This is 99% invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

When new movies come out, most of the praise goes to the director and the lead actors,

but there are so many other people involved in a film, and a lot of them are designers.

There are costume designers and set designers, but also graphic designers, working behind

the scenes on all of the graphic objects that you might see in a film and I do mean every

single graphic object.

Anything with lettering on it, anything with pattern on it and anything with illustration on it and most

things made out of paper. This is Annie Atkins. My name is Annie Atkins and I'm a

graphic designer for the film industry. Over the course of her career Atkins has designed all kinds of graphic props.

Telegrams, vintage cigarette packaging, maps, love letters, books, poems, any kind of chocolate box or food packaging at all,

labeling passports, fake CIA, identification cards.

And with all of these objects, Atkins needs to choose or design the lettering and make sure the paper is just right.

All of these small design decisions that contribute to creating a cohesive visual world for the film.

As graphic designs for film, we really have two main priorities when we start designing any prop or set piece. The first is to set the period and the second

is to set the location so that when the audience start watching the movie they know immediately

where the story is being told and when it's taking place.

But I think the other thing that we have to do is we have to also try to tell the story at hand as well

with graphics. So for example, if you see a sign in the background of a New York

subway scene that says walk don't run, you can bet any seconds after you see that the characters are actually going to start running.

All the graphic design you see in a film has a job to do. It's moving the story forward.

Even if background signage seems to have a kind of subliminal message,

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