to invest in creative title sequences. Says Josef Lee, founder of the leading Singaporean design studio Mojo, who is making a serious effort to bring the creative title sequence into focus in Asia. We discuss the issue with Mojo's creative director Cindy Liu on the occasion of her adorable, kawaii-infused end credit sequence for Love In A Cab.

The emphatically French-flavored 3-D title sequence by the seminal creative duo Kuntzel + Deygas for the 2009 film Le Petit Nicolas (Little Nicholas), brings to life the original drawings by veteran French cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé to project a nostalgic 1950s aesthetic.

In the third edition of French Fridays on Watch the Titles, guest curator Laure Chapalain provides us with some fascinating insights into the main title of Mon Oncle (My Uncle) – one of the masterpieces of the acclaimed French director Jacques Tati. The title sequence comments on the effects on the architectural modernisation of post-war Paris. “Despite the simplicity of the opening sequence, its surprising radicalism succeeds in condensing the whole essence of the film into just a few seconds”.

In part 2 of French Fridays, a new series on Watch the Titles dedicated to French title design '50's - '80's, French designer Laure Chapalain takes a closer look at Jean-Luc Godard's short typographic main title for Une Femme Est Une Femme (A Woman Is A Woman) - a musical comedy that is widely regarded as Godard's most accessible film. In these unorthodox and playful titles, Godard mixes the credits with words that prefigure the movie’s spirit.
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The first post in a special program on French title design 1950's -1980's, co-curated by Hervé Tissot and Laure Chapalain. Graphic designer/cartoonist cum celebrated crime novelist Tito Topin's end credit sequence for Everybody He Is Nice, Everybody He Is Beautiful (English title), is a provocative piece of 1970's pop art. Topin combines socio-political criticism with his signature-style cartoon sense of humor.

The kids spy movie Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore left most critics unimpressed, which could explain why the uncompromisingly stylish James Bond-inspired title sequence by Imaginary Forces (IF) slipped past everyone's radar. Well, almost...
Using the original storyboards, IF's creative director Michelle Dougherty takes us through the process of creating the title sequence.

In 2010, creative director Michael Riley received his third Emmy nomination for Outstanding Main Title Design for his title sequence for HBO's feature Temple Grandin. We visited Riley at Shine in L.A., where he talks about the “golden handcuffs” of optical compositing in the 1990's. And Riley takes us through the design process of his main titles for Gattaca (1997), and recent movies The Back-Up Plan and Temple Grandin.