Design is thinking made visual - The Genius of Saul Bass

Saul Bass is one of those names you know but whose work you might not immediately be able to name. His work is also the kind of work that, once you see it, you realise you know all too well. Particularly if you're a film-buff. His work is singular, utterly unique; he was a visual and conceptual genius. Before we go any further, here's the proof:

"Symbolize and Summarize" were the words Bass lived by. Before Bass, movie posters were all about luring an audience into the darkened theatre with nothing but a painted or photographic picture of the film's star. But Bass broke tradition for good in the fifties and sixties by utilising a jagged and bold style with broken type letters that spring from the posters he designed.
And Bass was about more than visually arresting poster design. He was responsible for some stunning opening title credit sequences, the like of which are often imitated for films that aspire to that Bass 'vibe' that kicked off movies such as The Man With The Golden Arm, Anatomy of A Murder, Psycho, Oceans Eleven or Vertigo.

Otto Preminger's The Man With The Golden Arm - a movie about a jazz musician's battle to overcome heroin addiction - caused Bass to come up with a title sequence and poster featuring the arm as it's central image, implying the intravenous heroin angle. When Preminger's movie arrived at US movie theatres in 1955, a note was stuck on the cans - "Projectionists – pull curtain before titles".
Until then, the lists of cast and crew members which passed for movie titles were so dull that projectionists only pulled back the curtains to reveal the screen once they’d finished. But Preminger wanted his audience to see The Man with the Golden Arm’s titles as an integral part of the film.

This was 1955; the drug angle was pretty taboo stuff. But it cemented Bass's reputation as a visual stylist who could as Martin Scorsese put it: "(create) an emblematic image, instantly recognisable and immediately tied to the film."

Bass caught the attention of Alfred Hitchcock who employed him to produce posters and title sequnces for Psycho, Vertigo and North By Northwest, all utterly unique and visually striking. My favourite is for Vertigo...

The title sequence for Stanley Kramer's 1963 film, It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is also notable, as it's been aped by a multitude of movies such as Catch Me If You Can, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and a whole host of Bond openings...

Bass's influence extended to visual consultantcy on Spartacus, West Side Story and Grand Prix. But most famous of his collaborations is his influence on Psycho's infamous and visionary shower scene. Although Bass claims he actually directed the scene, co-stars and movie historians disagree. But whatever the extent of his input on one of the most famous moments in cinema, much of his visual style is certainly present in the final product, as evidenced by the splendid storyboards he produced for Hitchcock...

Bass's lavish design sense fell out of fashion in the late sixties, and he then turned to corporate design, making a similar mark there with iconic logos for AT & T, United Airlines and Quaker. He also made a little seen SF movie called Phase IV in 1974. It took a generation who'd grown up with his work to start making movies of their own, and bring Bass back to work his magic on them. As well as creating titles for Broadcast News, Big and War of the Roses, Bass struck up a working relationship with Martin Scorsese and went on to make his tonal mini-credit movies for Cape Fear, Good Fellas, The Age of Innnocence and Casino.

A year after Casino, Bass died. His New York Times obituary 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."