Designing Graphic Props for Filmmaking Book Review

Posted By yonghow on January 13th, 2021

Fake Love Letters, Forged Telegrams, and Prison Escape Maps: Designing Graphic Props for Filmmaking is an illuminating and delightful exploration of a vital but often overlooked discipline in movie-making; the work of prop designers. Although graphic props such as invitations, letters, tickets, and packaging are rarely seen close-up by a cinema audience, they are designed in painstaking detail.

Dublin-based designer Annie Atkins invites readers into the creative process behind her intricately designed, rigorously researched, and visually stunning graphic props. The many wonderfully detailed and beautiful props she has designed have been featured in movies like Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel and Isle of Dogs, and Todd Haynes’s Wonderstruck, among many other Hollywood films.

(above) The box design for Mendl’s, the fictional pastry shop prominently featured in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel ( below ). Definitely check out the making of book for the film.

As a lifelong student of filmmaking, I’ve always been keenly interested in the intricacies of art direction and production design; design for props certainly require strong skill sets from both, so the contents covered by this book is right up my alley. Recommended.

“Fake Love Letters, Forged Telegrams, and Prison Escape Maps: Designing Graphic Props for Filmmaking” book details :

– Dimensions – 7.6 x 1.05 x 10.15 inches
– soft cover, 208 pages
– Full color, In English Language