08 April 2026.
TV Series Every Graphic Designer Should Watch
Some people watch TV series to switch off their brains. Then there are graphic designers, who—even while “relaxing”—are unconsciously analyzing grids, color palettes, and visual hierarchies.
It’s visual training.
A graphic designer doesn’t watch TV series like everyone else. They deconstruct them. Read them. Mentally archive them as references. They look beyond characters and plot, noticing palettes, visual hierarchies, rhythm, typography, and composition. Most importantly, they recognize that design is not decoration—it is language.
From this perspective, certain television series are, in every sense, visual education.
Here’s a short list of four must-watch TV series for graphic designers.
1.MAD MEN
Advertising as the Grammar of Desire
Set in the 1960s, a brilliant New York advertising executive navigates iconic campaigns, ambition, and personal crises. A series about desire, identity, and the birth of modern branding.
Genere: Drama / Period Drama
Before feeds and pixels, there was cigarette smoke in boardrooms and the sound of well-sold concepts. Mad Men is an elegant (and slightly cynical) lesson in how persuasive imagery is created. Every frame feels like a visual from a print advertising campaign: central subjects, static compositions, and colors that never shout but subtly influence. Here, design is not decoration—it is narrative strategy.
- Static and often symmetrical compositions
- “Poster-like” framing with central subjects and immediate readability, reminiscent of 1960s advertising layouts
- Desaturated color schemes with strong accents (red, orange)
Available on: Prime Video (rental/purchase), Apple TV
2. ABSTRACT: THE ART OF DESIGN
The Process Matters as Much as the Result
Genre: Documentary Series / Design
A journey into contemporary design thinking.
If design had an official magazine, this series would be its special edition. Real designers reveal the backstage of creative thinking.
Abstract focuses on that beautiful and often ambiguous territory that comes before the final outcome: the process. Sketches, failures, revisions, and sudden insights.
It’s almost reassuring to remember that even the work of the world’s most celebrated designers is built on imperfect attempts—except that some of those attempts eventually become icons.
- Editing structured like a dynamic portfolio
- Extensive use of close-ups and details that emphasize textures, materials, and mark-making
- Transitions that mimic the creative process, from sketch to final output
Available on: Netflix
3. BLACK MIRROR
The Best UI Is Invisible
Genre: Sci-Fi / Thriller / Anthology
Each episode presents a technologically driven future that feels disturbingly close to reality—a reflection on the relationship between humans, media, and technology.
Every episode is a miniature exhibition of speculative design.
The interfaces in Black Mirror are not designed to feel spectacularly futuristic; they are designed to feel believable. And that is exactly what makes them unsettling. Neutral typography, minimalist layouts, and nearly invisible interactions.
You barely notice the design—and that’s the point.
It’s UX design applied to our collective fear of the future.
- Diegetic interfaces (embedded within the scene) that are never intrusive but always readable
- Neutral typography, often geometric sans-serif fonts
- Limited color palettes with strong visual consistency within each episode
Available on: Netflix
4. SEVERANCE
Corporate Aesthetics as Emotional Design
Genre: Sci-Fi / Psychological Thriller
A company surgically separates employees’ work memories from their personal ones. The result is an elegant and unsettling corporate dystopia.
Few series have transformed minimalism into such a powerful narrative language. In Severance, minimalism even stops being reassuring. Branding is applied to psychology in an exercise of visual control: empty spaces, cold colors, and geometries that seem designed to reduce human identity to a corporate variable.
Here, design becomes discipline.
- Minimalism used as a psychological language
- Vast empty spaces that emphasize isolation
- A strict, cold palette dominated by green, blue, and white
- Repetitive visual grids that create intentional monotony
Available on: Apple TV+
Zach Cherry, Britt Lower, John Turturro, and Adam Scott in a scene from Severance.