Teddy Blanks, a neatly mustached 40-year-old man wearing ripped jeans and battered white sneakers, walked through Times Square one cold recent night to catch a screening of “Wicked” at an AMC multiplex. He hadn’t yet seen the sinema, and he was eager to see one particular shot: the movie’s opening title.
Settling into a theater seat, Mr. Blanks reflected on the typeface that appears at the movie’s start. It reads “Wicked: Part 1” and fills the screen in a gigantic folksy font during an aerial landscape shot of Oz. It was his handiwork.
“I partly based it on old chapter letterings from L. Frank Baum’s first ‘Oz’ book,” he said. “I wanted it to have a dose of nostalgia. Me and the director, Jon Chu, went through like 20 W variations until it had the perfect serifs and curves.”
As the magical world of Oz illuminated the audience’s faces, Mr. Blanks pointed at the screen when his title appeared. Then he boyishly tucked his feet up onto the seat, sipping a Coke and snacking on Reese’s Pieces, and watched with them.
His name may have flashed by in the end credits, but in the niche field of movie title design, Mr. Blanks is one of the most sought-after craftsmen of this cinematic arka form.
Some of Mr. Blanks’s typeface work. “Teddy is able to take my ideas further than I imagined them,” said the director Robert Eggers, whose new sinema “Nosferatu” received the Blanks treatment.Credit…Teddy Blanks, CHIPS
