Mr. Good? Gåten Erik Jensen

•

Show Package & Title Sequence for the documentary series "Mr. Good? Gåten Eirik Jensen" on Netflix.

"Mr. Good? Gåten Eirik Jensen" is Netflix's first Nordic documentary series and is about the Norwegian policeman Eirik Jensen who was accused of drug smuggling and corruption.

Here the question is raised whether he worked within or outside the law with his informant, the hash smuggler Gjermund Cappelen.

The series weaves Jensen's question of guilt into a larger context where criminal history and informant activities are put in focus, spiced with a colorful cast of characters.

The Task

The task was to design a visual profile and graphic package for the documentary, in addition to a number of specific deliverables that would support the story and clarify important information in the series.

The complexity and breadth of the delivery was large and included a logo, vignette, templates for text (supers, location and time indications, source crediting), intro and end credits, overviews such as timelines and networks, text messages, sound logs, maps, graphics around archive material, facsimiles, and epilogue.

Ambiguity and contradictions

The basic concept for the visuals builds on the idea of opposites.

Jensen and Cappelen stand on opposite sides of the law, each with their own perception of reality. They have conflicting explanations of what happened. Does this mean that one of them is blatantly lying, or does the truth lie somewhere in between?

This is visualized using two main colors, blue and red (inspired by police sirens), which represent the two opposites. By overlapping these, a third color is created, and this purple color represents the gray area the two main characters operate in.

The result is a color usage that breaks with familiar true crime conventions to give the series uniqueness, in addition to playing along with the series' cinematography.

The idea of overlap is implemented in several ways to underline the inherent ambiguity of the case in visualizing different types of information. This implementation is acquired through composition and color use in depictions of suspicious SMS exchanges, or as glitch elements to underline the feeling that something is not right.