Digital Kitchen has earned two 2026 Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Main Title Design, recognized for its work on Apple TV’s Smoke and MGM+ and Prime Video’s Spider-Noir.
The dual nominations spotlight two very different approaches to title design. Smoke turns fire, ash and reverse chronology into a forensic puzzle, while Spider-Noir uses fractured imagery, practical effects and psychological noir to place viewers inside the deteriorating perspective of its central character.
Recognized for Smoke are Digital Kitchen’s Mason Nicoll, director; Peter Pak, art director; Rachel Brickel, art director and cinematographer; Ana Criado, designer; Simon Chan, animator; and Justin West, editor.
The Spider-Noir nomination recognizes Nicoll, director; Andrew Julien, art director and editor; Arik Weiss, designer; Pak, art director; John Van Unen, 3D artist; Daniel Duda and Christian Arnsparger, animators; and Brickel, cinematographer.
For Smoke, Digital Kitchen quite literally set the title sequence on fire. Created for Dennis Lehane’s Apple TV crime drama, the sequence unfolds as a forensic puzzle in reverse. A cigarette, police badge, potato chip, VHS tapes, handwritten journals and other story-connected objects burn in real time before seemingly reconstructing themselves from ash and flame.
The concept reflects the opposing forces at the center of the series, starring Taron Egerton and Jurnee Smollett as an arson investigator and detective pursuing two serial arsonists. One side studies destruction to understand it, while the other is driven by the compulsion to create it.
Digital Kitchen captured the burns practically, building a fire-safe set and experimenting with butane torches, borosilicate glass and different materials to see how each would ignite, melt and collapse on camera. Set to music by Thom Yorke, the finished sequence transforms combustion into a slow-moving visual investigation.
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Spider-Noir heads somewhere entirely different. Created for the MGM+ and Prime Video series starring Nicolas Cage, the six-month production immerses viewers in the fractured perspective of Ben Reilly, an aging private investigator forced to confront his past as a masked vigilante.
Manhattan splinters through broken mirrors, shifting perspectives and flickering light as the sequence moves deeper into paranoia, mystery and transformation.
Drawing on classic film noir and early 20th-century surrealist photography, Digital Kitchen combined practical cinematography, live-action material, 2D animation and stylized 3D environments to create its version of 1930s New York. Watch below:
Historical photography from Berenice Abbott’s Changing New York helped ground the setting, while mirrors were physically broken and reshaped to create distorted reflections and patterns that subtly evoke spider webs.
As the sequence progresses, reality becomes increasingly unstable, placing viewers inside a character caught between identities. Original music by KIRBY drives the descent.
Together, the two nominations demonstrate the range of Digital Kitchen’s approach to title design. Smoke reconstructs destruction in reverse, while Spider-Noir fractures reality itself.
The nominations also continue the studio’s long relationship with the Television Academy. Digital Kitchen has previously been nominated for Outstanding Main Title Design for Narcos, House, Path to 9/11 and True Blood, and won the category for Dexter, Six Feet Under and Godfather of Harlem. Its work on the first two seasons of Westworld also earned consecutive Emmy wins for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media.
The 78th Annual Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards will be held Sept. 5 and 6 in Los Angeles.
