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.