Saul Bass

Saul Bass, born May 8^th, 1920 and died April 25^th is an American graphic designer and academy award winning film maker, best known for his design in motion pictures title sequences, film posters and corporate logos.

His designs were most famous for using simple, geometric shapes and their symbolism. In which a single dominant image of a figure or object stands alone to deliver a powerful message. He hand drawn them to create a casual appearance with a sophisticated message. His ability to create such a powerful message with basic shapes makes the design very impressive.

During 40 year as a graphic designer he worked with Hollywood’s most prominent film makers in a film title sequences called ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’, a jazz musician who struggles to overcome his heroin addiction, a taboo subject in the mid-1950s on the film cover he designed the arm as the central image with the film’s title as the film features an animated, white on black paper cut out arm of a heroin addict.

He designed the arm and title from paper cut out and then scanned it afterwards. He makes the titles generally static, bold and getting close together. The black and blue papers as the backgrounds are dim because he used lower lightning effects on the film covers he scans.

Saul Bass also designed a film cover call’ ANATOMY OF A MURDER’, an American courtroom crime drama film produced and directed by Otto Preminger.  This was adapted by Wendell Mayes from the bestselling novel of the film written by Michigan Supreme Court justice john D. Voelker under the pen name Robert Traver. Voelker based the novel on a 1952 murder case in which he was the defence attorney. This was the first mainstream of Hollywood films to address sex and rape in a graphic design terms. 

This includes one of Saul Bass’s most celebrated film title sequences, a musical made and scored by Duke Ellington who played Pie Eye in the film was described to by a law professor as ‘probably the finest pure trial movie ever made. As similar to the title sequences called ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’ He also designed the black figure in a dying pose and the white title from paper cut out and takes a photo of this it afterwards. 

Most of Saul bass designs in his 1950’s films was that he designs the figure from shape and style from a human body or objects and used flat colors only to develop their shadow, they don’t have straight lines or are not neat and tide. Like ANATOMY OF A MURDER film cover the yellow and red papers as the backgrounds are dim, he use different type of color papers or is because he used lower lightning effects on the cameras from where he has taken a photo from a area. Bass made effective and memorable title sequences to create a new type of kinetic typography for his films and made them innovative. He made them generally static, bold and separate or close to each other for the films he design.