"I am consistently aware
of the influence Bass has had on contemporary film poster designers
and on the design world at large. Unashamed references to original Bass
designs abound. The poster campaign for Spike Lee's 1995 film 'Crooklyn'
offers a humorous and clever reworking of Bass' graphics for 'Anatomy
of A Murder'. Today Bass' visual style is echoed everywhere from all
forms of advertising to the most prestigious of web site designs." - Tony Nourmand
Alongside with Paul Rand Saul Bass could be referred to as one of the fathers of graphic design. The style and the ethos of turning concepts and profiles to anonymous, timeless symbols that pass through the core idea and brand in stead of using predictable images is the founding idea of logo and symbol design.
His style is so copied around the world in different mediums it has become mainstream.
In the 60s Saul Bass' genius extended to logos as a logical continuum to his work with film. Like with films he found a way to describe the corporates with simple, meaningful symbols instead of predictable images. His perfectionist drive and his aspiration to always be at
the vanguard of all forms of design have bequeathed a legacy of some
of the most potent symbols of the 20th Century.
The original 1978 design by Saul Bass and the 2003 version (designer unknown).
His timeless, minimalistic style still does it's deeds to this day, many of his logos are still in use, if not in their original form, at least as modernised versions. For example Minolta's logo, designed in 1978 looks like it might have been designed anywhere between today and 1950'. Saul Bass created timeless classics that define the modern logo.
“My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the
prime underlying core of the film’s story, to express the story in some
metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience,
so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an
emotional resonance with it” -Saul Bass.
Saul Bass is most wellknown for his work with Hollowood films opening titles.
One
of Bass' most famous pieces are the opening titles of Otto Preminger's
The Man With the Golden arm. The film tells the story of a jazz
musician's struggle to overcome his heroin addiction. Bass had
previously worked on Preminger's Carmen Jones film poster. Preminger
was so impressed with Bass' work he asked Bass if he could make the
opening sequence as well. The potential was obvious and Bass was asked to
work on another Preminger's film: The Man With the Golden Arm.
Preminger wanted his audience to see The Man with the Golden Arm’s titles as an integral part of the film. Until then, the lists of cast and crew members which passed for movie
titles were so dull that projectionists only pulled back the curtains to
reveal the screen once they’d finished.
The
topic of the film was a taboo in the 50s. Bass decided to make the
title's to match the controversial subject by making a paper cut arm as a
central symbol for the title's. As expected, the title's were a
sensation and made Saul Bass the first acknowledged opening title
artist and made opening titles an art form.
Saul Bass has a very distinctive graphic style in his animations. For example the titles of Vertigo, Around the World in Eighty Days and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World raise no question about who is behind them. Martin Scorsese once described his approach as creating: "an emblematic
image, instantly recognisable and immediately tied to the film"
In the early 50s film publicity was usually based around the celebrity of the actors. Bass instead developed a graphic language which brought together modern design, music and film. One distinctive feature was the reduction of graphic elements to a minimum, as with the simple paper cut-outs used in The Man with the Golden Arm and Anatomy of a Murder.
Saul Bass' style is very symbol oriented. Like in The Man With the Golden Arm Bass took the heroin addict's arm, a very powerful symbol and built the whole graphical style and the storytelling of the titles around it. The symbol was so powerful the opening titles created a new genre of art.
Because of his ability to capture the essence of a film into powerful symbols and minimalistic graphics Saul Bass still remains as one of the most famous if not the most famous opening title designer of all time.
Saul Bass is an American graphic designer and filmmaker. He is best known for his design on animated motion picture title sequences.
Saul Bass' career included collaboration with some of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers, Alfred Hitchcock, Staley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese to name a few.
Saul Bass was the first one to make opening titles a piece of film art that not only introduces the cast but also sets the mood for the film. Saul Bass' innovation turned opening titles from a boring necessity to an interesting and important part of the film.
Saul
Bass was born in New York on May 8th 1920 and studied Graphic Art at
Brooklyn College, NY before moving to Los Angeles in 1946. Bass was
a pioneer of the pared down graphic, favouring minimalist symbolic images,
which has been in vogue since he began designing for the film industry
in the early 1950s.
Bass was a wellknown graphic designer even before his career with film. Alongside the his filmwork he carried working with more traditional graphic design such as logos and movie posters. He is responsible for some of the best-remembered, most iconic logos
in North America, including both the Bell Telephone logo and
successor AT&T globe, Minolta and United Airlines.
