If you haven't already watched the reboot of Battlestar Galactica which ran from 2004-2009, then you are missing out on some of the most iconic, well written tv-scifi ever (in my opinion). As well as being well-written and well-made, it also features some incredible design and aesthetic choices. One of the first things I noticed when watching was the decision to make all sheets of paper on the show octagonal. Standard, letter-sized papers would have all four corners trimmed off to make a cool looking, functionally terrible octagon. In real life, this would be an enormous waste of paper, and probably creates all kinds of problems with binding, packing, shipping … plus all those little triangles of paper which would (hopefully) be gathered and recycled.

The same choice applied to books, binders, clipboards, tickets, pretty much anything printed, and also influenced other aspects of the show like monitor shapes, and other pieces of tech.

It's an amazing design choice, super subtle but extremely immersive - you know immediately you are watching BSG, even if you don't consciously register the shape of paper in the show … similar to seeing bright, one-color uniforms in a show like Star Trek.

Apparently, the pilot's director made the choice to cut the corners of all papers on the show because he was tired of working within the pilot's limited budget, and kept being asked to cut corners. If true, he probably set up a whole universe of extra work when the show got the green light.

In his response, the Battlestar Galactica showrunner didn’t name the person who came up with this idea. However, the person in question is Michael Rymer, the television veteran who directed the miniseries and helped establish much of the show’s early aesthetics. He came up with the idea of cutting off the edges of the paper, though he was less interested in making a cool aesthetic choice and more interested in thumbing his nose at the network.

As the story goes, Rymer was annoyed at having to work within the budgetary constraints of the SyFy network, so he had all of the edges of the paper cut off for the miniseries. It was a not-so-subtle form of protest: the director was annoyed that he had to keep cutting corners while filming, so he ended up very literally cutting the corners off all of the onscreen documents. It’s pretty funny as gags go, but by the end of the series, nobody was laughing anymore.