make Beautiful things even if nobody cares - Saul Bass
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“Design is thinking made visual”
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aul Bass was an American Graphic designer. He was born and raised in the 20’s in New York City, where he went on to study at the Art Students League of New York, and was influenced by Bauhaus. He later moved to California in the 40’s and worked for a few years on advertising projects and logo designs. Some of his best known logos are for AT&T, Bell, Quaker Oats, and Warner Bros (a).He made wonderful logos but became interested in working in the film industry, making that the focus of his career. Bass made a poster for the 1954 film Carmen Jones (b.) that received a lot of attention. This led him to make more movie posters and he even started doing title sequences too. His career took off and Bass became one of the top designers in the film industry. His designs were simplistic, often working with symbolism, geometric silhouettes, and bright or bold colors. Some of his movie posters include West Side Story, Vertigo, The Shining, and many more. He also illustrated a children’s book, Henri’s Walk to Paris by Leonore Klein(c.), a few years before he passed away in 1996.
a.
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Saul Bass : Life and Early Work
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b.
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A
d.
t the time most movie posters had a lot going on. They often were filled with many different colors and typefaces, which made them hard to read. Also lots of posters included images of the actors. Saul Bass brought something different to the table. As shown in his posters for Vertigo (d.), Such Good Friends (e.), and The Man with the Golden Arm (f.), he suggested ideas and peaked interests rather than nearly giving away the movie or focusing on unimportant aspects. He’d use a minimal approach, working with a limited color pallet, often black, white and one or two bright colors. Bass worked with negative space which made his posters easy to look at, and he used simple graphics to get the message across. His work was bold yet clean and refreshing, and got viewers interested in the films. Bass thought outside of the box, and his clever creations continue to inspire designers and directors to this day.
e.
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Changing the World of Film
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f.
ust like his posters Bass changed the world of film title sequences. He worked on popular films by Otto Preminger, Martin Scorsese, Alfred Hitchcock and even helped direct the shower scene from Psycho. Title sequences before were often a boring use of words and credits that led into a movie and sometimes didn’t even relate to the film. Saul however took aspects of the films and his posters and then animated them to summarize what the audience was about to see. He used imagery, type, and music to set the tone and foreshadow the film, engaging the audience before the movie could start. Bass believed that an audience should be involved with a film from the first frame. He stated “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.”
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Impact on an individual
B
efore I had heard of Saul Bass his work stood out to me. When I was younger I watched West Side Story a countless number of times and I remember the intro (g.) stuck with me. It felt long but I never skipped over it because it really was like a part of the movie. It was just a simple arrangement of vertical lines on the screen and the color of the background changes to fit the tone of the music, eventually an image emerges from the lines and you see the city of New York. I always thought it was clever because the use of lines is so simple you can’t tell what the image is right away, yet it draws you in, tells a story, and effortlessly leads into the film. It just shows how good Saul was at his job. His goal was to engage the audience from the start and that’s exactly what he did for people of all ages. This passion of his encouraged creativity and whole new field of possibilities for the industry, and I believe it always will.
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Designed and written by Emma van Lohuizen, GD102 Design Basics: Typography and Image, BFA Spring 2020, Charles Melcher.
Composed in Cambria designed by Jelle Bosma and Freelancer designed by Don Marciano Published to issuu.com. Copyright: Š2020 Emma van Lohuizen, Maine College of Art, Portland, Maine