On April 4, the pop-culture juggernaut that is Mad Men will begin wrapping up its final season, before going down in history as one of the finest TV shows ever made. The franchise will leave behind many legacies, but one of its greatest is the exceptional way its cinematographers, set designers, and costume team elevated how a television show can look. Their vivid recreation of the 1960s wasn’t just about aesthetics; it also played an integral part in telling the show’s story.
Design-oriented professionals can learn plenty from Mad Men‘s visual excellence, so with the last episodes upon us, we’re taking a bittersweet look back at the show’s astonishing seven seasons to glean some valuable lessons you, too, can apply to your work — whatever medium you happen to be designing in.
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
//
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
//
1. Cinematography: Recognize the Power of a Still Camera
One thing Mad Men has shown via the cinematography of Christopher Manley is the value of keeping your camera still. No Steadicams or camera dolly — just a locked-down shot (see as of 0:43 above). Some of Mad Men‘s most powerful moments were ones where the camera was at its stillest, where Manley realized that what was being shot was more important than how it was shot. That is to say, if you want what you’re recording to have maximum impact, keeping your camera stationary can do just that. Let what you’re putting on screen — whether it’s beautiful dialogue, or even a home movie — be the star. It places greater emphasis on the subject, creating more opportunity for an audience to be drawn in without the distracting influence of camera movement.
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
//
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
//
2. Set Design: It’s All in the Details (Even If An Audience Won’t See Them)
It’s a testament to the quality of Mad Men’s set design that it’s recently been turned into a Museum of the Moving Image exhibition in NYC. A large part of this set design’s success is due to its exhaustive detail. Pause any moment in Mad Men and you’ll see remarkable detail everywhere — whether it’s piles of magazines, scattered unopened mail, boxes of records, unfiled paperwork, or the clutter of everyday life. It all goes a long way toward creating an impression of completeness, the sense that you’re watching a fully realized world. Will you see everything the set designers built into characters’ environments? Of course not. Nor should you. If you’re paying attention to what posters are on the wall of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, you’re missing the point of Mad Men. But that doesn’t mean they don’t matter. An audience may not always be aware of every detail you put into your work, but a viewer will notice an absence more. It’s part of the immersion that makes it easier for someone to fall into a work, a lesson easily applicable to all design.
3. Editing: Make Every Cut Have Meaning
Mad Men is a master class of editing. If you watch some of the show’s most important dialogue scenes (like the one above), it’s hard not to admire the surgical precision with which it’s put together — most notably, how it’s edited like an emotional tennis match between dialogue and reaction shot. A character says something significant and, at the height of its impact, we cut to the other character’s response. It’s a potent reminder that editing isn’t just a ho-hum means of putting images together; it can be elevated to an art that conveys Newton’s Third Law in dramatic form — every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The lesson to take from Mad Men‘s example is that whatever you happen to be editing, make sure every cut has a direct relationship with the one before and after it.
4. Costume: Design Is Storytelling
It’s hard not to talk about outfits when talking about Mad Men. The show is a dreamland for fashion lovers. But it would be a disservice to the program to believe its outfits are nothing more than nostalgia and retro appeal. As costume designer Janie Bryant puts it in the video above, “I approach larger Mad Men scenes as a painting, and how each character is going to tell their story. My characters are established in their design.” It’s a valuable reminder that design — whether in costume or not — should always tell a story.
5. Visual Design: Make Color Meaningful
There are few shows that use color as powerfully as Mad Men, whether it’s in costumes, sets, or props. We all know color is an essential visual tool, but Mad Men is a potent reminder of how effective color can be in creating meaningful art. Here, it’s never used arbitrarily; it’s always linked to a theme, mood, story, and character. (For example, notice how the color red is used in the above clips from the Season 5 finale.) The symbolism of color selection in your average Mad Men episode isn’t always obvious; that’s not the point, and that happens to be the valuable lesson to take away: Color selection matters because it’s often felt subconsciously by an audience. That’s why choosing colors with meaning adds a level of authenticity and excellence that will create an additional level of investment from your viewers.
What other visual lessons have you taken away from the show? Tell us what you learned and what you’ll miss the most in the comments below!
For more Mad Men tributes and inspiration, check out these posts:
A Retrospective Look at Mad Men’s ‘End of the Era’ in Photos
Mod Men: The World of ‘Mad Men’ Through a 21st-Century Lens