Concept and creative process
Using portraits of a variety of individuals, combined with a rotating linear everyman image, gave the opening a strong sense of the educational authority of this Open University series, and was one of the first computer aided title sequences ever produced at the OU. A computer system was used to create the wire frames and to interpolate between one image and the next, before drawing the line drawings onto cels with a Rotring pen and a plotter. The cels were registered and painted and filmed on a rostrum camera. The BBC had a separate Graphic Design Department based at historic Alexandra Palace from 1969 to 1982, servicing the needs of Open University Programmes for the studio and film programmes which formed the audio-visual component of OU courses. On limited budgets designers produced interesting opening titles for courses, of which this one by Haydon Young is a prime example.
Winner of a Design & Art Direction Wood Pencil for Television Graphics 1977.