How do you set the tone for the sprawling world of Game of Thrones in just under 120 seconds? Ask Angus Wall. For the past six years, the designer—who created the HBO drama’s striking main-title sequence—has been devising new bits of opening animation for Thrones to coincide with the drama’s plot progression. Viewers know within the first two minutes of an episode whether they’re heading to Winterfell, King’s Landing, or beyond the Wall—where the night is truly dark and full of terrors. This year, the show’s plot has taken fans to new and long-absent locations including Dragonstone, Oldtown (where Sam studies to be a maester), and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, which means the sequence itself has also had to evolve.

“Part of our initial pitch was to create unique journeys through the map for each episode that required them,” Wall explains. “So every season when there’s a new location added to the story line, we get the initial concept art from production, and then we go to work.”

Wall is too humble to admit that his own work on Game of Thrones put his company, the design firm Elastic, on the map—but it has. Word of mouth spread since he won an Emmy for outstanding main-title design in 2011, and now these sequences have become a crucial part of Elastic’s D.N.A. On top of advertorial work, like producing the Comic-Con teaser for the Pacific Rim sequel and these viral videos for Batman v Superman, Wall’s team has collectively designed main titles for Westworld, American Gods, True Detective, The Night Manager, and The Crown—and that’s merely a surface-level rundown of Elastic’s prestigious and lengthy résumé.

“Game of Thrones is still referenced more so than anything that is more recent, even like, Westworld or True Detective,” Jennifer Sofio Hall, Elastic’s managing director, notes. “It was an incredibly iconic piece of entertainment. I think it reinvigorated the main-title category for the Emmys, and everything else.”

Planted on the corner of Broadway and Cloverfield Boulevard in Santa Monica, Elastic’s headquarters are splashed with prismatic hues and bold graffiti—offering a spray of color to the otherwise muted neighborhood, just as the design firm livens up the small screen on everything from HBO’s The Leftovers and The Young Pope to Netflix’s Daredevil and Iron Fist.