Saul Bass-Commercial Design Guru-Blog 5

There is a lot to be said for Saul Bass, the designer I have selected for my blog. I leapfrog to him, like a fly to light, due to his connection with Alfred Hitchcock, the master film maker and other film makers of his time.

Alfred Hitchock loved to use light, lines, shapes and all else to convey a sense of mood, urgency and cinematic direction. The protagonist and antagonist often in any scene in a Hitchcock movie were usually clearly defined by the use of light and shadows. The bad guy usually was encompassed in darks shadows.

Saul Bass reflects Hitchcock film making in his own print making. In Saul Bass’s Poster for the Alfred Hitchcock film “Vertigo” , he really encapsulates in a single image the message or the movement of the film. Even though there is not a lot going on in the poster as far as multiple ideas, the clearness and conciseness of the idea of the film is laid out in terms that can be understood . Less is more here. The lines, the figures, the color of the poster, all play important factors in helping to tell the viewer what is happening in the poster.

The characters at the center of the poster are identified as black and white, indicating some sort of interplay of characters. The orange color in the Vertigo poster and the spiraling movement of the white lines take the eye straight to these human figures in the center of the picture almost revealing the plot of the movie. Just looking at this Saul Bass piece almost gives too much of the movie plot away as a single image says so much about a story. www.designmuseum.org/_entry/3857?style=design_image_popup)

Saul Bass style would be describe as a modern, or commercial designer and has been shadowed by many artists as he himself has worked on many films. He has worked with Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorcese and Otto Preminger to name a few of the great.

Saul Bass seems to design with a “less is more” philosophy that he has picked up from some of these film greats. . The idea that space can be successfully separate by line and color shows in his work.

In Saul Bass’s “the Man with the Golder Arm” poster, (www.designmuseum.org/_entry/3856?style=design_image_popup) even though the poster is a 2-D composite, the poster seems to have a time sequence going on. There are 4 separate visible images that are describing points of view in the story. One of the recognizable human elements of the piece is the mangy, crocked arm in the center of the poster. The style of the poster, which the big black and blue block defining space, is reminiscent of the 1950 and the modernist style of the time, and makes used of dark colors.

Looking at different Saul Bass movie posters, it appears that he has an experimental way of working with his subject matter. He seems to like using black text as well. In each example of black poster text, the text itself has a story into itself in the balanced way the letters in each typographical element add to the concept and story. The way the typography is crafted, the kerning and leading, of the text, all of which ads to the character of the piece. www.designmuseum.org/_entry/3860?style=design_image_popup) when typography is carefully staggered and created, it has meaning unto itself.