Alan Jeapes

Senior graphic designer, Alan Jeapes created the distinctive opening and closing titles for EastEnders, he worked closely with music composers Simon May and Leslie Osborne.

"I was aiming for simplicity in the titles, as the sequences for a long-running serial must be continually interesting without dating," he says. "The lower reaches of the River Thames, which have a close and continual link with the history of the East End, have such an eye-catching shape on the map, that the winding course, docks and tributaries become a graphic theme in themselves."

Alan Jeapes has spent over 50 years in the BBC's Graphic Design Department working on a wide range of drama, music and arts and documentary programmes, including Cockles, All Our Working Lives and Cold Warrior. He has won many craft awards for his BBC work, including a BAFTA Award for The Secret Army, an RTS Award for Colditz, an Emmy for the Beverley Sills music programme and Design and Art Directors' Awards for The Secret Army and Famous Gossips.

"In graphic design, you generally find that you are either producing a storyboard before the title music is composed, or working to a given music theme. But for EastEnders, the composers, whom I had met before on Cold Warrior, worked closely in tandem with myself - with Simon May at the piano, while I sketched out my visual ideas."