Tuesday 6 December 2011

Saul Bass - An Influential Titles Designer



Saul Bass was a 'commercial' artist who was born in 1920 and died in 1996 aged 75. Saul Bass studied at the Arts Student League in New York but soon moved to Los Angeles to escape from creative constraints. There he became a freelance artist and designer. In 1950 Bass opened his own advertising studio. Saul Bass is best known for use of simple, geometric shapes and what they symbolise. Often, he would use a single dominant image which would stand alone to deliver a powerful message. Bass's posters and titles had an uncanny ability to capture the mood of a film with simple shapes and images. This was his preferred method of title design as opposed to using photographs of the films star, which he saw as boring. Saul Bass was influenced by constructivist and Bauhaus propaganda. Between the years of 1970 and 1986 Bass only created a handful of film title sequences.Below is his famous title sequence for The Man With The Golden Arm:

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