Saul Bass (1920 – 1996) is one of the most recognised graphic designers from the past century. He was famous for producing impressive and distinguished film posters and title sequences for some of the famous filmmakers in Hollywood, Otto Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese.
Before he started as a graphic designer, he studied at the Art Students’ League in Manhattan, New York, with a scholarship in 1936. After his study, Bass worked for Warner Bros as an assistant in the art department. Then he enrolled at Brooklyn college after joinning Blaine Thompson Company in 1944. He moved to LA in 1946 to work at Buchanan and Company which was another advertising agency and he was the art director there. Bass created his own studio in 1952 and called it Saul Bass & Associates in 1955. During that year, Bass’ name went famous with the motion title sequence he crated for Preminger’s “The Man With The Golden Arm”.
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In the title sequence of “The Man with The Golden Arm”, Bass simply just used a few white rectangular shapes with a san serif typography on a black background. However, those lines were leading audience’s eyes to look at what’s going on the screen. Since everything was on a black background, audience would be able to focus more on the credits of the movie. The last bit with the shape turning into an arm was a significant twist to the whole motion graphics. It also related to the title, “The Man with The Golden Arm”. Overall in the whole work, Bass gave the audience a feel of mysterious and full of surprises at the beginning of the movie. Continue reading
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