There used to be about six people doing this kind of work for film in this country and now there are over 300 so I think it became obvious to the industry that that role needed to be defined and acknowledged. There were always people designing props with graphic elements but it wasn't really recognised as a distinct role.

Graphic designer wasn't an official role in the film industry when I started out.

So, for the Harry Potter films, that's things like The Daily Prophet newspaper, Harry's Hogwarts acceptance letter or the packaging for Weasley's Wizard Wheezes joke shop products. Anything that needs to convey a message visually is our remit. It's not my map, it's the four marauders' map and how would they express themselves and be a bit devious and crafty in the way that they created this magical tool that only they had done? So it's thinking about trying to manifest their personalities in the piece and that's what we do every time we're thinking of something, even stuff in here for Dumbledore but, yeah, that was a great adventure.Īs a graphic designer, I work with my business partner, Eduardo Lima, to imagine and create graphic universes for films. But we had to really think about who the characters were. Rowling has written but, in this case, she only described it as a square piece of folded parchment that the Weasley twins take out. But The Marauder's Map was a real sort of adventure in design for us because it was such a brilliant magical tool to push the story forward and that's really what we're having to deal with all the time, but sometimes you get a really great piece that J.K. I think the most iconic thing that I've been involved in making on Harry Potter was The Marauder's Map and all The Daily Prophet newspapers. It was only maybe about 20 years ago that it became a role that was defined and acknowledged by producers and filmmakers, so it's a relatively new role and from having had about six people in the industry is now over 300 so that shows that there actually is a career path now for that role. I didn't even know that graphic design for film existed when I started working in film because it didn't as an official role. When I was at school, I had no idea that I would even work in film and I was training to do theatre design, so set design. I was a bit naughty, actually, at school – I was probably a marauder, actually, so had I had The Marauder's Map that would have been ideal, but I think often creativity gets mistaken for naughtiness and probably the two things were happening at the same time and I was always making, drawing, creating and I really knuckled down to work when I had an opportunity to do all those things properly at Art school. I'm Mira Mina and I'm a graphic designer for film.Īt school.

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