Saul Bass is the Visionary Designer Who Transformed Cinema

Saul Bass was an American graphic designer and Oscar winner, best known for his designs for the title sequences of films.

Saul Bass (May 8, 1920 – April 25, 1996) was a graphic designer, film title sequence designer, and director from the United States whose unique technique revolutionized an entire genre in the 1950s. Bass created the poster for Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List in 1993, the same year as Age of Innocence which he did a title sequence for as well.

Saul Bass had the ability to capture and present the essence of a film in a way that he could convey the atmosphere and premise of what the film was supposed to bring in an opening sequence that lasted a few minutes.
Under his influence, title sequence became an extension of film as art form in its ability to symbolize and summarize what the audience was to experience.

Saul bass’s opening sequences in amazing films such as Psycho, Casino, Cape Fear, Seven Years and The Itch are legendary.

His work on Seven Years and The Itch intro sequence gained widespread recognition and established him as a major player in the film industry.

His career really took off in 1954 when he got a job as a poster designer for Otto Preminger. Otto Preminger, initiated a collaboration that would last for twenty-five years and a dozen films.. From then on, Bass created titles, posters and advertising campaigns for more than 40 films by well-known directors, . His best-known works include a series of memorable posters and title sequences for films like Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm and Anatomy of a Murder.

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saul bass posters_ the man with the golden arm_ anatomy of a murder

Prior Saul Bass’ groundbreaking poster for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), movie posters were dominated by juxtaposing depictions of key scenes and characters. On the other hand, Bass’s posters generally produced simpler, symbolic designs that graphically expressed the vital components of the film.

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He developed a simplified, symbolic design that communicated central, essential elements of a film. In the middle of the century, Bass was the king of the movie poster title sequence. One of the reasons Bass’s posters are so memorable is their simplicity, as they use only a few bold colors and focus on a particular angular, sparse image.

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Bass developed a recognizably minimalist style that managed to produce an entire film in just a few seconds of satisfying content, often accompanied by clever film posters.

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He was part of a small panel of title designers, along with others such as Friz Freleng and Maurice Binder, who initiated the new concept of opening the film. A century ago, Saul Bass, the most innovative and influential graphic designer in the history of cinematography, was responsible for some of the most iconic movie posters of all time, spawning the pre-movie title sequence as we know it today, as he continued his corporate and commercial work, and was in a unique position to uphold the broken studio system of the 1950s and 1960s to keep creative people in place. He opened his own design studio in 1952.

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During the 1960s, filmmakers and producers commissioned Bass to create title sequences for their films and conceptualize and storyboard important events and sequences inside them.
In five films, Bass holds the unique title of “visual consultant” or “pictorial consultant.”
Bass worked as a “visual consultant” on Spartacus (1960), designing significant aspects of the gladiator school and storyboarding the last confrontation between slaves and Romans.
Grand Prix (1966) director John Frankenheimer had Bass plot, direct, and edit all but one of the racing sequences for his picture.
Bass directed the prologue, storyboarded the opening dance scene, and designed the concluding title sequence for West Side Story (1961).

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saul bass storyboard panels — Storyboards by Saul Bass

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Bass also designed famous logos for companies such as the Bell Telephone logo (1969) and successor AT&T globe (1983). Other well-known designs were Continental Airlines (1968), Dixie (1969) and United Airlines (1974).

Bass directed the sci-fi thriller feature picture Phase IV (1974) and wrote, produced, and directed many short films, in addition to his design work.

His Why Man Creates (1968) was nominated for an Academy Award for best short-subject documentary.

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The average cinema-goer assumes that the image editing comes from the director, but in many cases, the title designer is responsible for the image editing of the title sequence. As a result, many title designers consider themselves, at least nominally, amateur filmmakers. Occasionally, Bass would direct or advise on live-action shoots of movie title sequences, as he did with the filmography company he ran with Seth Kleinberg.