Typography in Film Title Sequence Design

A title sequence is the beginning and the audience’s first center of attention to the film, in which the film’s title, key production and cast and crew along with some special notions related to the film’s content are introduced through typography. A film title sequence may include live action, animation, music, still images and graphics. With the invention of the cinematograph, in order to identify the film and its production company and also to signal the beginning and the end of the film to viewer, simple title cards were used to begin and end silent film presentations. Although such title cards evolved to become more elaborate film title sequences over time, typography has always been the significant part of them. Due to the importance of typography in title sequence design, the method of utilizing and applying the Farsi font and coordinating them with screen media has been one of the most important challenges in this field in Iran from the start. The purpose of this research is to study the effective factors in forming a title sequence suited to the field of graphic design, and to provide access to a series of notes for making informed choices of Farsi typefaces that are appropriate for screen media and the correct usage of their abilities and capacities in those media. In this research, the extent and the method of the usage of the different types of prevalent Farsi typefaces, and the method of phrasing the message’s content through font in Iranian film title sequences are explored in over 80 Iranian films from the start of Iran’s cinema until today. Data analysis in this research has quasi-statistical style. Target population is all Iranian film title sequences, among which the research samples are chosen purposefully. Research tool is a checklist designed by the researcher. The reliability and validity of the checklist are examined through test-retest method and specialists’ evaluations. Each part of checklist is designed in order to obtain the research answers and to collect the necessary information. The method of gathering information was the semi-structured observation. The statistics show that the most frequent typeface used in the research samples was Zar. Zar is the oldest Farsi font and therefore it is quite reasonable that it is seen in the most early film title sequences in Iran. It seems that analyzing Zar can lead to better understand the capacities of the font for its more suitable usage on screen and digital media. Furthermore, the examination of the 80 Iranian film title sequences reveals that the most frequent typefaces used in these title sequences were static and fixed. The reason can be related to the date of the research samples’ productions. Certainly, in order to reveal the relation between the date of films productions and technological limitations of the time, these two variations must be examined in subsequent researches. Overall, the research result clearly shows that most of typographies in Iranian film title sequences are without paying adequate attention to the media and its characteristics