Saul Bass (1920-1996) was a commercial artist and a freelanced graphic designer. He studied at the arts students league. He was best known for his use of simple geometric shapes and their symbolism. Often, a singledominant image stands to deliver a punctual message.Saul Bass was born on May 8, 1920, in New York City. He graduated from James Monroe High School in the Bronx and 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.
Bass' posters and titles have an uncany ability to capture the mood of a film with simple shapesand images. This was his preffered method as to using a boring photograph. Bass was heavily influenced by Bauhaus and russian constructivism.
During his 40-year career Bass worked for some of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and 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 that eventually becomes a high-angle shot of the United Nations building in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, and the disjointed text that races together and apart in Psycho.
