Saul Bass

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Saul Bass

Born May 8, 1920

New York City, New York, United States

Died April 25, 1996 (aged 75)

Occupation Graphic designer, title designer

Saul Bass (May 8, 1920 – April 25, 1996) was an American graphic designer and filmmaker, but he is best
known for his design on animated motion picturetitle sequences.

During his 40-year career he worked for some of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers, including most
notably Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Stanley Kubrickand Martin Scorsese. Amongst 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 text racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of the United Nations building
in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, and the disjointed text that raced together and was pulled apart
for Psycho (1960).

Saul Bass designed the sixth AT&T Bell System logo. He also designed AT&T's "globe" logo after the breakup
of the Bell System. Bass also designedContinental Airlines' 1968 "jetstream" logo which became the most
recognized airline industry logo of the 1970s. [1]

Contents
 [hide]

1 Early career

2 Film title sequences

3 Selected film title sequences and respective

dates

4 Logos and other designs

5 Movie posters

o 5.1 1950s

o 5.2 1960s

o 5.3 1970s
 o 5.4 1980s

6 Filmmaker

7 Quotes

8 See also

9 References

10 Further reading

11 External links

[edit]Early career

Saul Bass was born on May 8, 1920, in New York City. He studied at the Art Students League in Manhattan
until attending classes with György Kepes at Brooklyn College. He began his time in Hollywood doing print
work for film ads, until he collaborated with filmmaker Otto Preminger to design the film poster for his 1954
film Carmen Jones. Preminger was so impressed with Bass’s work that he asked him to produce the title
sequence as well. This was when Bass first saw the opportunity to create something more than a title
sequence, but to create something which would ultimately enhance the experience of the audience and
contribute to the mood and the theme of the movie within the opening moments. Bass was one of the first to
realize the creative potential of the opening and closing credits of a movie.

[edit]Film title sequences

Bass became widely known in the industry after creating the title sequence for Otto Preminger's The Man with
the Golden Arm (1955). The subject of the film was a jazz musician's struggle to overcome his heroin addiction,
a taboo subject in the mid-'50s. Bass decided to create a controversial title sequence to match the film's
controversial subject. He chose the arm as the central image, as the arm is a strong image relating to drug
addiction. The titles featured an animated, black paper cut-out arm of a heroin addict. As he expected, it
caused quite a sensation.

For Alfred Hitchcock, Bass provided effective, memorable title sequences, employing kinetic typography,
for North by Northwest, Vertigo, working with John Whitney, and Psycho. It was this kind of innovative,
revolutionary work that made Bass a revered graphic designer. His later work with Martin Scorsese saw him
move away from the optical techniques that he had pioneered and move into computerized titles, from which he
produced the title sequence for Casino.

He designed title sequences for 40 years, for films as diverse as Spartacus (1960), The Victors (1963), It's a
Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and Casino (1995). He also designed title sequences for films such
as Goodfellas (1990), Doc Hollywood (1991), Cape Fear (1991) and The Age of Innocence (1993), all of which
feature new and innovative methods of production and startling graphic design.
[edit]Selected film title sequences and respective dates

 Carmen Jones (1954)

 The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

 The Seven Year Itch (1955)

 Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)

 Storm Center (1956)

 Bonjour Tristesse (1958)

 Vertigo (1958)

 Anatomy of a Murder (1958)

 The Big Country (1958)

 North by Northwest (1959)

 Psycho (1960)

 Spartacus (1960)

 Exodus (1960)

 Advise and Consent (1960)

 Ocean's Eleven (1960)

 West Side Story (1961)

 Walk on the Wild Side (1962)

 The Victors (1963)

 Nine Hours to Rama (1963)

 It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

 The Cardinal (1963)

 In Harm's Way (1965)

 Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)

 Grand Prix (1966)

 Seconds (1966)

 Broadcast News (1987)

 Big (1988)

 The War of the Roses (1989)

 Goodfellas (1990)

 Cape Fear (1991)

 Doc Hollywood (1991)

 The Age of Innocence (1993)

 Casino (1995)
[edit]Logos and other designs

Bass was responsible for some of the best-remembered, most iconic logos in North America, including both the
Bell Telephone logo (1969) and successor AT&T globe (1983). Other well-known designs were Continental
Airlines (1968), Dixie (1969) and United Airlines (1974). Later, he would produce logos for a number of
Japanese companies as well. He also designed the Student Academy Award for the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences.[2]

Selected logos by Saul Bass and respective dates (note that links shown point to articles on the entities
themselves, and not necessarily to the logos):

 Avery International (unknown)
 Celanese (1965)
 Continental Airlines (1968)
 Dixie (1969)
 Frontier Airlines (1981)
 Fuller Paints (unknown)
 Girl Scouts of the USA (1978)
 Japan Energy Corporation (1993)
 Kibun Foods (1964)
 Kose Cosmetics (1959)
 Lawry's Foods (1959)
 Geffen Records (1980)
 Minami Sports (1991)
 Minolta (1978)
 Quaker Oats
 Rockwell International (1968)
 Security First National Bank (1966)
 Security Pacific Bank (unknown)
 United Airlines (1974)
 United Way (1972)
 Warner Books (1963)
 Warner Communications (1972)
 Wesson Oil (1964)
 YWCA (1988)
[edit]Movie posters

All of Bass's posters had a distinctive style. After his first film project Carmen Jones, he frequently collaborated
with Otto Preminger as well as with Alfred Hitchcock and others. His work spanned five decades and inspired
numerous other designers.

[edit]1950s

Love in the Afternoon poster designed by Bass.

 Carmen Jones (1954)

 The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

 Edge of the City (1956)

 Storm Center (1956)

 Love in the Afternoon (1957)

 Saint Joan  (1957)

 Bonjour Tristesse (1958)

 Vertigo (1958)

 Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

 North by Northwest (1959)
[edit]1960s
 Psycho (1960)

 Exodus (1960)

 The Magnificent Seven (design not used) (1960)

 One, Two, Three (1961)

 West Side Story (1961)

 Advise & Consent (1962)

 The Cardinal (1963)

 In Harm's Way (1964)

 Bunny Lake is Missing (1965)

 The Firemen's Ball (1967)

 The Two of Us (1967)

 Why Man Creates (1968)

[edit]1970s

 Such Good Friends (1971)

 Rosebud (1975)

 Bass on Titles (1977)

 Brothers (1977)

 Notes on the Popular Arts (1977)

 The Human Factor (1979)

 The Double McGuffin (1979)

[edit]1980s

 The Shining (1980)

 Very Happy Alexander (1980)

 The Solar Film (1981)

He received an unintentionally backhanded tribute in 1995, when Spike Lee's film Clockers was promoted by a

poster that was strikingly similar to Bass's 1959 work for Preminger's film Anatomy of a Murder. Designer Art
Sims claimed that it was made as an homage, but Bass regarded it as theft. [3] The cover art for the White
Stripes' single The Hardest Button to Button is clearly inspired by the Bass poster for The Man with the Golden
Arm. The original Tahi poster for Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Last Life in the Universe is also influenced by Bass'
work.

[edit]Filmmaker
Bass claimed that he participated in directing the highlight scene of Psycho, the tightly edited shower-murder
sequence, though many on set at the time (including star Janet Leigh) disputed his contention of "direction".
However, it can be argued that said dispute was simply semantic in nature with Bass's use of the term
"directing" reflecting his own perspective on the “directorial” value of his influential graphic contribution to the
scene, while the position of Leigh and the others on set was based on the scene being literally directed by
Hitchcock as the film director ultimately in charge of all artistic decisions.

Bill Krohn's recent work of scholarship on Hitchcock's production of Psycho (Hitchcock At Work, Phaidon
Press), validates that Bass in his capacity as a graphic artist did indeed have a significant influence on the
visual design of that famous scene. Hitchcock had asked Bass to produce storyboards for the shower-murder
scene and a later murder scene (which was truncated).[4] For this, Bass received a credit as Pictorial
Consultant as well as Title Designer.[5]

Krohn noted that Bass's 48 drawings introduced key aspects of the final shower-murder scene, namely the fact
that the attacker would be seen as a silhouette, the shower curtain torn down, a high angle shot of the murder
scene with the curtain rod used as a barrier and also the famous shot of the transition from the drainage hole of
the bathtub to Marion Crane's dead eye which as Krohn notes is reminiscent of Bass's iris titles for Vertigo.
Krohn also concludes that Bass did not literally direct the shower-murder scene, proving Hitchcock's presence
on the set throughout the shooting of that scene conclusively. Also, as Janet Leigh points out in Stephen
Rebello's book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, Hitchcock met with Bass and gave him detailed
instructions concerning the scene, from which Bass then developed storyboard pictorial ideas — therefore the
authorship of the fundamental sequence is clearly Hitchcock's. [6] The shower scene was shot with two cameras
at least part of the time and Hitchcock working from the paradigms set up by Bass's storyboards would trim the
shot footage into a proper montage that he believed would produce the right emotions on the audience.
Hitchcock showed a rough cut of the scene during production to his editor George Tomasini and even brought
a Moviola on the set to gauge the exact sequence of scenes which ultimately was shaped according to his
decision and approval.[5] Additionally, in an interview with Francois Truffaut regarding "Psycho", Hitchcock
confirms that Bass also storyboarded the scene where Arbogast proceeds up the staircase to his doom, a
scene that Hitch also let Bass film while the director was at home with a temperature. However, Hitchcock
states that once he saw the sequence he did not use it because it "wasn't right". [7]

In 1964, Bass directed a short film titled The Searching Eye and shown during the 1964 New York World's Fair,
coproduced with Sy Wexler. He also directed a montage “dream” sequence in the 1966 film Grand Prix directed
by John Frankenheimer and later made a short documentary film called Why Man Creates, which won an
Academy Award in 1968. That film was broadcast on the first episode of the television newsmagazine 60
Minutes, on September 24 of that year.
In 1974, he made his only feature length film as a director, the visually splendid though little-known science
fiction film Phase IV, a "Quiet, haunting, beautiful, [...] and largely overlooked, science-fiction masterwork". [8]

[edit]Quotes

"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."[9]

"Design is thinking made visual."

[edit]See also
Biography portal

 Motion graphic
[edit]References

1. ^ Serling, Robert J., Maverick: The story of Robert Six and Continental Airlines (ISBN 0-385-
04057-1), Doubleday & Company, 1974.

2. ^ Student Academy Award

3. ^ Entertainment Weekly 1995
4. ^ "Saul Bass storyboards for Psycho shower scene".
5. ^ a b Krohn, Bill, Hitchcock at Work, London: Phaidon Press, 2003.
6. ^ Rebello, Stephen Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, St. Martin's Griffin, New York,
1990, pp.109, ISBN 0-312-20785-9

7. ^ Francois Truffaut, HITCHCOCK By TRUFFAUT. The Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock,

Simon and Schuster - Touchstone Books, New York, pp.273, ISBN 978-0-671-60429-5

8. ^ Thomas Scalzo. "Phase IV" (review). Not coming to a theater near you (notcoming.com). 8

August 2005 (accessed 16 October 2008).

9. ^ Haskins, Pamela. "Saul, Can You Make Me a Title?": Interview with Saul Bass. Film
Quarterly, Autumn 1996:12-13

[edit]Further reading

 Joe Morgenstern: Saul Bass: A Life in Film Design. Stoddart, Santa Monica 1997, ISBN 1-
881649-96-2.
  Tomislav Terek: Saul Bass on Titles: Film Titles Revealed. Defunkt Century 2001, ISBN 1-
903792-00-2.
[edit]External links

 Saul Bass on the Web

 Saul Bass in the Looniverse

 Art Directors Club biography & images of work

 Bio-film & resources on Saul Bass

 Title sequences from Saul Bass (videos & commentary)

 Titles designed by Saul Bass (still sequences & commentary)

 Saul Bass at the Internet Movie Database

 Saul Bass at Find a Grave

 A postage stamp by Saul Bass

Font Designer - Paul Renner

In: Home › Font Lounge › Font Designers

 Paul Renner – born 9.8.1878 in Wernigerode, Germany, died 25.4.1956 in Hödingen, Germany – graphic artist,

painter, type designer, author, teacher.

Studied architecture and painting in Berlin, Munich and Karlsruhe. Then worked as a painter in Munich. 1907-

17: production assistant and presentation manager for Georg Müller Verlag in Munich. 1911: cofounder of a

private school for illustration in Munich. 1925-26: head of the commercial art and typography department at

the Frankfurter Kunstschule. 1926: director of the city of Munich’s Grafische Berufsschulen and from 1927 the

Meisterschule für Deutschlands Buchdrucker.

"Paul Renner studied architecture and painting in Berlin, Munich and

Paul Renner  Karlsruhe; he then worked as a painter in Munich. From 1907 until 1917,

he worked as a Production Assistant and Presentation Manager for Georg

Miller Verlag in Munich. In 1911, he became one of the founders, along

with Jan Tschichold, of a private school for illustration in Munich. During

the years 1925-26, he was Head of the commercial art and typography

department at the Frankfurter Kunstschule, and in 1926, he became

Director of the city of Munich's Grafische Berufsschulen, and from 1927,

the Meisterschule for Deutschlands Buchdrucker."

1933: as arepresentative of the German Reich he is charge of the design of the German section at the Milan

Triennale. Receives the Triennale’s Grand Prix. 1933: is dismissed from teaching. Works as a painter from 1934

onwards. Writes on topic pertaining to typography, lettering, graphics and color studies.

Fonts: Futura® (1928), Plak® (1928), Futura® Black (1929), Futura® licht (1932), Futura® Schlagzeile (1932),

Ballade (1937),Renner™ Antiqua (1939), Steile Futura ®(1954).

Publication include: “Typographie als Kunst”, Munich 1922; “Kulturbolschewismus?”, Zurich 1932; “Die Kunst

der Typographie”, Berlin 1948; “Das moderne Buch”, Lindau 1946; “Vom Geheimnis der Darstellung”, Frankfurt

1955.Phillip Luidl (ed.) “Paul Renner”, Munich 1978.

* TYPOGRAPHY – An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Throughout History by Friedrich Friedl,

Nicolaus Ott (Editor), Bernard Stein, published by Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH.

more ... Works and Samples

PAUL RENNER: THE ART OF TYPOGRAPHY.

By Crawley, Charles

Publication: Technical Communication 

Date: Tuesday, February 1 2000 

Share:

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Christopher Burke. 1998. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press. [ISBN: 1-56898-158-9. 223
pages, including index. $35.00 (softcover).]

John Brockmann has argued that "Technical communicators need to know their profession's forebears"
(From millwrights to shipwrights to the twenty-first century, Hampton Press, p. 1; reviewed in the August
1999 issue of the journal). If you grant that the graphic arts are part of our profession, then one of our
profession's forebears is Paul Renner best known as the designer of Futura, a typeface he designed in
the 1920s. Futura, which Renner called a "serifless roman," is one of the all-time best-selling typefaces
and is still widely used (it is definitely one of my top 10 typefaces). Not only does Renner's life deserve to
be better known, but his ideas on design can enlighten today's designers. Christopher Burke attempts to
show both of these things in his new book from Princeton Architectural Press.

Paul Renner was born in northern Germany (in what was then Prussia) in 1878. His Protestant up-
bringing influenced him to be a designer rather than a fine artist, although he continued to paint
throughout his lifetime. As Burke puts it, "He was drawn to a field of activity in which he could put his
esthetic skills to a utilitarian purpose" (p. 201). Renner made his living as a book designer and a graphic
arts teacher in Munich.

Renner served in the German army during World War I and did a stint at technical writing as a military
instructor. He had to train hundreds of field-artillerymen, and to do that he drew diagrams that were
mimeographed and distributed. He was drawn to the "rules" that he found in the military, though as a
designer he did believe they could be broken once mastered. As a modernist, Renner held that "the
principles of traditional book typography should only be questioned once they had been mastered" (p.
182).

As mentioned previously, Renner developed Futura starting in 1924 as a "serifless roman" (not a sans
serif). At the time he was reacting to the Bauhaus movement and Herbert Bayer's call for a "universal
alphabet," which attempted to get rid of uppercase letters. While Renner agreed that capitals were
overused in German, he did not want to get rid of them. He believed that the first duty of the typographer
was to the reader and that while getting rid of capitals might make text easier for the writer, all lowercase
would make things harder on the user, the reader.

Renner believed in the practical nature of his craft. As a "user advocate," he was well aware that people
were going to use what he made:

The position of printing among the fine arts is not so simple. Immediately we perceive that its products
also serve a practical purpose: that of being read. If they are not suitable for this, they have no more right
to exist than a chair that one cannot sit on, or a telephone, gramophone or telegraph that does not work.
(p. 36)

PAUL RENNER: THE ART OF TYPOGRAPHY.

By Crawley, Charles

Publication: Technical Communication 

Date: Tuesday, February 1 2000 

Share:

Print

More

You are viewing page 2

Christopher Burke. 1998. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press. [ISBN: 1-56898-158-9. 223
pages, including index. $35.00 (softcover).]

John Brockmann has argued that "Technical communicators need to know their profession's forebears"
(From millwrights to shipwrights to the twenty-first century, Hampton Press, p. 1; reviewed in the August
1999 issue of the journal). If you grant that the graphic arts are part of our profession, then one of our
profession's forebears is Paul Renner best known as the designer of Futura, a typeface he designed in
the 1920s. Futura, which Renner called a "serifless roman," is one of the all-time best-selling typefaces
and is still widely used (it is definitely one of my top 10 typefaces). Not only does Renner's life deserve to
be better known, but his ideas on design can enlighten today's designers. Christopher Burke attempts to
show both of these things in his new book from Princeton Architectural Press.

Paul Renner was born in northern Germany (in what was then Prussia) in 1878. His Protestant up-
bringing influenced him to be a designer rather than a fine artist, although he continued to paint
throughout his lifetime. As Burke puts it, "He was drawn to a field of activity in which he could put his
esthetic skills to a utilitarian purpose" (p. 201). Renner made his living as a book designer and a graphic
arts teacher in Munich.

Renner served in the German army during World War I and did a stint at technical writing as a military
instructor. He had to train hundreds of field-artillerymen, and to do that he drew diagrams that were
mimeographed and distributed. He was drawn to the "rules" that he found in the military, though as a
designer he did believe they could be broken once mastered. As a modernist, Renner held that "the
principles of traditional book typography should only be questioned once they had been mastered" (p.
182).

As mentioned previously, Renner developed Futura starting in 1924 as a "serifless roman" (not a sans
serif). At the time he was reacting to the Bauhaus movement and Herbert Bayer's call for a "universal
alphabet," which attempted to get rid of uppercase letters. While Renner agreed that capitals were
overused in German, he did not want to get rid of them. He believed that the first duty of the typographer
was to the reader and that while getting rid of capitals might make text easier for the writer, all lowercase
would make things harder on the user, the reader.

Renner believed in the practical nature of his craft. As a "user advocate," he was well aware that people
were going to use what he made:

The position of printing among the fine arts is not so simple. Immediately we perceive that its products
also serve a practical purpose: that of being read. If they are not suitable for this, they have no more right
to exist than a chair that one cannot sit on, or a telephone, gramophone or telegraph that does not work.
(p. 36)

A user manual, he might say, does not serve its purpose unless it is used.

But Renner was not solely a pragmatist. He believed, like John Keats, that "truth is beauty." He believed
that things designed for use should be "usable, efficient, but they should also look good" (p. 69). Think
about Web pages when you read this. Our challenge in creating them is not only to provide content, which
is primary, but also to have such a sense of the esthetic that we know when something looks bad or good,
or needs the help of a graphic designer or artist.

Renner developed Futura not only to create a useful typeface, but one that looked good on paper as well.
His creation of Futura was a precursor to one of the great typographic debates that occurred in Germany
due to the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, as Renner was teaching graphic arts in Munich. Fraktur, the gothic
script that had been used for hundreds of years in Germany, was associated with the Nazi philosophy.
Renner wanted to abolish the use of Fraktur in favor of roman types and openly called for its abolishment.
Renner and fellow typographer and teacher Jan Tschichold were dismissed from their teaching posts by
the Nazis for "national unworthiness," and Renner moved to Switzerland, where he lived briefly in exile.

Ironically, the Nazis dumped Fraktur for the roman typeface in 1941, claiming that the former was based
on a Jewish script. They ended up rejecting Fraktur, just as Renner had, but for different reasons.

Renner continued designing and writing after World War II. His most developed design philosophy was
captured in the book Die kunst der typographie (The art of typography), published in 1939. His favorite
form of the book was the slim and handy novel, which gave him pleasure designing and reading. Could
that have been a precursor to the minimalist manual?

The German typographer devoted a whole section of Die kunst der typographie to lists, tables, and forms,
"regarding them as complex configurations of information worthy of detailed consideration" (p. 153). He
eliminated brackets, rules, and boxes because he thought they cluttered the typesetting. He wanted
simplicity and elegance to make information clearer to the reader, In doing so, he recognized the
importance of non-prose in textual materials, which we technical communicators deal with every day.

Renner died in Munich in 1956. His legacy endures in the Futura typeface, but also in the stand that he
took against the Nazis based on his design beliefs. And his design philosophy continues to ring helpfully
today, with its mix of pragmatism and idealism, its belief in utility and beauty. As Burke sums it up, Renner
encouraged designers to "adopt some established principles, try them out, see how that looks, and then
progress from there using your own visual judgment" (p. 203).

If you enjoy the graphic arts side of technical communication and want to know more about its history, you
will appreciate this book.

CHARLES CRAWLEY is a lead technical writer at Rockwell Collins, Inc. in Cedar Rapids, IA. He is an
STC senior member and membership chair for the Eastern Iowa chapter.