Saul Bass

 

Saul Bass

 

Saul bass is a film and classic logo designer. He is know mainly for his use of geometric shapes and their symbolism in title sequences and posters.

In the majority of his title sequences there is a single dominant image that stands alone to deliver a message, for example in Westside Story there is an image of lines that symbolise a city which gives a message to the audience about what the film will be about.

 

Early Career

Saul Bass studied design at Art Students League in Manhattan, after this he took an apprenticeship with Manhattan design films and Bass worked as a freelance graphic designer afterwards.

 

Bass began his career in design with designing posters for films which capture the mood of a film with simple shapes and images. These were used before title sequences were a big thing and could be easily experimented with.

Saul Bass often hand drew his designs to create a casual appearance whilst being packed with a sophisticated message.

 

In his career Bass also did collaborations with famous designers such as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. With these designers he learnt and went onto animate and direct title sequences with them. He ended up creating over 60 different title sequences and inspired many modern day title sequences and designers in which they follow Saul Bass' initial idea of giving a visual metaphor or story through a simple design or view that will intrigue the audience to continue watching the film,