Saul Bass Saul Bass
Saul Bass Saul Bass Saul Bass
Mariana Silva
Column 1 West Side Story 1961 Exodus 1960 Vertigo 1958 Column 2 The Human Factor 1979 Love in the Afternoon 1957 Anatomy of a Murder 1959
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aul Bass, born in 1920, in New York, grew up studying part time at the Art Students League in New York and Brooklyn College. Eventually moving to Los Angeles, he opened his own studio as Saul Bass and Associates in 1946 . In la, Director and producer, Otto Preminger, invited Bass to design commercial posters for the movies Champion and Death of a Salesman. Before the innovative designs by Bass, movie posters were bland and emotionless (figure 1), with the typeface and composition of no relevance to the production. Film titles were strictly to advise viewers which movie was about to be presented. Impressed by his work, Preminger asked Bass to create a title sequence for Carmen Jones (figure 2), but it wasn’t until Preminger’s next project, The Man with the Golden Arm (figure 3), that Bass’s career was established. The movie about a struggling jazz musician played by Frank Sinatra was given a title sequence that features an animated black paper cutout of a heroin addict’s arm. Knowing that the arm was a symbol of addiction, Bass decided to use it rather than Frank Sinatra’s iconic face. The cutout arm caused a sensation as Bass reinvented movie titles as an art form. He showed the importance of ways to represent what films are about in a single image that would intrigue the viewers, showing that there is an art behind advertising. Bass was exceptional at identifying symbolism through a single image, proving that he could give away the plot with a striking design.
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Screen shot of Janet Leigh in Psycho, Sketches of the shower scene, and image of a theater playing Psycho when it first premiered in 1960.
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ass then began to hone his skills by creating an animated mini movie for Mike Todd’s 1956 Around the World in 80 Days. He began to dabble in the art of film, becoming comfortable with how it works and what it takes to create a production that requires a lot more people, time, equipment, and resources. In 1958 he created the title for Vertigo by Hitchcock and in 1959 he did North by Northwest. Working on the title of Psycho, where he was able to recreate the symbol of Norman Bates’ fractured psyche, Bass gained the trust of Hitchcock, allowing him to work on parts of the actual filming, specifically the famous shower scene with Janet Leigh. Bass began to create a lot more title sequences that were live action, in order for them to seamlessly blend into a movie opening scene. In the Grand Prix he depicts moments before the beginning race in Monte Carlo, in The Big Country he introduces the days it would take to travel on a stage coach to a remote Western town, and in The Victors he represents the twenty seven years between World War I and mid World War II; all of these openings were as captivating and important to the film as the first paragraph of a great novel.
Saul Bass
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oward the later years of Bass’s career, James L. Brooks rediscovered his work and also asked him to do a few of his title sequences. Martin Scorsese, who was an admirer of Bass’s film work growing up, also sought him out for a few projects, including the title sequence for Goodfellas in 1990, Cape Fear in 1991, The Age of Innocence in 1993, and even Bass’s last title sequence, Casino, in 1995. In his later work with Martin Scorsese, Bass began to move away from the optical techniques that he had coined and into a more computerized effect, creating extremely innovative work in the graphic design department. Saul Bass has left a legacy of incredible designs, and how visual aesthetics can create an important impact and story beyond them. After Bass’s death on April 25, 1996, his obituary stated that he was “the minimalist auteur who put a jagged arm in motion in 1955 and created an entire film genre… and elevated it into an art”. To this day, his work has been commemorated in many title sequences.
1955 The Seven Year Itch 1959 North by Northwest 1958 Vertigo 1966 Grand Prix 1990 Goodfellas 1991 Cape Fear 1995 Casino
Column 1 It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World 1963 In Harms Way 1965 Nine Hors To Rama 1963 Column 2 The Cardinal 1963 Such Good Friends 1971 Grand Prix 1966 Column 3 One, Two, Three 1961 Bunny Lake is Missing 1965 The Two of Us 1967 Column 4 North By Northwest 1959 Bonjour Tristesse 1958 The Magnificent Seven 1960
Saul Bass Bibliography Annyas, Christian. “Saul Bass Title Sequences | The Movie Title Stills Collection.” Movie Title Stills Collection Updates RSS. http://annyas.com/ screenshots/saul-bass-title-sequences/. Brown, David R. “Saul Bass.” AIGA. http:// www.aiga.org/medalist-saulbass/. Coles, Stephen. “Typographica.” Typographica RSS. September 4, 2007. http://typographica.org/on-typography/ saul-bass-website-and-hitchcock-font-areback/. Poynor, Rick. “Creative Review.” Saul Bass, A Life in Pictures 31, no. 11 (2011): 8. http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/ articles/67231119/saul-bass-life-pictures. “Saul Bass / - Design/Designer Information.” Saul Bass / - Design/Designer Information. http://design.designmuseum.org/design/ saul-bass.
Designed and written by Mariana Silva Composed in Avenir Next and Hitchcock, typefaces designed by Adrian Frutiger in 2004, and Matt Terich Printed in the U.S.:TOSHIBA colorMFP-X4 USA Copyright © 2015 Mariana Silva, Portland, Maine, Maine College of Art