For All Mankind is an alternate history space drama series created by Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi for Apple TV+, which premiered on November 1, 2019. The series imagines a timeline in which the Soviet Union beat the United States to the Moon, and the global space race never ended. The show’s visual identity, including its main title sequence and wordmark, was developed by the Los Angeles-based title design studio Imaginary Forces.
Design and History
The main title sequence for For All Mankind was crafted by Imaginary Forces, with Alan Williams serving as creative director and Max Strizich as art director. The sequence was designed by Strizich, Henry Chang, Clint Chang, Sam Alexander and Wes Richardson, with animation by Strizich, Rick Kuan, Hogan Williams, Henry Chang and Wes Richardson. Jon Hassell served as executive producer on the project.[1][2]
The title sequence opens with a single point of light that expands throughout the piece, rendered in geometric black and gold. The sequence culminates in the formation of the show’s logo.[2] According to the creators’ description, lines deviate and converge in a graphic, tactile world that pays homage to the past while hinting at the “what if?” future explored throughout the series. Like the show logo itself, these lines weave and merge to create stylised representations of human exploration, described as “badges, almost,” ultimately reminding viewers of the common thread they share.[3]
Beyond the title sequence, the show’s broader promotional identity was developed by We Are Royale, a design-driven creative production company that built launch toolkits for Apple TV+’s initial slate of original programming. For each show, including For All Mankind, We Are Royale established the look and feel of the endpage and logo treatment as the anchor of the package, then expanded the design and motion signatures into title cards and lower third toolkits.[4]
Meaning and Symbolism
The show’s title treatment draws visual inspiration from NASA’s 1975 “worm” logotype. The series uses a font similar to NASA’s logotype for its title treatment, a stylistic choice that ties the wordmark directly to the space program aesthetic central to the show’s premise.[5]
Within the series itself, the NASA insignia appears in a modified form. On the “meatball-style” logo used in For All Mankind, the red vector is pointed in the opposite direction and moves behind the blue circle instead of across the front, and the circular orbit surrounding the letters has been shifted. According to series creator Ronald D. Moore, this change was made to respect NASA’s brand policies, which require that anything using the official NASA logo accurately portray events as they happened. Former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman, who served as a technical advisor on the show, noted that the production team did attempt to obtain the agency’s approval for use of the logo, but given the timing just before the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, it was too much to ask of NASA.[6]
Typography and Design
The title font used in For All Mankind closely resembles Nasalization, a typeface designed by Ray Larabie and published by Typodermic Fonts. Nasalization takes its cues from NASA’s 1975 “worm” logo, translating that iconic geometry into a sans serif typeface. First released in 1997 as an all-caps design, it has since grown into a six-weight family with italics and wide language support.[7][8]
One distinguishing feature of the For All Mankind lettering is that its letter “A” has a broken bottom line, a detail that differentiates the show’s font from the one NASA used for the “worm” logo.[9]
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