Starring Jeff Goldblum as Zeus, Janet McTeer as Hera and David Thewlis as Hades, Kaos is an eight-part TV show which sees the famed characters from Greek mythology living amongst mortals on Earth.

Matt Willey worked with entertainment group Sister, the company behind the show, on the titles, which deliberately aim to reflect the contemporary setting of the show and avoid any typically classical references.

“The ultimate ‘thesis statement’ of the series is that order is ‘bad’ and chaos is ‘good’,” explains Willey. “In other words, ‘order’ is a way of controlling and oppressing the natural chaos of the world. Only through chaos can the oppressive order be overthrown, and a new – freer – world emerge.

“With that in mind we wanted the type to have a bit of attitude and rebellion, to be loud and bold, to have energy … to feel a bit irreverent – for it to not feel polite or classical or old-fashioned; this is a very modern spin on the Greek myths.”

As humanity is “key to the story”, with Prometheus acting as both a guide to viewers through the series and the mastermind of the battle against the gods, Willey “wanted the type to feel human, to feel human-made”. He used gold to distinguish the gods in the titles, with the names of the other characters and locations rendered in cream.

“We drew a fairly modern sans serif typeface, created stencils of the various locations and names of gods and humans and then hand-painted each title card so that it had character and texture and a hand-made physicality,” he says.

Credits:
Design Studio: Pentagram
Partner: Matt Willey
Design Team: Bina Thorsen, Nick Marabella, August Dine