Some title sequences never lose their power to fascinate, however many times you watch them – think Dexter, True Blood (which won an Emmy for its designers Digital Kitchen) and Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can. YouTube is littered with examples of this contemporary art form, the best of which use material that may not seem directly related to the feature they introduce, but reveal its essence in often compelling ways.

On Wednesday, BAFTA hosted a ‘masterclass’ talk by UK design duo Momoco, creators of title sequences for the likes of Misfits, Luther and Eleventh Hour, as well as the films Hard Candy and Alien vs Predator.

Speaking at London’s ICA, founders Nic Benns and Miki Kato cite Japanese comic-strip illustrators among their influences and take a strongly design-focussed approach to their work, in contrast to Dexter titles creator Eric Anderson, who describes himself as thinking more like a film-maker than a designer, putting the emphasis on telling a story rather than illuminating theme or atmosphere through type-face, colours etc.

The pair reveal that their interest in linking a programme’s subtext to the presentation of its title sequence has led them to use devices like fragmenting the type for Luther to show the character’s psychological fragmentation and, in the case of Hard Candy, having a red square chase the type-face to parallel the film’s predator/prey relationship.

For the BAFTA-award winning Misfits, they took a more narrative-focussed approach to the title sequence in order to get across the show’s distinctive supernatural premise, electing to show a storm ‘transforming’ Miki’s cartoon silhouettes into three-dimensional images of the actors to parallel the transformation of the five main characters from disempowered into exceptionally powerful beings.

Nic describes storyboarding as his favourite part of the creative process – he and Miki do as many as seven strikingly-individuated storyboards on different aspects of a show, of which only one makes it to the final cut – and confesses to having used peeled fresh figs to simulate decayed flesh in the title sequence for 2007’s vampire horror 30 Days Of Night.

Also highlighting the differences between the working methods of US and UK companies (as you’d expect, US companies require more conference calls, layers of approval and branding), the talk was a fascinating insight into this wonderful and often over-looked art form.

Next month’s BAFTA masterclass events include ‘Games Art Direction’ with David Hego (Batman: Arkham Asylum), ‘Visual Effects’ with Monsters writer/director Gareth Edwards and ‘Writing for Games’ with Charles Cecil (Doctor Who, Broken Sword). Tickets can be purchased on the BAFTA website.