Prior to making the custom Warner Bros. opening logo treatment, the filmmakers shared the poster designs that they were developing to promote the film. The vintage war movie visual theme was very prominent, so we wanted to lean into that for our treatment as well.

The details below like the osprey helicopter in the film poster and the concrete wall from the prison really tie the WB logo to both the story and the universe of the film.

Reference:

When James Gunn briefed us, it was pretty clear he was looking for treatments that were evocative of 60’s caper war films. So, after watching the film  we started looking at titling made for films like ‘Dirty Dozen’, ‘The Great Escape’ or ‘The Guns of Navarone’ and this really informed our exploration. From there, we scoured the internet for all the reference and inspiration we could find that was relevant, including films, printed ads, album covers, and others.

This research led us to explore a bold and bright stencil solution. An added benefit was that it was very legible when placed over the frenetic montage sequence that it’s set over.

Of course the badass music track (“People who died” by Jim Carol band) pushed us towards a punk rock color scheme that worked wonderfully with the vintage type.

Part of the story takes place in Corto Maltese and all the locals speak Spanish. That meant the film needed subtitles. Where some look at subtitles and cringe, we saw it as an excellent opportunity to grow our typographic system.

We treated the subtitles throughout the film like a kinetic type assignment, where the words animate on as the characters say them. This movement added another level of expressiveness and style to the scenes.

All the subtitles were set in Template Gothic, by Barry Deck. A typeface that, while extremely legible, embraces its imperfections and oozes personality.