The last few years have seen a shift. Like Marmatakis, she has noticed a surge in attention for her work. “Titles usually fly under the radar for most people,” she says, but lately “people have really acknowledged the title design in a way they usually don’t.” McCarty believes this is due to the increase and availability of content via streamers. “I’ve been doing this since 1989 and I do think people are much more aware of film titles now. There’s been some pretty fancy ones on TV that have gotten people’s attention. So a broader swath of people is exposed to more creative title solutions than 20 years ago.”
The poster and marketing materials for May December, though they use the style developed by McCarty and Blanks, were created in-house by Netflix. The elements were siloed, the titles created by one team and the posters by another, but both attempting to speak the same language.
Sometimes during this process, what McCarty describes as a “personality knot” of clashing agency demands, very different solutions arise. This is what happened with the 2023 film adaptation of the beloved novel Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. The lettering for the poster and marketing materials was created by lettering artist and author Jessica Hische, while the main title that appears in the film was made by others. For Hische, working within specific typographic eras like the 70s or 80s allows her to let loose her nostalgic side. The title lettering that Hische created for Margaret has what she describes as an optimistic vibe. “It says, ‘You are going to come to this film and it’s going to be fun and nice and you’re going to be filled with warm fuzzies.’” The lettering was used on a plethora of materials leading up to and beyond the release of the film: the teaser and full trailer, the physical and digital ads, the cover artwork for streaming services, even personalized journals. But it wasn’t used in the film itself, a fact which shocked Hische when she learned it. “I didn’t actually know that they weren’t using it in the film until I went to a preview with my daughter,” she says. The reality is that title designers often have no control over their work after files are delivered.”
