Some identity briefs arrive with the concept already latent in the name. Chronology Productions — a Hollywood production company founded by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Eric Heisserer — needed a mark that could carry the weight of cinematic ambition, live gracefully in a credit reel, and communicate something about the relationship between storytelling and time. The answer was waiting in Prague.
The Orloj — the medieval astronomical clock installed in Prague’s Old Town Square in 1410 — is one of the most visually complex and historically resonant mechanical objects in existence. Its layered faces track solar and lunar time, the positions of celestial bodies, and the liturgical calendar simultaneously, all through an intricate system of gears, dials, and hands that has been turning for over six centuries. For a production company whose name is literally about time, no contemporary mark could compete with that lineage.
I illustrated the Orloj face from photographic reference — drawing the astronomical dial, the zodiac ring, the calendar face, and the surrounding architectural detail by hand to achieve the level of precision the concept required. The clockworks at the center are a composite of two stock illustration elements, layered and modified to create depth, visual richness, and — critically — animation readiness. Every layer was built to move. The clock was designed to turn.
The resulting mark embeds this fully realized Orloj illustration as the O at the center of the CHRONOLOGY wordmark — presented in two colorways: a refined gold line art version for single-color applications, and a full-color version in the deep navy, warm amber, and gold palette of the actual Prague clock for rich media and full-color contexts. The business card system carries the identity through to print with characteristic confidence — the clock face bleeding full across the card back as a detail image, the wordmark anchoring the front with clean spaced-cap authority.
The PowerPoint deck template completed the system. The engagement was carried out as an independent project alongside my role as a learning systems engineer at Cisco Systems — one of several creative commissions I maintained during that chapter to keep the practice fluid and the instincts sharp.
A footnote worth keeping: the identity work earned a valid IMDb membership for yours truly — a graphic designer’s entry into the same database that tracks every film the mark was built to precede.
Custom Illustration, Identity Design, Wordmark Design, Business Card System, Presentation Template Design