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

Annie Atkins’s new book, Fake Love Letters, Forged Telegrams, and Prison Escape Maps: Designing Graphic Props for Filmmaking takes a behind-the-scenes look at the extraordinary and meticulous design of graphic objects for film sets

Available for pre-order now.

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. These objects may be given just a fleeting moment of screen time, but their authenticity is vital and their role is crucial: to nudge both the actors on set and the audience just that much further into the fictional world of the film.

Annie Atkins has been involved in film props for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, Isle of Dogs, Penny Dreadful, The Box Trolls, Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, and Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck.

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