UNMASKING JIHADI JOHN –
Title Sequence & GFX

A title sequence and documentary graphics package for the Sky and HBO production about Mohammed Emwazi — the British member of the ISIS Beatles cell known as Jihadi John. The brief demanded something forensic and unsettling: a visual language that conveyed the gravity of the subject without sensationalising it.

I developed the concept and creative direction in full, working with a single animator to execute it. The titles were built on fragmented type, redacted imagery, and a cold typographic system drawn from surveillance aesthetics and degraded intelligence feeds — the visual language of investigation rather than conventional title design.

Beyond the titles, we developed an extensive GFX package to visualise key narrative threads throughout the documentary: a code-hacking sequence, school records and archive materials tracing Emwazi as a pupil, GCHQ-style redacted documents, and a series of graphical elements that mapped the intelligence trail leading to his identification and apprehension.