Saturday Night Live opening/intro titles (2022–)
Legendary sketch show Saturday Night Live debuted a new look and title sequence for the premiere of its 48th season on October 1st, 2022. As it has been the case since 2009, Emily Oberman led the team at Pentagram to create this new design for the show, working closely with photographer Mary Ellen Matthews and director Mike Diva to bring this new identity to life on the screen.
This makeover comes in the midst of a huge change in the show as eight of their twenty-one cast members depart, allowing for the start of another era in SNL’s lengthy history.
The logo itself is set in a custom version of Nik Thoenen’s Blender, given the name of Blender Bass-o-Matic SNL. As the show approaches its fiftieth season, its style “pays tribute to the original typography in a way that sharp-eyed fans will appreciate” by bringing back the lowercase “n” from the show’s first logo, then set in Futura Display. Pentagram picked Blender as the basis of this new identity as it is “a blend of different types of letterforms––some curved, some sharp––which felt related to the structure of SNL itself and its many diverse players.” [Pentagram]
However, the font is not alone. Combined with Blender, the cast names are shown in Mark Simonson’s Grad – this pairing of the bold and modern Blender with the stylish and elegant Grad conveys what both Pentagram and Lorne Michaels envision for this new era of Saturday Night Live – something fresh, bold and exciting.
Also, borrowing from their last major design change in 2014, the logo’s flexible nature provides ample opportunities for photographer Mary Ellen Matthews to place the host and musical guest within the frame that the words provide.
Saturday Night Live bumper, “Miles Teller/Kendrick Lamar” (October 1st, 2022)
Saturday Night Live bumper, “Miles Teller/Kendrick Lamar” (October 1st, 2022)
6 Comments on “Saturday Night Live opening/intro titles (2022–)”
What font is used in season one of SNL?
Are you asking about the inaugural season from 1975/1976, when the show was still named NBC’s Saturday Night? That’d be Futura Display, with a contour and an accent in place of an apostrophe.
Thank you. I live in Seoul where you sometimes see signs using fonts like Futura Display or the font from Star Trek (the television program). I saw a sign in Futura Display and realized I had no idea what the font was called.
I’ve been looking for the typeface used in the 1995–2005 logo. Google’s brought up nothing. Anyone have any ideas what it was?
Having run the 1995–2005 logo through What the Font, I’ve found that the most likely candidate is a custom version of Engravers’ Gothic. I think I’ve answered my question.
Hi Jarrod, yes, that checks out. Here are some images of this logo version.