Saul Bass Danny Yount
Ethan Pollard! Production Methods! Professor Meranda! !2/20/2014! SAUL BASS! ! Saul Bass is one of the most influential designers of history, with work that is readily recognized and celebrated by many people on a daily basis, designers and non- designers alike. Bass was born in the Bronx, NY, in 1920. In 1936 he was awarded a scholarship to the Art Students’ League in Manhattan, where he studied design. He moved to Los Angeles in 1946 to work as an art director at an advertising firm, and in !1952, opened his own studio, Saul Bass & Associates.! Bass was incredibly prolific in his output, and is responsible for the designs of many of well-known logos, including United Airlines, Quaker Oats, AT&T, and the Girl Scouts. What he is most well-known for, however, is his work in film title design. In 1954 he made his first foray into this field with Otto Preminger’s Carmen. It was a year later, however, that his career in film titles bean to really take off. In 1955 he created the opening titles for Preminger’s The Man With the Golden Arm, starring Frank Sinatra as a jazz musician struggling with a heroin addiction. Bass’s titles feature a graphic, cutout- style image of an arm—an iconic image of drug addiction—and caused a sensation !upon the film’s release.! Until this point, film titles had always been a fairly dull necessity, often barely linked to the film they were preceding. Saul Bass changed all of that, making the film titles a preface for the film itself, using his incredible ability to distill the entire story to one iconic image.
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