saul

Bass

design byben wisecup

Saul Bass

Saul Bass was a graphic designer best known for his designs of film title sequences. Bass was born in 1920 in the Bronx in New York City. He was a very creative child who spent much of his time draw-ing.Bass studied at the Art Students League in Manhattan and then under Gyorgy Kepes. Kepes in-troduced Bass to László Moholy-Nagy’s Bauhaus style and also to Russian Constructivism. While in school Bass worked as an assistant in the art department at the New York office of Warner Bros. Bass then worked as an apprentice with Manhattan firms before deciding to freelance on his own. Frustrated with constraints in New York, Bass moved to Los Ange-les in 1946. He worked as an art director at Buchanan and Com-pany, an advertising agency. He opened his own studio in 1952, working mostly in ad-vertising, which would later be named Saul Bass & Associates.

Eventually Otto Preminger asked Bass to design the poster for his 1954 film Carmen Jones. After be-ing impressed by the poster design, Preminger asked Bass to design the movie’s titles as well.After Carmen Jones, Bass was offered jobs to do titles for two more films in 1955: The Big Knife by Robert Aldrich and The Seven Year Itch by Billy Wilder. Bass’ next collaboration with Prem-inger would prove to be the film that changed the way film titles were viewed forever.In 1955 Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm opened with a title sequence by Bass that would match the sensation of the film’s heroin addict main subject played by Frank Sinatra. Bass chose an arm to be the central image of the opening, twisted in a way to allude to the struggles of a drug addict. Bass chose not to use the legend-ary Frank Sinatra in the titles, re-lying instead on the power of his twisted arm imagery to set the tone of the movie that is to follow. The film reels of The Man with the Golden Arm had a note with them telling film projectionists to open the curtains before the titles. Previous to Bass’ pioneering work, film titles

had been so boring that projection-ists hadn’t bothered to open the curtains until after they had ended. Preminger considered the titles an integral part of his film, and want-ed his audience to see them in the same way.Bass had an ability to distill a movie down to its most essential elements and represent them in his titles. For this reason many consider his work on films such as Anatomy of a Mur-der and Walk on the Wild Side to be unequaled by Hollywood in their concept and execution.Bass worked on film titles from 1955 until his death in 1996.

The Man with the Golden Arm Poster(1955)

opposite: Anatomy of a Murder Poster (1959)

He did titles for Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese, among others. Bass did the title work for 1990’s Goodfellas, which began a multi-film relationship with Scorsese. As technology advanced, Bass moved to computers to aid in his creation of titles, including his work on Scorsese’s Casino in 1995.Although Bass is arguably best known for his role in revolution-izing film titles, he was extremely prolific and successful in a number of different creative roles. He was a photographer, illustrator, art di-rector, designer, and filmmaker to name a few.Bass himself didn’t consider his ver-satility as good or bad, and said in regards to it: “For myself what mat-ters is doing work that interests me and doing it as well as I can.”Logo design and corporate design is another area where we can see Bass’ conceptual strength. Bass cre-ated logos for Bell and following its breakup AT&T, Continental Air-lines, Dixie, Girl Scouts of the USA, Kleenex, Minolta, Quaker Oats, United Airlines, United Way, and Warner Communication.

Many of these logos are still in use today, decades after Bass designed them, and they are still as relevant as ever.Bass said he felt corporations are “almost as fascinating as people.” Again for his ability to distill to an essence, Bass’ logos are memorable and successful. He said, “Every company I have ever worked for has a unique aura. The secret and the chal-lenge are learning how to ex-press and make comprehensible the subtext.” Bass obviously held the ability to grasp this aura and relay it in visual form.Bass work with films did not stop with titles. He also directed sequences in feature films and directed a number of short films as well. He also directed a fea-ture-length film titled Phase IV in 1974. Phase IV is little known to most people out of Bass’ large body of work. It is a visually striking science-fiction film rely-ing more on its visuals than on dialog to convey a story.

The Shining Poster (1980)

Quaker Oats Logo

In addition to both directing and creating title sequences Bass cre-ated movie posters for a large number of films. Some of them include The Man with the Golden Arm, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Westside Story, and The Shining. Bass also created the Poster for the 1984 Olympic Games held in Los Angeles.Saul Bass was a minimalist who didn’t clutter his design with un-necessary elements. Everything he did had a reason behind it. This al-lowed his work to stand on its own and stand the test of time. Film titles he created in the 1950s are still revered for their originality and vi-sion today. His conceptualizing and execution was superb. He crafted logos with expert use of negative space.Bass wore many hats as a creative individual and wore them all argu-ably equally well.

To look back through his body of work is to look back at an amaz-ingly talented designer’s career that spans decades in a cohesive man-ner. There is nothing that you can look at and say it doesn’t belong.One of the greatest signs of Bass’ passion for his work is the fact that he continued to design until he died. His work for Scorsese’s Ca-sino came out in 1995. It was less than six months later that Saul Bass succumbed to non-Hodgkins lym-phoma in Los Angeles, leaving be-hind a legacy that any artist would be proud of.

Vertigo Poster (1958)

AT&T Logo (1984)

Girl Scouts Logo (1978)

saul

Bass

design byben wisecup