New York School Movement- Saul Bass

Saul Bass:

He was an American Graphic designer and was also an Academy Award winning film-maker which was widely known for his design of movie title sequences, movie posters and corporate logos.

During his 40 year old career, Bass worked for a lot of prominent film-makers. The list of film-makers varies from Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorcese. Among his famous title sequences there is the famous one known as Preminger’s the ‘Man with the Golden Arm’ which is about a heroin addicted jazz player.

Saul Bass also designed some of the most famous corporate logos in the North American TV including the Bell System logo during somewhere in 1969 and also the AT and T’s globe logo during 1983 after there was some chaos of the Bell System. He was also responsible for the logo of the Continental Airline and became one of the most  famous airline industry logos.

Bass’s philpsophy of his title sequences was to ‘’try to reach for a simple, visual phrase that tells you what the picture is all about and evokes the essence of the story”. Another philosopy he used to describe the thought about his title sequences was that the audience can see familiar parts of their world in a very strange and unfamiliar manner. A few examples of that theory are the sequences “Walk on the Wild Side” which describes a cat that in the sequence he becomes a predator. He had been designing title movie sequences for over 40 years and while doing it he used and implemented a lot of interesting techniques which ranged from cut-out animation which is seen in “Anatomy of a Murder” to fully animated short movies like the epilogue for the movie Around the World in 80 Days. There were also live action sequences which their purpose was mainly to be used for title sequences that contained prologues to their respective film and transitioned in their opening scenes.

When his career seemed to be reaching an end he was once more discovered by James L. Brooks and Martin Scorcese whou both of them grew up admiring his works done with the opening sequences. He created the titles sequences of Goodfellas, Cape Fear and Casino in collaboration with Scorcese and his second wife Elaine Makatura.

Socialpsychol.wordpress.com, (2015). Anatomy of a Murder | socialpsychol. [online] Available at: https://socialpsychol.wordpress.com/tag/anatomy-of-a-murder/ [Accessed 29 Jan. 2015].

Saulbass.org, (2015). Saul Bass. [online] Available at: http://saulbass.org/index.html#about [Accessed 29 Jan. 2015].