For Ben Wheatley’s new film, High-Rise, graphic artists Michael Eaton and Felicity Hickson designed a wide range of props, from books and cigarette packs to the entire contents of a supermarket. Here, they reveal how they worked with production designer Mark Tildesley to help cement the look and feel of 1970s apartment living – with a dystopian edge.

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For the ‘Market’ shop, Hickson filled an empty supermarket with a range of products. On-set photo by Felicity Hickson
For the ‘Market’ shop, Hickson filled an empty supermarket with a range of products. On-set photo by Felicity Hickson

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Creative Review: How did you get involved with High-Rise?

Michael Eaton: I’d heard from a friend that High-Rise was happening in Bangor; I live in Belfast. I’d seen Ben Wheatley’s other films and just really wanted to work on it. I’d worked with the supervising art director before, so I had got in touch with him and asked if I could put my portfolio forward for an interview. I had a back catalogue to show them, but this is the most ‘futuristic’ thing I’ve done. I’d made medieval work on Game of Thrones and Hercules, it was all ‘old world’. But I love the 1970s, the style of it, and so I was keen to get on [the film], not just because of the subject but also as it was a new time period for me.

Felicity Hickson: Through previous experience your name gets out there. I went to Belfast and met the director and the designer and they said that they needed someone specifically looking at the supermarket. It was a massive undertaking. They didn’t have anything, just an empty supermarket to dress. We went to see the location and they said that we’d have to dress all the shelves with new products; every one has to be different. Then the scale of what was expected suddenly dawned on me.

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CR: Typography was a starting point for your design work, but were you given a specific brief in terms of the look and feel of the film?

FH: So each location had a particular font – [Ben] was very particular about the font. He had a few fonts in mind that he showed us, I think from a few of Stanley Kubrick’s films that he liked. And then we showed him five fonts and we picked a few for the different locations.

I showed him a few for the supermarket and he picked one straight away, which was brilliant. So I knew my font for the supermarket was already chosen. [Then] I produced maybe four or five layouts of various products and also the signage – we set a few colours that we showed him. He pretty much liked what we were doing and he said just go for it. It was pretty easy. I wasn’t designing each product and then asking ‘Is this approved?’. I was designing ten in a row and then showing them. Ben kept on saying ‘Keep going’ so I was making products every day.

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CR: One of the first ‘graphic’ elements the audience notices is the ‘Welcome’ pack for the building. Can you tell me about that?

ME: Yes, Ben had said he wanted a booklet that would go into almost crazy detail on all the appliances in the building. It was about schematics – you could take it really far; stuff on how to attach your shower nozzle, that kind of thing. It was a fun one to do.

We knew what the shape of the building would be, so we put that in, then it was just a layout of the room and what each area would be. The idea was you got this pack, ‘Welcome to your new home’, and it describes what your life will be like in there. Lots of cool references for that. It was a nice one from a design point of view, like an Ikea furniture manual.