Twin Peaks (1989) employed a title sequence unlike anything produced for an on-going, broadcast television program before it. The theatrical feature length title sequences designed by Wayne Fitzgerald for the premiere episodes of Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers, while longer than the titles in other television programs, were also special title sequences that were not used again during the course of the programs run; instead shorter, more typical titles for television programs replaced them for the remaining episodes in the series; this was not the case with Twin Peaks.
Len Lye (1901 1980) worked as an animator, then as a director of newsreels for the March of Time from 1946 to 51, and finally as a kinetic artist; within the history of motion graphics he occupies an unusual position: even though he had informal training as a painter and worked with various types of sound-image synchronization in abstract film, these works exhibit a distinct conception of abstraction as a kinetic art, rather than an art constructed upon a musical analogy as was typical for the other artists drawn to create abstract motion pictures during the first phase of their history. This emphasis appears in his theorizing shortly after his first hand painted film had achieved a wide-spread critical success in Europe. Writing with a collaborator, Laura Riding, in 1935 for the essay Film-making, Lye proposes a tentative framework to think about motion as form:
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) presents one of the earliest examples of kinetic typography integrated into the dramatic action, functioning within the narrative space of a fiction film in a way that is clearly distinct from the more prosaic applicationssuch as a character reading a letter where the letter itself is shown to the audienceCaligaris reaction to the appearance of the typography within the visual space of the climactic scene is a highly unusual moment in an already unusually experimental feature. The use of diegetic and non-diegetic type is extremely common in the silent era film precisely because it did not have the technical capacity for synchronous sound; however, the typography in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is of a different character entirely than those commonly used. It appears in the film not in the form of a letter or book, but as a visualization of madnessas the dramatization of the films climax.
The 1906 Vitagraph Company film "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces" produced and animated by J. Stuart Blackton also includes an exceptional animated title sequence, striking for both its complexity and early date. It is taken from a paper print preserved at the Library of Congress.
