Elements of Design in Science Fiction
A Q&A with Chris Noessel and Dave Addey on the power and influence of design in Science Fiction
Science Fiction, at its best, challenges us and asks us to consider some of the biggest questions: What does it mean to be human? What is our purpose in the universe? Are we alone? But even such lofty philosophical questions can fall flat when delivered in a world that feels like nothing more than a soundstage. Details matter and those iconic films, from 2001: A Space Odyssey to more recent efforts like Blade Runner 2049 place their big philosophical and moral questions on a foundation that feels real. Directors like Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott and Denis Villeneuve earn our trust because they — and their design teams — create worlds we believe exist.
Chris Noessel and Dave Addey are among the foremost chroniclers of science fiction design in film and TV. Chris runs Sci-Fi Interfaces, where he dives into the design elements of science fiction cinema and television, especially interaction design. Dave Addey is the man behind Typeset in the Future, which looks at typography and design in Science Fiction movies. Both gentlemen have books that I highly recommend. Chris, along with Nathan Shedroff, has written, Make it So: Interface Design Lessons from Sci-Fi, and Dave’s new book, Typeset in the Future: Typography and Design in Science Fiction Movies, just hit Amazon on December 11. I reached out to Chris and Dave about the look of science fiction and they agreed to share their thoughts and insights…
The Adjacent Possible: The Blade Runner font. The Minority Report heads up display. What’s on the Mount Rushmore of Science Fiction design and are there any common themes among them?
Dave Addey: Focusing on typography, I’d nominate Alien’s opening title reveal, with its slow, progressive builds that don’t even suggest lettering at first, putting the viewer on edge. Its title character spacing has also become influential, to the point where every one-word sci-fi movie now has to space out its title for that floating-in-a-vacuum feel.
The granddaddy of all sci-fi typography, however, is surely the HAL 9000 interface from 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL’s flat-screen displays cemented Eurostile Bold Extended — the stretched, geometric typeface you’ll have seen in hundreds of movies since — as the typeface of the future. It’s at home everywhere from the sides of spaceships to the screens of future computers, and it’s super-wide design is perfect for the widescreen expanse of space.
Chris Noessel: I’ll speak more broadly in terms of interaction design, but my top modern two have to be the Minority Report pre-crime scrubber interface and the Iron Man JARVIS HUD. Both standout as landmark moments of cinematic interaction that influence designers (for better or for worse) for years to come.
If we’re heading back to early film, the Maschinenmensch from Metropolis and the Star Trek communicator are lead candidates. Each are still recognizable as iconic objects in science fiction, for their form and function. And while the communicator style of flip phone has come and gone from consumer fashion, the advent of AI and social robots means the Maschinenmensch is still waiting in the wings for its resurgence.
Lastly, HAL’s unblinking red eye is arguably up there. Such a simple and menacing interface. Oh wait. Can our sci-fi Mount Rushmore have 5? [Ed. note — of course!] Anyway, as a set I picked these because they each managed to work well both in popular culture and design, with a whole bunch of caveats that fill pages of blog posts. :)
DA: Looking more at technology design, I’d add the Bell Labs Picturephone from 2001, which introduced interplanetary video calling to 1960s audiences, way before the days of Skype and FaceTime. The real-world Picturephone was a billion-dollar commercial flop, and video calling hasn’t become anywhere near as ubiquitous as sci-fi might have us believe, but it’s still an extremely handy storytelling shortcut for a largely visual medium. It shows up everywhere from Blade Runner to Total Recall to advance the plot without characters having to be in the same physical location.
On which note, I think that’s the unifying theme of these Mount Rushmore design tropes — all of them are visually arresting shortcuts or storytelling conveniences. And typography, perhaps, is the biggest shortcut of all — it communicates both a literal message (because words), and also a visual one, with the right choice of typeface saying “FUTURE” way before the plot catches up.
The AP: Are the elements of design you focus on a nice little touch that speaks to the quality of the production, or can we infer something deeper and more meaningful from these elements? Do they say something more integral to the experience of watching, or do they convey a deeper set of meanings?
CN: It runs the gamut. There are background interfaces that just blink, set pieces like doors and props like communicators that have to do something (but are largely incidental to the plot), and then there are technologies around which the whole plot hinges. With the introduction of AI and even magic there are characters who are “technological” and present themselves to us humans through interfaces. These technologies get more attention from the production crew and director the more plot- and character-critical they are.
[…] the reboot of Battlestar Galactica had to come up with a reason why the ship didn’t have a network. Sci-fi provides rich canvas of paleo-futurism of the past.
CN (con’t.): But at whatever “level” they appear, sci-fi technologies are necessarily an extension of our real world now. I like to think of this pattern as What You Know Plus One. Look back at sci-fi shows pre-1992, and you’ll see that nobody built technology concepts on the notion of a network of networks, because it would have taken too long to explain to the audience. After the Internet came into people’s living rooms and then into their pockets, this became a given in most sci-fi. Note that the reboot of Battlestar Galactica had to come up with a reason why the ship didn’t have a network. Sci-fi provides rich canvas of paleo-futurism of the past.
DA: In Typeset in the Future, I’ve ended up covering a bit of both. Some of my discoveries are design ephemera or unexpected spots; this includes identifying enduring trends and tropes, such as the fact that live video on sci-fi TV screens still has to have horizontal scan lines across it, even though it hasn’t done so in reality since cathode ray tubes fell out of favor. (It’s become a learned trope that provides a useful shortcut — “this is live video” — to the point where TVs in sci-fi do it purely because it’s what TVs in sci-fi do.)
CN: It’s not just a bas relief of our technological and design ideas, but our ideas about culture as well. I’m currently working on a study of gender presentation of AI characters in TV shows and movies, and it’s revealing all sorts of (dark) biases we have about women and non-men. (Quick shout-out: I’m doing some grassroots fundraising to pay for the guest bloggers on this series, and am still a ways out from the goal. Please help if you can!)
So, my short version of this answer is very much a deeper set of meanings.
DA: I agree with Chris that the adaptation of technology in sci-fi tends to reflect the paranoias of the time, too, whether that’s a room-sized computer gone rogue in 2001, or the moral extrapolations of The Twilight Zone, or taking social media to its terrifying logical conclusion in Black Mirror. There’s an aspect of the present in every sci-fi future.
In his foreword for the Typeset in the Future book, movie critic Matt Zoller Seitz kindly describes it as “a stealth history book about how Western audiences saw themselves, and where they imagined they’d end up.” That’s not the book I set out to write, but he’s absolutely on the money. If you study science fiction in enough detail, sooner or later you become an archaeologist.
The AP: Has design in science fiction improved greatly in recent times? What do you consider the Golden Age of science fiction design in the areas you focus on?
DA: I’d say it’s less a case of there being a single “Golden Age,” and more a case of specific landmark movies or TV shows changing our expectations of what the future should look like. There are relatively few that fall into this category, and they each tend to lead a strata of movies that build upon their style.
It’s a perennial challenge for a sci-fi movie-maker — if you adopt an established design trope, such as using a wide, bold, geometric typeface with slices cut out of it, you can get “this is the future” for free, and sidestep the need for exposition or dialogue. Take it too far, however, and it becomes a cliche rather than a shortcut. It’s telling that the “classics” we hold up as design examples — 2001, Alien, Blade Runner, Minority Report — are the ones who eschewed the tropes of their time, and imagined their own futures instead.
CN: We’re in what I think of as the Baroque age of sci-fi interface design. Most interfaces wow us with spectacle: More motion, objects, and detail than we can reasonably follow or make sense of in real time. But, just like the ornamental detail of the Baroque period, it’s mostly all surface detail, meaningless when you study it. Detail for detail’s sake. Uncritical designers in the audience suffer an exposure effect where they think — because they feel that sense of wonder and that feels good — that this is a good way to design. One of my main missions in reviewing these things critically is to decouple surface from function and build up my audience’s critical eye.
But the past wasn’t much better. Largely it’s because few works in sci-fi have the budget or interest in incorporating real engineering and design ideas, but rather only budget for aesthetics and the semiotics of signaling high-tech-ness. (I have spoken with one enfant terrible in the sci-fi design world who has said that he specifically wants to thwart usability constraints in his work.) In retrospect those surface-marker technologies look foolish to us. Consider the deconstructed kitchen appliances repurposed to be interface on the German TV show Space Patrol. Ridiculous! But they passed muster at the time.
DA: I do think there’s a practical purpose to the “design for design’s sake” that Chris mentions above. When you’re making a movie, there are times where you need to create the illusion of technological complexity to make the world immersive, but you can’t make it functional and clear, because its clarity would distract from the primary action on screen. Our brains can only process one linguistic input at a time, and as natural pattern-recognizers, we can’t help but read text if it’s sufficiently easy to parse. You can’t focus on what an actor is saying if there’s a clearly-readable piece of interface text on the other side of the screen.
When you’re making a movie, there are times where you need to create the illusion of technological complexity to make the world immersive, but you can’t make it functional and clear, because its clarity would distract from the primary action on screen.
DA (con’t.): The recurring theme I’ve found in my research is that the creators of these iconic movies spent a ton of time developing an internally consistent world, both technologically and visually, even if much of that work didn’t end up on screen. For example, Stanley Kubrick borrowed or adapted prototypes from over 40 real-world companies for 2001: A Space Odyssey, covering everything from task-specific cars to real-life space-kitchens. It’s easy for us to forget that many of the technologies we see in 2001 — magnetic credit cards, seat-back in-flight entertainment systems — did not exist at the time the movie was released. Putting in the time to think through the minutiae means that a movie’s on-screen world still holds together, even after real-world technology has moved on.
CN: For my money, we have yet to see a golden age. There are hints of it — I’ll point to the Spartan aesthetics of Black Mirror as a promising example — but until we can balance spectacle, meaning, and utility across the board, the design must largely be regarded as a fun cardboard box with “transmogrifier” scribbled on the side.
I’ll add one exception, and that is when we don’t look just at interfaces but at the interactions between AI, objects, and users, the MCU is putting some absolutely cutting edge work out there, and for that (what to call it, sci-fi interactions?) we might well be in a golden age. JARVIS, Dr. Strange’s cloak, and Nick Fury’s car all jump to mind as examples.
DA: For the Typeset in the Future book, I spent a lot of time studying the tricks that designers use to add this visual complexity without distracting from the plot — writing things in scientific terms, using alien languages, showing things written backwards on a transparent screen — and I definitely think these have their place, if only to add visual color. What we mustn’t do, however, is hold them up as examples of how real future interfaces will look — but I think Chris has that pretty well covered.
The AP: Are there certain designers who specialize in science fiction design work? Who are the masters in the field?
CN: Oh yes. There are studios who specialize in it, freelancers who consider that their A-portfolio, and designers who work in-house at movie studios. Most do other work as well, and some use their sci-fi work to get real-world clients who are excited to be working on teams capable of producing the wonder we see in film.
For declaring masters, it’s a harder thing for several reasons:
- My blog takes a New Criticism stance, I try quite deliberately to not look at the creators and only regard the creation. This is part of what makes scifiinterfaces.com and typesetinthefuture.com such nice compliments to each other.
- Even if I was to break that stance, it’s hard to say who did what. Especially since the introduction of CGI, sci-fi interfaces are built by huge teams, and it’s hard to know exactly who has done what on any given show. Worse, multiple studios are often brought in to handle different interfaces in the same movie or TV show. I’ve gotten into trouble mis-attributing one team’s work to a particular individual.
- I’m hoping very soon to launch an annual awards program for sci-fi interfaces, and that means it’s important for me to avoid the appearance of partiality.
All that said, the names I’ve commonly run into include Territory Studio, Perception Studio, SPOV, Blind, GMUNK, Chris Kieffer, Coplin Le Bleu, Shaun Yue, and Mark Coleran (though he’s been out of the industry for a bit). There are others, please forgive me if I’ve forgotten somebody I should have remembered.
DA: With my typographic hat on, I feel I must give a shout out to Dan Zadorozny, an amateur type designer from Texas whose Iconian Fonts website is a treasure trove of free fonts for every sci-fi flavor. Dan’s designs have graced many TV shows and books over the years, but perhaps his most famous typeface is Gunship, which you’ll know as the title font for WALL·E. (There’s lots more about WALL·E’s typography on the TITF web site, fellow Pixar fans.)
Going back to the classics, I must mention Aldo Novarese, designer of Eurostile, whose typefaces are the foundation of so many trends we expect from sci-fi type [Ed. note — Chris and Nathan note the popularity of Eurostile in their book, Make It So. See chart.]. In addition to Eurostile’s synthetic superellipses, Novarese also created Stop, possibly the original example of slicing out parts of a letter to make them feel more alien. I’m sure it was an influence on the iconic Blade Runner logo.
The AP: Certain titles certainly stand out in this area — Blade Runner, Alien, 2001 are some examples. What’s a hidden or little known gem of science fiction design you would recommend people check out to understand this art form?
CN: I can think of three.
- Sleep Dealers is a film out of Mexico, touching on lots of modern social issues and the interface design is lovely and subtle.
- I’d also recommend The Cabin in the Woods, though I don’t know if that’s little known. Its “technology” works for the story and also to illustrate many ages across which it’s been designed and cobbled together, and it does so in funny and awesome ways.
- A last recommendation would be a French sci-fi thriller called Chrysalis, which braves volumetric displays and spectacle-design but manages to do it in well-thought out ways, avoiding lots of traps other films fall into.
DA: I’ll add three more:
- Moon, by Duncan Jones, with stellar conceptual design by Gavin Rothery. Moon adapts plenty of design tropes from the movies that precede it, but it builds on them so effectively to create its own isolated world, and to play on our expectations for evil space-based robots, that I consider the appropriation to be a feature.
- Europa Report, which applies a found-footage (and cleverly non-linear) storyline to scientific space exploration. It’s a great example of taking a visual design conceit — footage captured by the crew — to its logical conclusion for the purposes of storytelling twists.
- Dark Star, by John Carpenter, written by (and starring) Alien co-author Dan O’Bannon. Dark Star introduces the “space truckers” aesthetic that Alien went on to make famous, and while its design is extremely low-budget, it’s an effective parody of the tedium of long-distance space travel. It may also be the instigator of the dispassionate-female-voice Ship’s Computer that Alien codified into a recurring trope.
The AP: Do you think the creators of these movies and shows appreciate the work of people like you? Do you feel, by investigating and critiquing these works, you’ve helped elevate future efforts?
DA: Typeset in the Future has certainly caused an increased awareness of Eurostile Bold Extended’s omnipresence in sci-fi design, although I don’t know if I can claim to have increased its usage. I think Stanley Kubrick takes most of the credit for that.
To be honest, most of what I’m doing with Typeset in the Future is spotting the connections and design tricks in movies that I love, and sharing them with others who have a similar passion for futuristic visual storytelling. I’ll happily take credit for the diligent research and wry observations, but it’s entirely dependent on the work of creative brains who can conjure these futures from nothing.
CN: I have been told directly by several sci-fi interface creators that they read and think of my reviews like a secret report card. I had one tell me that after reading my reviews he cursed himself and wanted to go back and fix one of his interfaces. (Really though, it wasn’t that bad.) I even had one complain why it had taken me so long to review his. :)
I have been told directly by several sci-fi interface creators that they read and think of my reviews like a secret report card.
CN (con’t.): I love this kind of feedback because it’s very flattering and makes me feel like my opinions are helping. But I have to face the fact that those are insider opinions. What drives decision makers and studios is the effect on audiences, and I don’t know that I have much effect there at the moment. I know I’m too nerdy for a big readership, reading long-format posts isn’t the most popular format, and the speaking engagements I do are almost certainly limited to designers, so my footprint is small. But if I can help some audience members become more critical and skeptical, and at the same time let creators understand their impact and know we’re paying close attention, then yes, I think I’ve helped in my small way.
DA: You’d be surprised how many people are interested in reading 6,000 words about the typography of Alien. Turns out sci-fi design is a pretty big niche.
The AP [editor’s note]: What a fantastic conversation! Thanks to both Dave and Chris for their time and ample expertise and insights. I love it when like-minded individuals with similar passions are connected and the energy in the ‘room’ is palpable. Exciting new opportunities often spring from such meetings, as this post-interview comment show…
Chis: Dave, want to approach some network and start our own program? Maybe we’ll have more of an audience effect then.
Dave: Interesting idea! I’ve often wondered what the ideal medium for critiquing sci-fi might be. I love the rabbit-hole connectedness of a blog, and I’m a big fan of the collected completeness of a book, but I certainly wouldn’t say no to Mystery Font Theater 3000.
The AP: Whattya think? At the very least, would make a cool piece of YouTube content, watching Chris and Dave break down science fiction movies and shows from this perspective. Until then, make sure you grab Dave’s book and check out both Chris and Dave’s websites for the latest in Sci-fi design.
