General Information

Saul was born on 8th May 1920 in Bronx, New York. He was an American graphic designer and academy award winning filmmaker, best known for his design of motion picture title sequences, film posters, and corporate logos .He graduated from James Monroe High School in Bronx and studied part-time at the Art Students League in Manhattan until attending night classes with Gyorgy Kepes at Brooklyn College. He began his time in Hollywood in the 1940's, designing print advertisements for films including Champion (1949), Death of a Salesman (1951) and The Moon Is Blue(1953), directed by Otto Preminger.

During his 40 year career he worked for some of Hollywood's most prominent filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. Among his most famous title sequences are the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addicts arm for Preminger's “The Man With The Golden Arm”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Bass
Wikipedia (2015)

Quotes

“There are three responses to a piece of design – yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.” (Milton Glaser - LogoMaker, 2012).

“The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring.” (Paul Rand - 99Designs, 2015).

" I want everything we do to be beautiful. I don't give a damn whether the client understands that that's worth anything, or the client thinks its worth anything, or whether it is worth anything. It's worth it to me. It's the way I want to live my life. I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares." (Saul Bass - LogoMaker, 2012).

“It’s through mistakes that you actually can grow. You have to get bad in order to get good.” (Paula Scher - gdusa, 2015).


"Failure is built into creativity...the creative act involves this element of 'newness' and 'experimental-ism', then one must expect and accept the possibility of failure." (Saul Bass - LogoMaker, 2015). 

Original Logos by Saul and their new redesigns

Company Logos - Saul Bass' and today's redesigns

http://annyas.com/saul-bass-logo-design-then-now/

Christian Annyas – international designer (2011)

 AT & T

 Celanese

 Continental

 Dixie

 Girl Scouts

 Lawry's foods

Minolta

Inspiration

The sequence that initially jumps to mind when thinking of animations that borrow from Bass' distinctive style is Catch Me If You Can. This is a movie set in the 1960's (when Saul Bass' popularity was at a high), so taking influence from him seems like a logical choice to make. Not only does this capture the look of some of his work, but it also sets out to achieve one of the things that Bass found the most important when creating a title sequence

“My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film’s story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it”

What Bass is saying is that each title sequence just isn't something pretty that acts as a way to showcase names, it is a unique opportunity to deliver another story to the audience. It could act as a prologue to the films narrative, a device to set the mood of the film or hint at plot twists that are only noticed when you watch it again (something that I find very satisfying), or a piece that runs alongside the main plot that sets the audience up for what is to come. Keeping this in mind, it is easy to see how important a well designed title sequence is for a film.

https://motional.net/articles/saul-bass-inspired-sequences

Motional (2015)

How he changed design

Saul's work changed peoples eye that much, they even created a google homepage in his name, and is still used even now on his birthday.

"Mr. Bass created entire art forms from seemingly artless banalities. He gave projectionists a reason to draw the curtains for a films opening credits. He breathed life into the sterile company logo."
He did what great designers do, he surreptitiously moved people. It is why his legacy lives on today, long after his passing 17 years ago. Despite many companies abandoning his work in favor of flashier redesigns, it is hard to deny Bass's lasting influence on the clean icons and minimalist visual designs permeating tech culture today.

"If its simple simple, its boring". "We try for the idea that is so simple that it will make you think and rethink." Bass once said.

(http://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Tech-Culture/2013/0508/How-Saul-Bass-changed-design)
Website name: The Christian Science Monitor (2013)

Timeline of important events

1920 Saul Bass is born in the Bronx district of New York

1936 Wins a scholarship to study at the Art Students' League in Manhattan

1938 Employed as an assistant in the art department of the New York office of Warner Bros

1944 Joins the Blaine Thompson Company, an advertising agency, and enrolls at Brooklyn College, where he is taught by the émigré Hungarian designer and design theorist Gyorgy Kepes

1946 Moves to Los Angeles to work as an art director at the advertising agency, Buchanan and Company

1952 Opens his own studio, named Saul Bass & Associates in 1955

1954 Designs his first title sequence for Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones

1955 Creates titles for Robert Aldrich’s The Big Knife and Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch. The animated sequence he devises for Preminger’s The Man with a Golden Arm causes a sensation

1956 Elaine Makatura joins the studio as an assistant

1957 Devises titles for Michael Anderson’s Around The World in 80 Days and Preminger’s Bonjour Tristesse

1958 Forges a new collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock by designing the titles for Vertigo. Works with the architects Buff, Straub & Hensman on the design of his home, Case Study House #20 in Altadena

1959 Creates the title sequences for Hitchcock’s North by Northwest and Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder

1960 First title commission for Stanley Kubrick, Spartacus, and the last for Hitchcock, Psycho

1962 Devises titles for Edward Dmytryk’s Walk on the Wild Side and directs his first short film, Apples and Oranges. Marries Elaine Makatura
1963 Stanley Kramer commissions Bass to create titles for It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

1966 Directs the racing sequences and devises the titles for John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix

1968 Wins an Oscar for the short film Why Man Creates and develops a corporate identity programme for the Bell System telephone company. Creates an installation for the Milan Triennale, which is cancelled after a student occupation

1973 Designs the corporate identity of United Airlines

1974 Directs his first feature film Phase IV

1980 Designs the poster for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and devises the corporate identity of the Minolta camera company

1984 Creates a poster for the Los Angeles Olympic Games

1987 James L. Brooks persuades Bass to return to title design by creating the opening sequence of Broadcast News

1990 Begins a long collaboration with Martin Scorsese by creating the titles for GoodFellas

1991 Devises the titles for Scorsese’s Cape Fear and a poster for the 63rd Academy Awards. Bass designs the Academy Awards poster for the next five years.

1993 Creates the title sequence for Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence and a poster for Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List

1995 Designs titles for Scorsese’s Casino

1996 Saul Bass dies in Los Angeles of non-Hodgkins lymphoma

http://design.designmuseum.org/design/saul-bass
Design.designmuseum.org (2015)

Presentation