Hit the road, 2013!
It was the biggest year ever for Art of the Title. We tackled more ambitious content, we participated in a number of great events, we partnered with many exciting sponsors, we committed to a rigorous publishing schedule, and saw our readership grow immensely across a variety of platforms.
We published a total of 47 articles this year, including some massive and important features, some of which took more than a year to put together.
Top Billin’
Our most popular articles by number of pageviews in 2013 were:
- Iron Man 3 (121,171)
- Game of Thrones (37,643)
- Pacific Rim (37,369)
- Skyfall (36,822)
- Se7en (30,145)
- James Bond: 50 Years of Main Title Design (27,230)
- The Last of Us (25,348)
- Adventure Time (23,646)
- Catch Me If You Can (22,824)
- Sherlock Holmes (20,155)
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (19,590)
- Moonrise Kingdom (19,153)
- The Conjuring (19,085)
- ParaNorman (18,999)
- Mad Men (18,920)
- Da Vinci's Demons (18,359)
- Dexter (18,288)
- An Education (17,949)
- SXSW 2013 Film Awards: Title Design Finalists (17,353)
- A Brief History of Video Game Title Design (16,901)
Thanks, Robert Downey, Jr.
As a feature based on one of the biggest movies of the year, the popularity of our Iron Man 3 article was unsurprising, but the fact that Robert Downey, Jr. mentioned it on his Facebook page certainly helped give it a boost! With a whopping 121,171 hits, it was our most popular article (compared with our most popular last year, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which got 81,082 hits).
A number of articles from previous years also continued to be fan favourites. Game of Thrones, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Mad Men, and Se7en continue to rank highly.
All told, the site racked up over 4 million pageviews, 1.4 million visits, and more than 787,800 unique visitors!
We’re gonna need a bigger boat
A huge thanks to all of our readers, fans, and followers for keeping up with us on social networks. Your wonderful feedback on our tweets and posts makes it all worthwhile. We are continuously delighted at the comments we receive from readers so keep them coming. And thanks above all for sharing, liking, retweeting, and reblogging us!
Here’s how we stacked up this year.
That translates to an increase of 25% in Twitter followers, an increase of 68% in Facebook likes, and – as we gave Tumblr the attention it deserved – an increase of 6128% in Tumblr followers.
Staff Highlights
Our personal favourite moments this year run the gamut from new content we published, to new relationships established, to funny bumps along the way.
Will Perkins, Editor
- Getting to chat with Director Guillermo del Toro about the making of the Pacific Rim title sequence
- Helping to bring video game title design to the fore with features like The Last of Us and A Brief History of Video Game Title Design
- Taking charge of the Art of the Title Tumblr and building a following of over 14,000 users in just a few months
Lola Landekic, Managing Editor
- Completing our immense feature on R/Greenberg Associates, which was over a year in the making. Hearing about how then-assistant Richard Greenberg said “Fuck you!” to Director Pablo Ferro
- That wonderful moment when sending dick pics actually qualifies as work. Prepping for our article on Joven y Alocada and receiving the behind-the-scenes materials from the designers
Ian Albinson, Editor-in-Chief
- Being part of the jury for the SXSW Design Awards for the 4ᵗʰ consecutive year
- Presenting at the PromaxBDA conference with Designer Ben Radatz
- Meeting with a number of title designers in person for the first time, including Kyle Cooper, Danny Yount, Garson Yu, Richard Greenberg, Pamela Green and Jarik Van Sluijs, Michael Riley, and William Lebeda, and visiting various studios including Prologue, Imaginary Forces, yU+Co., PIC, Shine, Picture Mill, Pacific Title and more!
Everybody’s Talkin’
Here's a small selection of press coverage and features we contributed to this year.
In January, we were consulted for an article in Maclean’s, a weekly Canadian news magazine, about short versus long title sequences.
In March, the UK’s Port Magazine asked Editor-in-Chief Ian Albinson, as well as designers Kyle Cooper, Richard Morrison, and Marco Cendron, to write about their favorite title designs for the Daniel Day-Lewis edited film issue.
Watch the Soylent Green sequence and read the article here.
In July, Design Bureau Magazine asked us to detail some of our personal favourite title sequences.
Watch the Blue Valentine sequence and read the article here.
In September, Ian detailed the history of the site and his thoughts on title design in an interview with The Credits.
And apparently, Art of the Title is a favorite of the Twitter product design team. So, we've got that goin' for us.
Conferences and Talks
SXSW 2013
For the 4ᵗʰ consecutive year Art of the Title attended SXSW as a jury member for the Design Awards. Editor-in-Chief Ian Albinson hosted a 45-minute discussion with Designer Jay Bond (Les Bleus De Ramville) at the title screening event, and then announced the winners the following evening at the Film Awards at the Paramount Theater.
PromaxBDA
After the success of last year's James Bond: 50 Years of Main Title Design feature article, Art of the Title Editor-in-Chief Ian Albinson and MK12 Creative Director Ben Radatz were asked by PromaxBDA in Los Angeles to present a 45-minute talk on the history of Bond titles for their yearly conference.
The presentation, Shaken, Not Stirred: 50 Years of Bond, discussed the history of the franchise, the four main title designers involved over the years, and the themes, tropes, and traditions of the title sequence that has evolved over 23 films.
Ian Albinson and Ben Radatz at PromaxBDA.
Gamercamp 2013
We were delighted to be invited to speak at the 2013 Gamercamp festival in Toronto on November 1st. Managing Editor Lola Landekic and Editor Will Perkins gave a talk on how the visual language of film has changed video games. To accompany the talk, we put together A Brief History of Video Game Title Design, which has received a great response. We even got to put a Kids in the Hall joke into the presentation!
We were thrilled with the feedback from this talk, both in person and online. It also inspired a blog post by Mark Bertils entitled The Art of the Title [Page]?, which took the ideas we discussed in our presentation and explored how title sequences might be applied to the world of publishing and e-books.
Improvements and Changes to Art of the Title
Functionality
We added a couple of things to the site to improve functionality. Much of this happened behind the scenes, but one of the nicest improvements from a user point of view is the ability to sort title sequences by year! Now you can see all the sequences we’ve featured from a particular year. For example, of the 47 articles we published this year, 17 of those featured sequences released in 2013.
Sponsorship
We also introduced a sponsorship model whereby organizations and companies that we feel are relevant to our content and readers could partner with us. We introduced this model as an alternative to plastering the site with distracting ads in order to offset some of our rising costs. We want to keep Art of the Title clean, beautiful, and relevant.
Our focus will always remain on design and on preserving and encouraging the art of title design and for that reason we are very selective about our partners. We’d like to thank the wonderful sponsors we’ve partnered with over the last year. Thank you for supporting our vision: aescripts, Video CoPilot, Vimeo, Maxon, and Adobe Typekit.
We are especially grateful to Maxon and Adobe Typekit for their continued support of the site and sponsorship into 2014.
Is there anyone you think we should partner with? Recommend a sponsor!
The Amazing Disappearing Article!
This year, as our content and our readership grew, we were able to produce some very exciting features. With that growth came a couple of inevitable hiccups as we navigated the studio system and the permissions involved with the content that we publish. You may have noticed certain articles go up and then disappear, only to return a short while later.
We make every effort to work alongside the studios and creators whose work we feature and to ensure that our content is compelling, factual, and within its legal bounds. However, there are numerous parties involved in our content and every so often we are asked to wait while permissions are resolved in different areas. We have many relationships established already, but we definitely welcome opportunities for partnership and collaboration with studios and individuals to further promote their work and motion design as a whole.
Our wonderful contributors
Art of the Title relies on a number of fantastic contributors without whom this site would not be possible. We’d like to thank Ben Radatz, Jon Dube, Angel Tagudin, Noah R. Taylor, and Zack Kotzer for their work and support.
Hold on to yer butts
Here’s a few things that we’ve got in the works for 2014.
- In-depth interviews with title design legend Pablo Ferro and his son Allen
- Multi-part series on B-movie title design from MK12's Ben Radatz
- Feature article on the work of Designer Dan Perri (Star Wars, Taxi Driver)
- SXSW 2014 Design Awards
We’re happy to report that we’ll be returning to SXSW this year to once again be involved with their annual Excellence in Title Design Awards. - Revisiting classics Panic Room and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
- Continuing sponsorship from Typekit and Maxon
- A couple of large and very exciting projects that we can’t reveal just yet!
Our sincerest thanks,
Ian Albinson, Editor-in-Chief
Lola Landekic, Managing Editor
Will Perkins, Editor