Even if you don’t recognize the name Saul Bass, you’re most likely familiar with his work. Think of the opening sequences of Psycho and Vertigo; think of AT&T’s and United Airlines’ logos. Saul Bass designed all of that. His legacy still influences the design of the opening sequences of movies and logos all across the world. In the words of one of our designers, “Saul Bass redesigned what it meant to be a graphic designer.” What better person to take inspiration from this Monday morning?
Before Bass designed his iconic The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) movie poster, the typical movie poster depicted scenes or characters from the film. But with the advent of Bass’s innovative style, which featured a crooked arm (the protagonist of the film has a heroin addiction), movie posters became, on the whole, simplistic and based on symbols that visually represent elements from the film. Bass went on to design numerous iconic posters, including ones for Vertigo, Love in the Afternoon and The Shining.
Perhaps even more groundbreaking and influential was Bass’s innovative design of title sequences in film. Before Bass’s time, the title sequences of films were static and separate from the rest of the movie. After Bass came on the scene, title sequences became part of the movie, revealing something about its premise and characters. His opening sequences attempted “to reach for a simple, visual phrase that tells you what the picture is all about and evokes the essence of the story.” It’s this kind of simple, visual phrase that we should try to grasp in the opening parts of our presentations– something simple and to the point that visualizes the main takeaway as best as possible.
Think of the opening sequence of Mad Men or of Catch Me if You Can. That kind of silhouetted, symbolic, minimalistic sequence is a direct legacy of Bass’s innovative work. We could namedrop for pages, listing off all the quintessential works Bass was apart of, but that wouldn’t leave us time to mention another astounding accomplishment of Bass’s: logo design.
To sum up the influence of Bass’s logo designs in one statistic: The average lifespan of a Bass logo is 34 years (!). He is responsible for some of the most iconic, distinguishable logos ever created. Just take a glance at the image featured on this blog post. Those are his creations: Bell Telephone, AT&T, United Airlines Kleenex, Quaker Oats, Girl Scouts of the USA, and on and on. He was a pioneer in logo design, and a majority of his logos still live on today.
“Design is thinking made visual,” Bass once said. Well, take some inspiration from this extraordinary man, and make your thoughts visual with a clean, inventive design.
