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It is with great pleasure that graphic designer, Saul Bass be introduced on our next step in studying the design of movie posters. Although Bass’ work extends to several fields including filmmaking, he was most known for his incredible film posters and film title sequences. The success of Bass’ film posters is due to his ability to harmoniously merge his own distinct design style with the film’s style, content and overall marketed ambiance. Among the designer’s most famous film posters are the ones for Vertigo, a 1958 film by Alfred Hitchcock, Anatomy of a Murder, a 1959 Otto Preminger Film, The Magnificent Seven, a 1960 John Sturges film, The Shining, a 1980 Stanley Kubrick film… Bass uses basic monochromatic shapes, visually simple yet conceptually meaningful compositions in the majority off his work. He extracts strong visual emblems from the films he is representing to give the poster enough information on the films. A common eye-catching color he uses is red.
Much like his film posters, Saul Bass’ title sequences marvelously introduce films while remaining loyal to his visual style. His most successful sequences are the ones for Psycho, a 1960 Alfred Hitchcock film, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, a 1963 Stanley Kramer film, North by Northwest, a 1959 Alfred Hitchcock film… They merged simple symbols of the film with movement and the appropriate music to capture an audience’s attention and prepare them for the film. It is commonly said that Bass was the designer who began the trend of having a film begin as soon as a theaters lights went black and titles appeared on the screen as opposed to after the title sequence.
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