Chronotype — printed props for film, television & theatre · part of Scenergia
fictional worlds.period correct.
Graphic props for worlds that don’t exist. The letters, newspapers, labels, packs, menus and signs a story runs on — set to its own year, placed in its own country, and fictional down to the brand.
We don't make templates. We make paper that survives a close-up — and the rules that put it in the right year.
Made in the studios, at print size:
About Chronotype
Chronotype started from a plain observation in the art department: the paper in a period scene is usually wrong in a way nobody on set can name. The typeface is right and the year is not. The letter is A4 in a decade of foolscap, the warning sign has its words on the wrong plate, the menu prices a meal in a currency the country had not adopted yet.
So the rules come first. Every studio knows what its country demanded in its year — the sheet size, the trade's layout, the printing method it could manage, the text the law put on it — and draws the thing from those. Move the year and the sheet changes, for a reason you can read.
Of the 848 dated rules in the Archive, 11 carry a public source, 205 have their research notes written out and 5 are open questions. The rest is workshop practice, and says so.
A line of script. A whole world.
1962United KingdomThe Nightjar Letters7 scenes · 21 printed things
Ashcombe & Sons Ltdtobacconists, London
«A CLERK slides a telegram across the counter. She signs a receipt made out to Ashcombe & Sons Ltd.»
1974GreeceThe Last Ferry3 scenes · 11 printed things
Ἐργοστάσιον «Ἡ Ἀνατολή»a firm invented in the Brand Room, in the polytonic Greek of its year
«NIKOS reads a letter. On the desk: an invoice, a newspaper, a packet of cigarettes and a bottle of ouzo. On the wall, a map of the town.»
Both rows are what the Scene Kit built from a short script, as it came out — nothing retouched. The year, the country and the firm were set once; every studio took them. Every name, mark and masthead is invented.
Invent the company once. Then everything it touches.
A believable world is mostly one firm, seen on thirty objects. The Brand Room invents it the way its country and year would — the legal form, the mark, two inks, the typefaces, an address and a telephone that cannot ring — and every other studio wears it, so the letterhead, the tin, the van and the website belong to the same hand.
The firm
Name, mark, palette, type, address, telephone, year founded.
02Its paper
Letterhead, invoice, receipt, delivery note, the pass at the gate.
03Its goods
Labels, tins, cartons and packs, with the duty text of the year.
04Its premises
The fascia over the door, the window card, the plate by the bell.
05Its public
The newspaper that reports on it and the poster that sells it.
06Its screens
The website, the inbox and the bank page, in the browser of the year.
Talk to a studio.
01Document Studio29 types · 8 machines
Letters, invoices, telegrams, hospital charts, rail tickets, permits and the police file that goes with them — typed on a real escapement grid, on the sheet size of the country and the decade.
- Police and court paperwork
- Hospital and pharmacy forms
- Tickets, passes and dockets
- Typewriter to teleprinter
02Newspaper Press11 countries · 10 languages
Front pages, spreads and back pages from the 1860s to the 2020s, broadsheet to berliner, with real justified body copy and halftones screened at the year's own ruling.
- Banner and screamer fronts
- Wartime and austerity stock
- Eleven countries, ten languages
- Aged from news-stand to archive
03Poster & Bill Studio41 sizes · 81 styles
Fly posters, gig bills, gallery cards, public notices and regime print, at true trade sizes and by a method the year could manage.
- Film one-sheets and quads
- Gig, rave and club bills
- Notices, curfews, campaigns
- 35 code-art engines
04Label Studio38 vessels · 3D preview
Wine, spirits, beer, jars, tins and medicine, wrapped onto the real container geometry with the duty text each market demanded.
- Wine, spirits and beer
- Food tins and jars
- Tapered blanks, true die lines
- Print methods by decade
05Pack Prop Studio100 styles · 20 duty stamps
Hinge-lid and soft packs, sleeves, foil and duty bands, and the health warnings that grew to two-thirds of the pack.
- Hinge-lid and soft packs
- Duty bands and stamps
- Warnings by law and year
- Flat dielines to fold
06Pharmacy Prop Studio14 formats · Braille
Medicine cartons, dispensing labels, leaflets, blister cards and authenticity stickers, from the apothecary's shelf to the Data Matrix.
- Cartons and blister cards
- Dispensing labels
- Patient leaflets
- Braille and Data Matrix
07Menu & Bill of Fare20 formats · 9 countries
The most dateable paper in a restaurant — with the courses, the money and the law of the year printed on them.
- Table d'hôte and bills of fare
- Wine lists and bar tariffs
- Liners, dining cars, canteens
- £sd before 1971
08Sign Shop28 types · 13 regimes
Signage cut to the shape the regime of the year used, in the colours it meant, on the plate it was made from.
- Road and street signs
- Rail, bus and wayfinding
- Shop fascias and window cards
- Enamel, steel, reflective
09The Brand Room47 marks · 1700 to now
Invent a company once — mark, wordmark, palette, typefaces, address, telephone, year founded — and every other studio wears it.
- Trade marks and wordmarks
- Palettes and type by era
- Addresses and telephones
- Shared by every studio
10Cover Studio9 formats · 28 styles
Book jackets, paperbacks, cloth cases, schoolbooks, exercise books, diaries, ledgers and comics, laid flat the way a printer takes them — the spine as wide as the pages make it, the price in the year's money, and the ISBN and bar code only once they existed.
- Jackets, paperbacks, cloth cases
- Exercise books, diaries, ledgers
- ISBN and bar code by year
- Eleven countries
11Certificate Studio14 kinds · 10 languages
Degrees, school certificates, birth, marriage and death extracts, share certificates and bonds with their coupons, licences, membership diplomas and indentures — in the formula, the money and the security printing of the year, with guilloche, crests and seals drawn from nothing.
- Degrees and school certificates
- Register extracts, baptism papers
- Shares, bonds and coupons
- Licences, guarantees, indentures
12Sticker Studio7 kinds · masking patches
Street slaps for set dressing — name-tag stickers, tags, stencils, slogans, characters, band and crew stickers — dated by what a sticker could be made of, and masking patches cut a margin larger than a real logo. On a sheet, with the knife line for the cutter.
- Slaps, tags, stencils, slogans
- Band, zine and crew stickers
- Logo-masking patches to size
- Die-cut from 1990, with the knife
13ID Card Studio12 kinds · one or four hundred
Staff badges, visitor and contractor passes, student, library, gym and video-club cards, hotel keys, press cards and hospital badges — typed and sealed in a pouch, shot on a Polaroid ID camera, printed on PVC, worn on a lanyard — with photographs, names, numbers and codes that scan, a whole crew at once.
- Staff, visitor and contractor passes
- Press cards and hospital badges
- Hotel keys, library and gym cards
- A crew list and photos in, a sheet out
14On Air Studio12 marks · flags · news cars
A radio or television station for the story’s year — only of a kind the country allowed then — with its mark, the logo in the corner of the screen, the flags on the microphones at a press conference and the lettering on the news car, at true size and cut-ready.
- Station marks from 1920 to now
- The logo on the screen, as an overlay
- Mic flags: cube, triangle, round, plate
- News-car doors, roof and windscreen
15Map Room5 sheets · 14 countries
One invented town, drawn five ways: the town plan with its index of streets, the folded visitor’s map with its numbered sights and the publisher’s advertisement, the transit diagram (on the streets before 1933, schematic after), a page of the street atlas, and the regional road map with the roads numbered as the country numbered them. In the look of the year — engraved, two-colour, offset, bright or vector — in the language and the measure of the country, with the production’s own places on it.
- Town plan, visitor’s map, transit diagram
- Street-atlas page, regional road map
- Five looks, 1800 to now; miles or kilometres by country and year
- The firm from the Brand Room as the publisher
16Photo Lab6 objects · 11 countries
The photograph as an object: the print at the size the year sold it — carte de visite, cabinet card, deckle-edged contact print, the 1960s square, the 4 × 6 with its orange date — with its border, its back and the lab’s stamp; the instant print in its three generations; the booth strip; the passport sheet at the country’s size; the 35 mm contact sheet with the grease-pencil choice; the chemist’s D&P wallet with the firm from the Brand Room. The picture is your own, read on your machine, or an illustrated stand-in — never a generated face.
- Print, instant, booth strip, passport sheet
- Contact sheet, D&P wallet
- Albumen, sepia, black & white, faded or colour by year
- Your own photograph, kept on this machine
17Signature Studio11 hands · 6 pens · 3 alphabets
A signature for an invented person or the production’s own character, drawn as a mark and not set in a font. The hand is the school’s — copperplate, Spencerian, Palmer, the French anglaise, German Kurrent until 1941, the Greek and the Soviet school hands, the modern scrawl — so it follows the signer’s birth year; the pen and the ink are the year of signing’s — dip pen, fountain, ballpoint from 1945, felt-tip, gel. Legibility from copybook to scrawl, a flourish or a paraph, six takes that are never the same, the bank’s specimen signature card, the cast sheet for the binder. Keep it on the shelf and the letters in the Document Studio are signed in it. Never a real person’s.
- The signature alone, transparent, at true size
- Six takes, the specimen card, the cast sheet
- Latin, Greek and Cyrillic hands; the pen and ink of the year
- A shelf every studio signs with
18Web Studio15 screens · 6 looks · 1980–now
The digital page as an object: the firm’s website, the newspaper’s site, the inbox with its open message, the bank’s account page, a search result, a blog — in the look of the year (grey with blue links, tables and a left column, Web 2.0 gloss, flat, cards, now), at the resolution of the year, inside a browser of the year that is nobody’s. The firm comes from the Brand Room, the names from the production. Out as an HTML file for playback on the monitor in shot, as a PNG or SVG for the compositor, or as the page the browser printed — the e-mail someone kept. The live phone in the actor’s hand is Mombie’s; this is the page.
- Website, newspaper, inbox, bank, search, blog, magazine, forum, profile, sign-in, 404
- Dial-up board, mail program, bedside monitor, ultrasound
- Six dated looks, 640 × 480 to 1920 × 1080
- HTML for playback, PNG, SVG, the printed page
- An invented browser, mail client and search engine
05 · The Scene Kit
Drop the script. Get the paperwork.
Chronotype reads the screenplay on your own computer, lists every printed thing the scenes call for, and the studios build the lot — set to the script's year, placed in its country, one folder per scene. Fountain, Final Draft, PDF or plain text; English or Greek. No AI, no upload.
New: the Map Room — a town plan, a visitor’s map, a transit diagram, a street-atlas page and a regional road map of one invented town, in the look of the year and the production’s own names.
No script yet? Start from a kit — Transit · Retail · Mail · Café · Police station · Hospital ward — the printed things a set of that kind needs, built as one folder.
Or have it built.
Send the scene or the sequence. The firm, its paper, its packaging, its signs and its screens come back as one consistent world — period-correct, cleared by design, print-ready, with a certificate of originality — for a fixed price agreed before any work starts. Designed by the set graphic designer who wrote the rule sets.
Starter
A small set of production graphics for one scene
Production
A whole sequence and its fictional identity
World
The company and everything it touches
Who it's for
The people who make the paperwork, and the people who have to clear it. Every licence covers the whole art department for the title — nobody counts seats — and comes with a signed certificate of originality for the production file.
Graphic designers
Art departmentProp masters & buyers
FilmSet decorators
SeriesScenic workshops
TheatreAgencies & production houses
CommercialsFilm schools
EducationWho you'll actually talk to
Panagiotis ZachoulitisSet graphic designer · Athens
International features and series
panagiotiszachoulitis.com ↗ · how to hire →
One workshop. High signal.
Chronotype is built and run by a working set graphic designer. When you write, the person who answers is the one who wrote the rule set — and the one who draws your commission when a studio cannot reach it.
The rules come before the styling.The workshop rule · every studio
Anyone can put an old typeface on a sheet of paper. What makes a prop survive a close-up is everything the audience cannot name: the sheet size of the country and the decade, the ruling of the form, the method the printer had, the words the law demanded. Checks in every studio reads the finished sheet and says when one of them is wrong.
Free to make.
Every studio is free, with nothing switched off. When a prop ends up in something sold, broadcast or commissioned, one licence covers the whole workshop for the title — banded to the production budget, one-off, and it never expires.
Every sheet leaves as an editable SVG — real text, with the artwork, the cut line, the guides and the ageing on their own layers — that opens in Illustrator, Affinity or Inkscape as it is; a print PDF at true size; and a press PDF separated to CMYK.
Learning, portfolio, no-budget film
Nobody paid, nothing sold
Under €250,000
Small production · one title
Over €250,000
Production · one title
Every title in a year
Company licence
Part of Scenergia.
A script becomes one consistent world — a world that can be found, made and put on camera. Scenergia builds the tools for its three layers; Chronotype is the made one — what is printed, and the page on the screen. The same production file travels between them, so the firm on the letterhead is the firm on the van and the firm in the phone.
Skenic
Find what the scene needs.
The physical world — props, set dressing, vehicles, locations; the script breakdown, the suppliers, the production hub.
skenic.com → You are here CreateChronotype
Make what the scene invents.
The printed world, and the page on the screen — documents, newspapers, packaging, signage, labels, menus, maps, photographs, signatures, websites and inboxes; eighteen studios, period-correct and fictional.
the studios → ControlMombie
Put the world on screen.
The live screen — the phone in the actor's hand: messages, calls, notifications, interactive on-camera UI, cued from the director's tablet.
mombie.tech →