Graphic Design on Screen: Inside Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with Tina Charad

When it comes to the film industry, there’s a fine line which delineates how and when graphic design is employed. The graphics most bombarded in our faces are usually for the promotion of the film: movie posters, trailer designs and promotional materials. On the other hand, there lies a more consistent, meticulous work of graphic design in and for a film itself. The fictional fizzy drink brand the protagonist is drinking from? Made by the film’s graphic designer. The newspaper a detective is reading to find out the day’s headlines? A film’s graphic design. The exterior to a hospital in a character’s hometown? Film graphic design. That one-of-a-kind print T-shirt that reveals all you need to know about their character? You guessed it – film graphic design.

At the top of this niche industry sits graphic designer Tina Charad, a Los Angeles-based South African by way of Britain. “I didn’t know my current career was possible back when I first started 20 years ago,” Tina tells me when we sit down to uncover her elusive field of work. Tina sharpened her teeth in graphic design in the early aughts, where she worked diligently for branding and advertising agencies in South Africa. “While I worked at those agencies, I always thought my skills leaned more towards the holistic overall look and feel of something as opposed to just selling it,” Tina explains. Then, when Tina met a casting agent who suggested she pivot her talents into film production and design, she wasted no time discovering this new terrain for creativity.

After a quick move to the UK, Tina connected with a cameraman friend – and the rest is history. “Graphic design in film was incredibly new back then,” Tina recalls. “I was shadowing a very successful production designer who I didn’t really know, but one day she realised what I was capable of and asked me to make a few things for the film she was working on.” With only elementary days of Photoshop available to use, she was learning from scratch. Tina’s credits are now expansive and impressive to say the least: from The Batman to Pirates of the Caribbean to Tomb Raider and a whole host of Disney projects, Tina knows what she’s talking about. Yet, it’s her recent work on Quentin Tarantino’s slice-of-life piece Once Upon a Time in Hollywood which has particularly marvelled us.

After so many years in the industry, few things are left which surprise Tina. That isn’t to say, however, that she’s stopped challenging herself. With the advent of new technology coming thick and fast, Tina is making sure to stay on top of it all. “In The Batman, we were working with a very heavy VR department with Oculus and Unreal softwares,” she tells me. “It’s intimidating, but I’m wanting to learn and that's probably the thing that keeps me on my toes the most.” It’s a far cry from the days when Tina first started out, when the graphic design industry was only just evolving off handcrafting and not taken as seriously as a career. I suggest to Tina that perhaps that’s why she resonated so much with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, as it was her task to recreate graphics that would have actually been hand-made in the era she was replicating. “Yes, I definitely drew a lot of the type for the Western posters,” Tina concurs, gesturing to the traditional signwriters of the time. I tell her it looked artesanal and refer to the window signs of the store fronts Rick (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Sharon (Margot Robbie) visit. Then, in her usual humble demeanour, she becomes incredibly flattered. “A lot of the window stuff that looks handwritten was actually done on the computer, but I’m glad to hear it appeared realistic.”

Finally, as our conversation draws to a close, I ask her what was the favourite piece that she made in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. “It didn’t make the final cut,” she laughs.