Titles in Motion: Saul Bass

Saul Bass was an American graphic design artist, title designer and film maker. Bass was born May 8^th, 1920, in the Bronx to European Jewish immigrant parents. He grew up in the Bronx and attended Arts Students League and Brooklyn college. With a career spanning 40 years, Bass was a pioneer in creating kinetic title credits for Hollywood and his major corporate identity design.

Bass’ career started with him designing marketing and advertisement for director Otto Preminger. His early works included advertisements for Champion (1949), Death of a Salesman (1951) and The Moon is Blue (1953). Preminger asked Bass to design film posters for his upcoming film Carmen Jones (1954). He was so pleased, Preminger asked Bass to create the title credits. During the development, Bass said to Preminger while looking at designs, “Why not make it move?” Bass believed the audience should be captured from the start of the film. The animation and movement create a more captivating experience.

One career defining moment came after Bass created the title credits for Preminger’s The Man with the GoldenArm (1955). The film was about a jazz musician (Frank Sinatra) dealing with a drug addiction. The title design featured drop-in text, paper cut outs and lines centered around an iconic abstract (drug addict) arm. Despite the controversial subject, the movie was a success and the title design led to more title design work for Bass. He continued to innovate moving design titles throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s most notably Anatomy of a Murder (1959, West Side Story (1961), and Such Good Friends (1971). 

Alongside his title sequence work, in the early 60s Bass began to shift some of his creative energy to corporate logo design. His work caught the attention of major corporations who were looking for a fresh modern look for their identity design. Bass created logos for multiple airlines including Continental, Frontier, and United. HE also designed branding for non-profit organizations such as the YWCA, Girl Scouts, and the United Way “hand” with the latter 2 still in use with recent updates. From the mid-70s, Bass spent most of his focus on corporate identity design and created logos for AT&T’s blue and white sphere that inspired the current updated design. To this day, we the Warner Communications is unchanged. Tech and media brand such as Avery, NCR, Minolta also use Bass’ branding. We also see updated versions of Bass’ in use for food brands Quaker Oats, Lawry’s, and Wesson Oil.

From the late 80s through the 90s, Bass created titles for Big (1988) starring Tom Hanks, Tonko (1988)  and The War of the Roses. In the 90s he created titles for films including Good Fellas (1990), Mr. Saturday Night (1992) and Casino (1995).