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Nina Saxon (born 1953) is an American graphic designer, film titles designer, and founder of Nina Saxon Film Design.
- Star Wars
- The 1980s and The Rise of The Blockbuster
- Romancing The Stone
- Back to The Future
- Mrs. Doubtfire
- Soul Man
- Tin Men
While working at optical house Modern Film Effects, Saxon learned about rotoscoping and created all of the laser bullets for the first three Star Warsfilms. It was a lot of work but she makes it sound like a snap. “It was all done in black and white with mattes. George Lucas marked the place where the bullet came out and you had two or three frames...
The 1980s saw three important changes occur in the film industry: the rise of the blockbuster, the rise of the film franchise and the rise of the title design studio. Star Wars had swept in a megapicture mentality and with it a focus on branding, merchandise and visual effects. Many films of the era eschewed the full-fledged title sequence in favou...
On Romancing the Stone, Saxon took charge of the logo design, painting it with light the way she’d learned at Robert Abel & Associates and choosing the typeface for the credits that appeared over the opening scene. The action-adventure comedy, about a reclusive romance novelist (Kathleen Turner) who travels to Colombia to save her sister and soon f...
The studios behind Back to the Future, Universal and Amblin, were interested in establishing the film as a branded franchise. Two looks for the logotype had been developed: a slanted sans-serif similar to what we know today and one that, Saxon says, “looked like an old Western movie, which was really bad.” The editor, Artie Schmidt, preferred the l...
“That was fun, working with Raja Gosnell,” says Saxon. She considered her relationships with film editors vital. “They were really important because you were working to their counts and you had to make everything fit with them directly. It’s all relationships. That’s half the battle.” Since the opening scene to Mrs. Doubtfire, featuring Robin Willi...
For 1986’s Soul Man, a movie about a spoiled white teenager masquerading as Black in order to qualify for a scholarship, she devised a minimal but unique typographic solution that captured the film’s central themes. “I was reversing black and white,” she says. “There’s one letter that’s reversed… that was a good idea!” The letters are set tightly t...
The following year, Saxon collaborated with designer Deborah Ross and a shooting crew to capture a gleaming Cadillac for Tin Men. The film, about two dueling, cutthroat salesmen and their precious cars in 1960s Baltimore, opens with smooth shots of a Cadillac exterior, shimmering swaths of chrome and aluminum overlaid with embossed cursive typograp...
Movie Title Design (1994) featuring Nina Saxon. In 1981, she founded Nina Saxon Film Design and created the title designs for films including Paternity, Going Berserk, Romancing the Stone, and Back to the Future.
Feb 23, 2020 · Except for her partnership with Ross and a stint with New Wave Entertainment, Saxon primarily worked under her own moniker, Nina Saxon Film Design. She and Ross began this tumultuous but fruitful period with a fitting metaphor: a gleaming pilot’s insignia.
Design for Living is a 1933 American pre-Code romantic comedy film directed by Ernst Lubitsch from a screenplay by Ben Hecht, based on the 1932 play of the same name by Noël Coward.
Over the span of her 40-year career, Saxon established herself as a pillar of title sequence design, a defining figure of the branded blockbuster film, a logo legend and a master of painting with light.
Designed main and end titles for over 250 feature films and 50 television shows; over 30 corporate identities and motion logos for the screen and television for entertainment and design...
- Nina Saxon Design
