From the crawl to the cantina: how Star Wars was designed

The wild success of Star Wars often overshadows the vast creative effort that went into making it. A new book from Taschen explores how its characters, costumes, worlds and props were created

It’s been over 40 years since Star Wars burst into our lives, but the mania that surrounds it shows no sign of dying down. The original trilogy had a longlasting influence on filmmaking, and kickstarted a new creative era for Hollywood. But while a whole generation knows the stories by heart, less people are aware of the work of the conceptual designers and artists that shaped the films’ look and feel – doing everything from designing and building spaceships, to sketching out characters’ costumes.

Taschen’s The Star Wars Archives takes a deep delve into the original trilogy, with 300 image-heavy pages that go behind-the-scenes of the making of each film. Alongside this, author Paul Duncan has interviewed George Lucas, who shares a firsthand account of his early years and his time working on the Star Wars trilogy.