Annie Atkins

Annie Atkins is a Welsh/Irish graphic designer and prop maker for film and television. She is known for her graphic design work in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and has gone on to work with director Wes Anderson on Isle of Dogs (2018) and The French Dispatch (2021).

Early life

Atkins grew up in Dolwyddelan in Northern Wales. Her mother was an artist and her father a graphic designer.^[1] Atkins graduated with a degree in visual communications from Ravensbourne University London.^[2][3] After graduation, she worked as an art director in the advertising agency McCann-Erickson in Reykjavík, Iceland.^[2][4] In 2007, she enrolled in University College Dublin's^[5] master in film production program after losing enthusiasm for her work at McCann-Erickson, saying “I thought I’d leave design completely, that I’d study film and be a camera operator or a technician, and then I found this whole other world of design.”^[2]

Career

After graduating from University College Dublin, she worked as a designer on the third season of the BBC costume drama The Tudors in 2007. As the role was broadly defined, she had varying responsibilities, such as working as a stonemason, signwriter and scribe, and prop maker. After The Tudors, Atkins remained in Dublin and bounced around film jobs.^[2][3][6]

Atkins was lead graphic designer on The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). The film won the Academy Award for Best Production Design at the 87th Academy Awards.^[7]

Atkins worked on her first video game project, "That's You!", in 2018.^[8]

She teaches workshops out of her studio in Dublin, Ireland.^[3][9]

Filmography

Television

Title	Notes
The Tudors	[3]
Camelot	[10]
Titanic: Blood and Steel	[11]
Vikings	[11]
Penny Dreadful	[12]

Film

Year	Title	Notes
2014	The Boxtrolls	[2]
2014	The Grand Budapest Hotel	[2]
2015	Bridge of Spies	[2]
2016	Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk	[13]
2018	Isle of Dogs	[2]
2021	The French Dispatch	[1]
2021	West Side Story	[1]

Bibliography

• To the Left of the Midwest (2008), self-published
• Fake Love Letters, Forged Telegrams, and Prison Escape Maps (2020)^[1]
• Letters from the North Pole: With Five Letters from Santa Claus to Pull Out and Read, Fia Tobig illustrator, (2024)