Saul Bass

After looking at Polish poster art I though I would look at America for some alternative research into movie posters. I quickly came across a chap called Saul Bass. Saul is a modern graphic designer who was born in New York in 1920 who began to design film posters in the early 1950s and also designed film title designs.

Saul started out as a well praised graphic designed who studied at the Art Students League in New York and Brooklyn College and learnt under Gyorgy Kepes who then went onto work as a freelance graphic designer. Saul opened his own studio in 1950 which is where Preminger asked him to design the poster for his 1954 movie, Carmen Jones. Impressed by the result, Preminger asked Bass to create the film’s title sequence too. Saul Bass went onto deigning the titles for two 1955 movies: Robert Aldrich’s The Big Knife, and Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch.

Saul's talents did not go un-noticed and later in 1955 he designed the opening title sequence for the drugs movie 'The Man with the Golden Arm', before then projectionists would only pull back the curtains in cinemas after the 'boring' title scequence for the start of the movie.

Saul also worked with Alfred Hitchcock in 1958 for his film Vertigo to design Alfred's first title sequence. This involved a close up of a ladies face and zooming in on her eye before the screen spins into a spiral as a bloody colour red soaks the screen. Saul did further work for Hitchcock including 'North by Northwest' in 1959.

Saul Bass' other famous work included 1961’s 'Walk on the Wild Side' and the adrenalin-laced motor racing sequence in 1966’s Grand Prix. This lead Saul onto directing a series of shorts culminating in 1968’s Oscar-winning 'Why Man Creates' and finally realised his ambition to direct a feature with 1974’s 'Phase IV'.

When Saul Bass died the New York Times hailed him as "the minimalist auteur who put a jagged arm in motion in 1955 and created an entire film genre…and elevated it into an art."