The Crown
Series 6 - Leftbank / Netflix Series
August 2022 - April 2023
Production Designer: Martin Childs
Supervising Art Director: Mark Raggett
Series Set Decorator: Alison Harvey
Senior Art Directors: James Wakefield, Chris Wyatt and Hannah Moseley
Lead Graphic Designer: Lizzy Butler
Fellow Graphic Designers: Greg Keen and Jules Gawlik
Role: Graphic Designer
The sixth season is set from 1997 and portrays events through to 2005, including the premiership of Tony Blair, the death of Diana, the deaths of Princess Margaret and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, the early relationship of Prince William and Kate Middleton, and the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.
Above left: over the course of series 6, one of the main things myself and fellow GD Greg Keen worked on were the constant influx of hero and dressing newspapers. We sourced and cleared the newspapers and replaced all images and adverts so they could be seen in close up. Occasionally the newspapers would be real mastheads but completely fictional covers with content provided by scripts that we had to format and create. An example of these are the 2 newspapers above on the right and the 2 newspapers below in the 2 first screengrabs.
Above Left: Screengrab from filming - people on the graphiced 1945 Bus. Re-creation of Typhoo Tea art work and organisation of the clearance
Top centre: Re-creation of art work for graphiced 1945 Bus - Schweppes, organisation of clearance and print
Bottom centre: Re-creation of art for graphiced bus - Swan Vestas, organisation of clearance and print.
Above Right: Newspaper stands including sheets and several newspapers and bus destinations and numbers for all 4 buses
Above Left: A cleared (fictional) 1945 version of the Ritz logo, a handpainted cloak room sign and a pinboard for the Ritz Foyer
Right: Various signage for the exterior 1940’s sets - all painted and made by C and P by hand
Above left and centre: 8 - 10 banners were made by C and P and by our assistants with the help of the drapes department to decorate the streets
Above Middle: Event and celebration posters for street dressing. We also printed and originally cleared a lot of war time period posters from the time
Above Right: A stand was built to recreate Trafalgar square and we had posters printed for these spaces - they were several feet tall
Various Graphics Above: French 5 a side poster for dressing in The Paris Ritz (noticeboards in the staff area) Above middle: 90s rave flyer for dressing in Kate’s St Andrews dorm room Far right: logo for the Vancouver space museum
On this series of The Crown there were 2 dark room sets that I was assigned to do the graphics for (along with AGD Katherine Hoad). These were for 2 different photographers with different styles, above is the work from the photographer Brenna. In the scenes he develops photographs of celebrities as well as Princess Diana and the famous ‘Kiss’ photograph that was taken of her and Dodi Fayed. For this scene I edited the digital photos taken while filming (ageing them to look like film photos) and I then turned them into negatives so these could appear to be developed ‘live’ on camera in the scene by a photographer. I also produced contact sheets as well as large photo prints of each image.
Above Right: A noticeboard we created as set dressing for Brenna which included his work, polaroids, photos and notes in italian.
Below: Screengrabs from Brenna and his darkroom / The Kiss in development and other screengrabs showing the darkroom and the studio of the other photographer, Muir, with his photographs and his alternative style
Above: In episode 5 of Series 6 ‘Willmania’ - Prince William slowly begins to realise that he has an immense number of female fans around the world. One of the ways in which this was portrayed was an exterior scene in Vancouver Canada where girls screamed at William. They held up home made banners and Director May El-Toukhy requested a range of magazines that featured William’s face. These needed to be Canadian and due to clearance permissions we were able to use Life Magazine with our portrayed actor and then I created 3 further fictional magazines based on real 90’s Canadian Magazines.
Above Left: Hero magazine requested for teenage boys at Eton for generic use
Above Right: Hero magazine requested for Charles on private plane to Whistler
In this series there were several scenes where teenage girls from around the world were seen in their bedrooms or various locations, writing fan letters to Prince William. 2 of the sets were American teenage girls and British Teenage girls in 1998. For these sets I managed the graphic content, creating posters and dressing imagery for the walls.
Above Left: Poster designed for american teenagers bedroom
Above Centre: Art work for hero letter designed, printed and organised to match the actress’s handwriting.
Above: Various posters for girls bedroom
Below: Organisation of Banners made for extras to hold - made by Graphics runner Molly Hellman and poster in situ
On this series of The Crown there were several scenes in Prince William’s room at Eton college. I managed the graphic content for this set including clearances of scripted super models that were focused on as well as key interests of Prince William such as Footballers. This set needed to be busy as there were 2 large noticeboards and wall space - we created various pieces which included posters of where he had travelled to, Regattas, event tags, programmes, theme park tickets, postcards, ski passes, motorbikes, tickets, models, photography and footballers / his football team as well as school work. Lucy Buchanan was AGD for this set.
Below left: Signage for a Windsor street, a souvenir and collectables gift shop, ep 10
Below left: Brass plaque revealed in action by the Queen, ep 2
Below right: Plaque made by construction with the collaboration of the Assistant Art Director Freddie Burrows, to reveal names of the previous royal pipers, ep 6
Below right: Hero Technical drawing graphic made of a land rover that Prince Philip wants to be converted into a hearse, ep 10
On this series of The Crown there was a scene where Tony Blair presented a speech to the Women’s Institute in Ep 6. The logo of the original Women’s institute could not be used due to clearance (legal) issues and so I designed a new logo that felt in keeping with their organisation.
Above Left: Leaflet made for extras in the crowd
Above Right: Organisation of logos on large printed banners that hung from the ceiling in an arena. These were designed and organised by myself as well as the application of a CNC logo on the podium and a catch phrase running across of the stage.
Above Bottom section: More examples of the logo in use
Below: Various items that related to storyline including the Mori Poll in Episode 9 - posters, questionnaires, dressing items for various town halls and powerpoint presentation to the royal family to explain the results. Left: Blair’s Dossier in a custom made folder by Wyvern Bindary. Right: Notecard from the Queen to Prince William. Below Left: Questionnaire from Police to Prince William about the death of Diana. Below Right: Brenna’s wallet, credit cards and receipts.
Below are graphics from Episode 8 of Series 6 of The Crown which involved flashbacks to 1945. VE day was represented over several sets, 3 exterior and 1 interior to create a montage segment showing the scale of the VE Day celebrations. The Art Director and Set Decorator for these sets were James Wakefield and Carolyn Boult. Assistant Graphic Designer: Katherine Hoad.
Above Left: Hero magazine for a scene in which Princess Diana and Prince William sell copies of ‘The Big Issue’. For this I had to design a logo and magazine that was different from the real magazine due to clearance but also still felt like a real Big issue. This set also included an exterior shopping centre and the organisation of shopping bags for customers.
