Bob and Aleen Stein, a new disc format and two films, 1984.

The Criterion Collection began with a format rather than a film. In a long profile published on 29 February 2024, The New York Times Magazine said Criterion was founded by Bob Stein, his wife Aleen Stein and Roger Smith, a former Warner Brothers executive, to explore what the LaserDisc could do. The magazine noted that the disc could carry several audio tracks and let a viewer stop on any frame without the picture breaking up. Wikipedia dates the founding to 1984 and names the founders as Robert Stein, Aleen Stein and Joe Medjuck, who it says were later joined by Roger Smith. The Guardian, writing on 11 March 2016, also dated the company’s launch to 1984.

The method came with the medium. According to the Times, Criterion would track down the original negative or a surviving preprint of a film, then hire technicians to scan it, remove blemishes where possible and correct colours that had faded or turned pink. The magazine described a LaserDisc of Citizen Kane that carried a video essay and long liner notes on the history of the negative used for the restoration, followed by King Kong. Wikipedia says the King Kong disc carried a scene-by-scene audio commentary by the film historian Ronald Haver on a separate analogue channel.

That idea of a second voice running alongside the picture became part of the label’s record. On 14 April 1989, the Los Angeles Times reviewed an MGM and Criterion LaserDisc of The Wizard of Oz released for the film’s fiftieth anniversary, and listed among its extras a continuous commentary by Haver on the disc’s second audio track, home movies shot by the composer Harold Arlen, and costume and make-up tests. Wikipedia says that from its eighth LaserDisc, the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Criterion presented widescreen films letterboxed, keeping the original aspect ratio with black bars rather than cropping the image.

The business soon sat inside a larger one. Wikipedia says that in 1985 the Steins, William Becker and Jonathan B. Turell founded the Voyager Company to publish educational multimedia, that Criterion became a division of Voyager, and that Janus Films held a minority stake. It says Voyager released its CD-ROM about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in 1989 and was dissolved in 1997, after which Aleen Stein, Becker and Turell owned Criterion.

The early nineties brought new people and new titles. The Times said Michael Nash took over as director of Criterion in 1991 and worked from an office in Santa Monica. In the spring of 1992, it reported, David Bowie telephoned him about Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth; Bowie offered to record a commentary, and the Criterion LaserDisc came out in March 1993. The magazine added that Terry Gilliam’s Brazil entered the collection as a special edition box set in 1996, carrying both the director’s cut and the studio’s shorter version.

Voyager, Janus and a new owner in 2024.

Criterion has always worked beside another film company. Variety reported on 20 May 2024 that Janus Films was founded in 1954 by Bryant Haliday and Cyrus Harvey Jr., and described Janus as the sister distribution arm of Criterion. Wikipedia describes Criterion as a sister company of Janus and says Janus held a minority stake during the Voyager years. In practice the pair share a catalogue: the Criterion Channel launched with the same Criterion and Janus titles that had been streaming elsewhere, Deadline reported in 2019.

Getting discs into shops passed through several partners. Wikipedia says Home Vision Entertainment, founded in 1986 by Charles Benton, marketed and distributed Criterion DVDs until Image Entertainment bought it in 2005, and that Sony Pictures Home Entertainment took over distribution after an announcement on 4 November 2013. The Guardian reported in March 2016 that Sony had handled Criterion’s US distribution since 2013, and that a multi-year deal with Sony would bring Criterion Blu-rays to the UK from 18 April 2016. The newspaper listed the six launch titles, among them Grey Gardens, It Happened One Night and Tootsie, and quoted chief executive Jonathan Turell saying the company had thought about the move for many years and that the PAL and NTSC video barrier had disappeared with high definition and Blu-ray.

Two names recur in the company’s leadership. In 2024 the Times described Peter Becker as Criterion’s president and Turell as its chief executive, and said the late-nineties move from LaserDisc to DVD came with a wish to push the boundaries of what the collection would release, from a set of Beastie Boys music videos to the experimental films of Stan Brakhage. The magazine said Criterion adds fifty or sixty films to its catalogue each year.

Streaming followed a path of partnerships before the company built its own. Wikipedia says Criterion offered video on demand with Mubi, then known as The Auteurs, from 2008, moved its streaming titles to Hulu Plus in February 2011, and joined FilmStruck, a service from Turner Classic Movies, in November 2016. FilmStruck closed on 29 November 2018. Wikipedia says Criterion announced its own service on 16 November 2018, and Deadline reported on 22 March 2019 that the Criterion Channel would launch on 8 April 2019 in the United States and Canada, with apps for Apple TV, Roku, iOS and Android. A Criterion producer, Jason Altman, told the Times the launch was energising “because it was ours”.

Ownership changed in 2024. Variety reported on 20 May 2024 that Steven Rales, the founder of the production company Indian Paintbrush, had bought both Criterion and Janus Films in a private transaction, and that the mission and leadership of the companies would not change. Becker said the companies were excited to continue their legacy and pursue new opportunities through the relationship. Variety noted that Indian Paintbrush has produced and financed Wes Anderson’s films since 2007. Steven Rales has owned Criterion and Janus since 2024.

A disc, a number and a closet in Manhattan.

A film company’s identity reaches its audience in a few seconds at a time. The opening ident is the clearest case: a short sequence of motion, music and a wordmark that plays before the first frame of the story, so it has to read in a dark room, on a phone and on a festival screen alike. Many idents are revised over the years, and the changes are usually small — a new typeface, a cleaner animation, a shorter sound cue — so that the mark stays recognisable while it is updated.

Outside the cinema, the identity lives on smaller surfaces. Home-video lines use spine numbers, consistent spine typography and commissioned cover art, which turn a shelf of discs into a single designed object. On posters and trailers, the distributor’s logo usually sits in the billing block or the opening card, sharing space with the film’s own title treatment, so it has to stay legible at small sizes and in one colour. Websites, streaming tiles and social avatars add square and circular crops. For designers, the lesson is that a film-company mark is a system of formats rather than one logo: motion, print, packaging and screen each need their own version.

A spine number, a thin rule and an art department.

Criterion’s look is easiest to read on a shelf. In its 29 February 2024 profile, The New York Times Magazine described the features that unify the label’s DVD packaging: a catalogue number on the spine marking each title’s place in the collection, and a thin line drawn across the top of the cover, above which the words “The Criterion Collection” are set in letters with extra-wide spacing. The magazine reported that the filmmaker Benny Safdie once made his own imitation Criterion inserts by copying those features, and that when his and Josh Safdie’s Uncut Gems joined the collection it took spine No. 1101.

The spine numbers run in sequence across decades of releases. Wikipedia lists three Netflix productions given physical releases through Criterion: Roma as spine 1014 in 2020, followed by Marriage Story at 1038 and The Irishman at 1058. The numbering lets a buyer place any title against the rest of the catalogue at a glance.

The covers themselves have an art department behind them. The Times said Criterion’s visual language began to take shape in the early 1990s under Rebekah Audic, head of design from 1991 to 1994, who built up the art staff to show the power of the films through cover designs. Sometimes that meant searching every frame for a single image. For RoboCop, Audic told the magazine, the team had an aluminium letterpress plate cast and photographed it with a 4-by-5 camera, because a physical piece of metal gave the cover a feeling of aesthetic truth. When Wes Anderson’s films came to Criterion, the Times said, the designers drew on illustrations by his brother Eric Chase Anderson, and Anderson said Criterion covers tended to be more adventurous than what a studio would choose.

The restoration work behind each cover is also part of the identity. The magazine described Lee Kline, a mastering supervisor with three decades at the company, who learned from his mentor Maria Palazzola an approach that starts from the filmmaker’s intent, and who spent years repairing fire-damaged sections of Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy for a box set.

The company’s office has become a set of its own. Wikipedia says the Criterion Closet, a stockroom holding every title Criterion distributes, was made from a disused bathroom at its Manhattan headquarters, and that since 2010 Criterion has posted videos of directors and actors choosing films from its shelves, with Guillermo del Toro as the opening guest. The Times described the director Todd Field and the actor Cate Blanchett visiting the closet in October 2022. Wikipedia says that for its fortieth anniversary in 2024 Criterion fitted out a delivery van as a mobile version of the closet.

For a design guide, the Criterion Collection shows how a numbering system and one consistent strip of type can hold together many commissioned covers, each free to look different. Compare Mubi, an early streaming partner, and A24, which Deadline described in 2021 as a New York-based independent. For this guide we use disc black, spine grey and silver with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep The Criterion Collection’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.