Kyle Cooper

by Andrea Codrington

The first appraisal of one of America’s most creative designers of film titles

Kyle Cooper is acclaimed as the most innovative and important designer of film titles since Saul Bass. This attractive and informative book offers the first critical and historical assessment of Cooper’s impressive design achievements. In this book, Andrea Codrington relates that Cooper’s work first garnered major attention in 1995 with his creation of the extraordinary title sequence for the horror thriller Seven, which is credited with bringing about a renaissance in innovative film title design. Seven’s titles were touted as short films in their own right—not merely a “design solution” but a metaphorical representation of the film as a whole. Codrington also discusses Cooper’s work at the titles specialist R/Greenberg before he founded in 1996 his own Los Angeles based company, Imaginary Forces. As creative director there, Cooper now oversees a ninety-person team and has designed a stunning succession of highly regarded titles for such films as Eraser, Mission Impossible, Twister, The Mummy, The Horse Whisperer, The Negotiator, and Arlington Road. Kyle Cooper is essential reading for anyone engaged with graphic design, film, and visual communication.

Genres: Design, Film

112 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2003

About the author

Andrea Codrington is a Brooklyn-based editor and writer specializing in design and visual culture. With 18 years of experience in New York's art, design and architecture worlds, Codrington has been a columnist for The New York Times, an editor at Phaidon Press, senior editor at I.D. Magazine and a guest critic and lecturer at Parsons School of Design, Yale University, Cranbrook Institute, University of the Arts and Pratt. She is the co-author of Pause: 59 Minutes of Motion Graphics and sole author of Kyle Cooper: Monographics and has written extensively for such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Metropolitan Home, Metropolis and Cabinet. She is currently working on her first novel.