Saul Bass (/sɔːl bæs/; May 8, 1920 – April 25, 1996) 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.During his 40-year career Bass worked for some of Hollywood's most prominent filmmakers, including 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 addict's arm for Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm, the credits racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of a skyscraper in Hitchcock's North by Northwest, and the disjointed text that races together and apart in Psycho.Bass designed some of the most iconic corporate logos in North America, including the Bell System logo in 1969, as well as AT&T's globe logo in 1983 after the breakup of the Bell System. He also designed Continental Airlines' 1968 jet stream logo and United Airlines' 1974 tulip logo, which became some of the most recognized airline industry logos of the era.
May 8, 1920, The Bronx, New York City, New York, United States
Died
April 25, 1996, Los Angeles, California, United States
Place Of Birth
New York City, New York, USA
Profession
Miscellaneous Crew, Art Department, Director
Spouse
Elaine Bass (m. 1961–1996)
Awards
Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject
Star Sign
Taurus
#
Trademark
1
Avant-garde title sequences and symbolic posters.
#
Quote
1
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.
2
Design is thinking made visible.
#
Fact
1
In 2012, a Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibition on Stanley Kubrick displayed some of Bass' correspondence with Kubrick while he was designing poster art for The Shining (1980). As well as showcasing some rejected designs, this revealed that Bass was fond of signing off letters by doodling a fish (a sea-bass) with his own face.
2
Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. 32-33. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
3
It has been said that once you see the opening titles to a film that Saul Bass has done, you can walk out of the theatre because you know exactly what the film's about: he has shown you the entire thing in the first minute or so.
4
In the opening credits to Cape Fear (1991), Bass superimposed shots from the title sequence he did for John Frankenheimer's Seconds (1966).
5
Designed the title sequence in Psycho (1960) and one of the scenes where Arbogast climbs the stairs to his doom. He also drew up storyboards for the shower scene upon the specific instructions of Hitchcock. However, in interviews with Truffaut, Hitchcock states that he didn't use these because they "weren't right".
$300,000
