We have been working on something super exciting on an upcoming documentary about MMA fighters, Why We Fight, by Cengiz Ercan. It has been our pleasure to work with Cengiz to craft the main title screen and naming across the film.

The project is an amazing project following three fighters at various stages of their careers, and with incredible back stories to where they find themselves now.

The film is out later this year, but here’s a sneak peak of our working process and the craft that’s gone on behind the scenes.

As with many typographically led designs, we often start with a typeface (or faces) that exist and then begin to break it down, ready to rebuild in a new form. In the case of Why We Fight, we looked at visual language found in old fights, and visuals from around the world, considering MMA is so broadly represented.

This angle took us down a visual of the fight language of big, bold, curved type – as if it’s punching right out of the screen. Our next step was to give this some tactility, and again, looking to traditions found in fighting visuals, and the textures found in the sports directly, we felt an ink printed form, mixed with big splatters of chalk suited this just perfectly.

We’re always excited to see our titles on the big screen, and when this film does the festival circuit rounds we’ll be revealing the motion design elements we’ve got waiting for this project.

B&A