Who is Saul Bass ?

Who is Saul Bass ?

One of many Graphic Design heroes

Saul Bass was an Academy Award winning American designer best known for his work in Hollywood during the 60s and 70s while also making his presence felt in the corporate design world during the 80s. Bass was born and rasied in the Bronx New York. He studied at the Art Students League in Manhattan and was also mentored by New Bauhaus teacher Gyorgy Kepes. What make Bass an inspiration and a talent are his creativity on film posters, his innovations in film title sequences, and his indelible mark on corporate logos.

When Bass moved to Hollywood in the 40s he started his career by making film posters. Saul Bass coming from New York City, “cityscapes became a major inspiration for the work of Saul Bass. The grid structure in his design work mirrors the perpendicular lines of urban architecture” (Horak 228). When his big break came to design the poster for the noir film The Man With The Golden Arm in 1955 for director Otto Preminger; he used inspiration of cityscapes to design the poster. Movie posters at the time were filled with images from their respective films and incorporated many different design elements, but Bass did something very different by taking a minimal stance and using paper cut-outs in the style of Matisse to create enigmatic images. He went on to make posters for films including Vertigo, Anatomy of a Murder, and The Shining.

Bass made a name for himself by making posters, but what made him a legend was being the “Father of the Title Sequence”. Given creative control, he was able to design some of the most famous opening sequences for incredible films by big directors. Before Bass, films opened with static typography and background coupled with an overture of the score, but he gave title sequences a life and a story by incorporating kinetic type and motifs. For example, “in The Man with the Golden Arm, a jagged arm foreshadows the schizophrenic mindset of the main character” (Krasner 26).  In a few instances critics even said the opening sequence was better than its respective film. Bass worked with names like Preminger, Hitchcock, Kubrick, and toward the end of his life Scorsese.

A more subtle influence Bass had on design was in the corporate world. Using his vision for design and minimalism Bass created some of the most recognizable logos for companies, some of which are still used to this day: AT&T, Girl Scouts, Dixie, Warner Bros., Quaker Oats, and United Way, to name a few.

Saul Bass was a juggernaut in film, design, and art over the course of several decades. From humble beginnings in the Bronx to Academy Award winner in Hollywood, Bass made a name for himself. “Bass was multitalented and maintained that designers should never confine themselves to a single discipline” (Pipes 26). His creativity on film posters set him apart from his peers, his innovations in film title sequences made him a legend, and his work in defining corporate identity through logos solidified his place in history.