Uncredited Graphic Design and Opening Titles [Hardcover]

At last a book I've waited some years for. With more than three hundred credit sequences (so hundreds and hundreds of images) this is a feast of visual goodies. The ten chapters reveal a history of the movie in the movies. It is sort of chronological though many newer credits are mixed in with historical ones to indicate a style, like chapter four that looks at titles as logos: Gone With the Wind or Pulp Fiction where the type is overlaid on an image background.

The text runs in small sections throughout the pages but I kept on getting sidetracked by the images and their captions. The original words have been translated from Spanish which could explain the rather flowery style but its clear the authors have done a lot of research and obviously expressed their opinions, too, especially in the long captions.

An amazing two hundred designers have their work included. The great Saul Bass has nineteen credits, Kyle Cooper, Maurice Binder, Ferro Pablo, Dan Perri and Richard Greenberg are the other designers who get a good showing. Those that only have one or two credits (in the book) can still deliver a punch though, the credits for Thank You For Not Smoking by Shadowplay Studio are quite stunning or Marlene McCarty's lovely period work on Far From Heaven.

The book really is a treat but I found it had some annoying inconsistencies (so four stars) like the contents spread that had no page numbers, no, really! There is a designer index but no movie index. In a book like this I would have thought both were essential. The book's design shows a tendency to designer whimsy: the page numbers at the bottom right of the page are in sets of three with the last number (for the next page) running off the page to give the impression of motion...as in a movie? The bibliography is a huge list of websites and a few books. So many of the sites will be redundant long before the book is.

Included with the book is a DVD with 119 credits, an obvious plus factor for me but they are in QuickTime so no watching it on the big screen in the lounge and from those I've looked at they seem second or third generation quality. Incidentally the DVD is rather loosely inserted into an inside page at the back of the book and if you are buying the book pre-used it will be worth checking with the seller that the disc is included.

Despite the disappointments above I'm pleased to have this book and I think it will be a well thumbed edition over time.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover

acts as a prime example of a title sequence picture book. The initial statement that "we are unaware of the existence or publication of any study to offer a general overview on the topic" (p.10) does note excuse complete ignorance of wide range of in-depth academic works, magazine article and books published since at least the 1970s by authors such as Allison, Böhnke, Charney, de Mourgue, Gardies, Harris, Hüser, Johnson, King, Kuntzel, Odin, Porfirio and many more. While the collection of sequences and the accompanying historical and biographical information are undoubtedly valuable if superficial, and some insightful and potentially original viewpoints are expressed regarding for example film titles as brand images, few of them are based on existing theory and research, but on relatively uninformed personal impressions and opinions. Information is often presented without basis in empirical research, which also becomes apparent when considering the rather incomplete bibliography. Lastly the included Quicktime video files are of such low quality that they hardly allow the viewer to read the actual titles, let alone identify the typeface or technique employed. I do not regret buying it, mainly due to the vast number of title sequences and screenshots collected, however the writing style, translation, inaccurate assumptions and quality of video provided seriously diminish the value of this publication.

Although a previous review would have you think it suffers from "designer's whimsey" in its layout, it's actually a bad print run altogether, and NOT affecting just a few pages. It looks like whoever printed it for US distribution made some calculation error from the cm (european) measurements to inches (US) on the press specs, and ALL the pages are off. Black text overruns black screenshots, whole text passages run off the pages, all the chapter titles & pagination are clipped off (sometime entirely) -I find it impossible that the two previous reviewers could have spent any time trying to actually READ this edition, as the copy I received is unreadable.

Amazon lists it as a December 2008 publication, but the copy shipped out is 2007. I'm hoping there is actually a new edition yet to be released, and Amazon is just shipping out a previous edition unaware of the technical defects. Until you know for sure, DO NOT ORDER!