The adventures of an amateur games designer.: Visual Styles in The Prisoner

In this post I’ll be looking at the visual style that’s used in the 1967 television series, The Prisoner. Artists and designers started incorporating curves into art, architecture and products. Technological and scientific advances in the early 20^th century allowed shapes to be used in products that wouldn’t have been possible in the past. Designers and architects experimented with new forms and produced unique products and architecture such as Eames’ iconic chair.

Although a cliché, Eames’ chair is one of the most iconic and recognised designs ever and when talking about 20^th century modernist products, this Eames’ chair will always be at the top of the list.

In 1963 a Finnish furniture design named Eero Aarnio designed an unconventional and remarkable chair named the ball chair. The chair features in The Prisoner and is used by “Number 2”.

This chair and other similar chairs have been used in recent movies and television programmes such as “Men In Black”, where the egg chair was used. These chairs convey importance to the viewer; therefore if a character is sitting in the chair viewers will generally consider the characters to be of importance.

Another product that appears in The Prisoner is the lava lamp; it resembles “Rover” the white ball which returns captives back to the town, it also is constant reminder of the advances of technology in the 20^th century. The lava lamp was an item every boy wanted in his bedroom in the mid-late 1960’s, and another iconic modernist item of the 20^th century.