The Saul Bass effect: How one designer rewrote the rules of film forever

Designer of iconic movie title sequences and movie posters, Saul Bass was — and is — a legend of cinematic graphic design.

If you’re a graphic designer or illustrator, there’s no doubt you will have seen and admired Saul Bass’s design work, with his influence continuing to influence cinema and branding even now.

His typographic title sequences and poster work, created for Hitchcock movies Vertigo and Psycho, as well as iconic vintage movie posters for Anatomy of a Murder and West Side Story, cement Saul Bass’s status as the godfather of modern movie poster design.  

He is, in short, an icon. But what is it that makes his work so legendary? Let’s explore how the American designer, born in the Bronx to immigrant European parents, went on to become the most impactful artist of the mid-20th century, and why his legacy continues to shape contemporary movies, TV, and graphics today.

We’ll look at his design output, including some of the best-known Saul Bass movie posters, unforgettable (and effortlessly stylish) title sequences, and the brand identities he created for corporates like Bell, Warner, and United Airlines. 

Read on and get inspired.

Saul Bass (1920–1996) was a graphic designer and filmmaker, best known for his iconic movie titles for some of Hitchcock’s most gripping thrillers, including Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho. He crafted a distinctive visual style best seen in the range of 35+ published Saul Bass movie posters that have become a hallmark of 1960s offbeat cool. 

A prolific designer across other fields, Saul Bass also created brand identities and corporate logos, including AT&T, Quaker Oats, Lawry’s Foods, United Airlines, and Bell. His commercial work was similar to his contemporary, Paul Rand, in that they both favored minimalist design (the antithesis of today’s leaning towards maximalist design), with Saul Bass’s artwork for brands tapping into his talent for reduction and bold color. 

Born in the Bronx, New York, to Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Saul showed a talent for art early in life. He studied at the famous Art Students League in Manhattan and at Brooklyn College, before freelancing for several companies and agencies, including Warner Bros. In 1946, he moved to Los Angeles, setting up a graphic design studio and going on to win work for studios in Hollywood. 

His big break came in 1954, when filmmaker Otto Preminger asked him to design the poster for musical film Carmen Jones. Extending his work to the title credits, Preminger realized he was onto a good thing with Saul, whose distinctive, punchy credits enhanced the viewer experience.

The pair reunited for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) and Anatomy of a Murder (1959), the latter featuring some of Saul Bass’s most recognizable movie poster design work and jaunty title sequences. 

A partnership with Alfred Hitchcock led to some of the most iconic Saul Bass artwork, including his development of kinetic typography for the opening sequences of North by Northwest (1959), Vertigo (1958), and Psycho (1960), a development which revolutionized credits.

Saul Bass frequently collaborated with his wife Elaine Bass, née Bakatura, herself a talented designer. Together they collaborated on a variety of movie title sequences during the 1960s, including West Side Story (1961), Walk on the Wild Side (1962), and Grand Prix (1966).

Saul Bass went on to create more movie poster designs for Spartacus, The Age of Innocence, The Shining, and Casino, as well as logo design throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He died in Los Angeles in 1996, aged 75.

Saul Bass created more than 35 published vintage movie posters, most of which are still widely recognized and reprinted. No doubt you’ve seen his Anatomy of a Murder poster, or the iconic spiral of the Vertigo movie poster. Here, we look at these and a few other designs from Saul Bass’s memorable catalog. 

In this iconic graphic from the master of minimalist mid-century graphic design, the arm on the poster and title sequences was reported to have had a huge effect on cinema audiences. Block-color collage cutouts and pasted photographs of the cast create the perfect ensemble movie poster design.

One of the earlier Saul Bass artworks, the movie poster design for the adaptation of the Françoise Sagan novel is a great example of the designer’s knack for powerful simplicity. The single tear refers to the complex emotional story of spoiled teenage heroine Cécile, and the color palette evokes the sunlit setting of the French Riviera.

Perhaps the most iconic Saul Bass movie poster, the artwork for Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller is a perfect combination of style, emotion, and plot hint. Spirograph illustrations draw the viewer’s eye inwards, mimicking the feeling of falling, while the jagged and jaunty typography hints at the unhinged emotional state of the film’s characters.

Director and producer Otto Preminger offered Bass his big break with the film Carmen Jones (1954), and the pair collaborated again for the movie poster and title credits of legal drama Anatomy of a Murder. An iconic Saul Bass movie poster, the design features many of his trademarks, including collage graphics, high-contrast color, and playful typography. The subject hints at both the murder itself and the dramatic dissection of the murder case in court.

It’s rumored that director Stanley Kubrick forced Saul Bass to go through 300 iterations of this iconic (and terrifying) poster for horror movie The Shining. You can check out some of the rejected designs here. The sharp yellow and black combine to create a visual warning sign, while the figure of Danny appears trapped within the lettering, heightening the sense of claustrophobia present throughout the film.    

Many of Saul Bass’s movie posters were companions to similarly themed title sequences, creating a holistic marketing campaign and viewing experience for the movie — an approach that movie studios still emulate today. Some of his most notable title sequences include those created at the start of the 1960s.

A starry Hitchcock movie featuring Cary Grant, North by Northwest is a masterpiece in suspense, with a masterfully tense title sequence to match. The credits demonstrate Bass’s skill with kinetic type, and the aggressive angles and movement of lines suggest the fast pace of the train… and the action. 

Is there any opening sequence more iconic — and simple — than Psycho? Hitchcock partnered with Bass again in the creation of this unforgettable sequence, which relied on the simplicity of type, graphic lines, and a jarring score by Bernard Hermann to build audience tension to breaking point before the film had even begun. 

Saul Bass created logos and brand identities for a wide range of major companies, including AT&T, Bell Systems, United Airlines, Minolta, Alcoa, Warner Communications, and Exxon. Here are some examples of his minimalist, colorful style.

A subsidiary of the Bell Telephone Company founded by Alexander Graham Bell, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) invited Saul Bass to redesign its original bell-shaped logo in the 1960s. Bass created a characteristically simple logo design, reducing the bell to only its most basic elements: a silhouette and circle rendered with a clean, uniform line weight in a bright sky blue.

Warner Communications, the father brand of Warner Bros and its related companies, asked Saul Bass to create a corporate identity that would bring together the different aspects of its business into a coherent logo. The final logo design combined the ‘W’ of Warner with a cable-like form that hinted at Warner’s evolving role as an electronic communication company. 

Saul Bass’s graphic design style set the benchmark for cool minimalism in the early 1960s, with his work bridging the gap between Mid-Century Modern’s organic, quirky style and the psychedelic styles of the 1960s. Saul continued to work in the movie industry, creating iconic posters and credits throughout the 1970s and 1980s, while also pursuing work in branding, advertising, and other projects. 

Infused with psychological drama, the Saul Bass design legacy can still be seen in contemporary movie credits, movie poster designs, and other retro graphic design. His engrossing animation style continues to influence typographic title sequences across streaming and film. 

The credits for Netflix show The Queen’s Gambit use artwork in the style of Saul Bass to set a suitably 1960s mood, designed by Berlin-based title designer Saskia Marka, while 2022 horror flick Infinity Pool refers to the Saul Bass style with its retro type and bold color palette.

A little further back are the fantastic opening credits for Catch Me If You Can (2002), created by Parisian artists Olivier Kuntzel and Florence Deygas, with a brief from Steven Spielberg to pay homage to the Saul Bass style.

Saul Bass’ art falls somewhere between the edgy aesthetics popular in the swinging 1960s, such as Beatnik, Mod, and New Wave, but his talent for summarizing the mood and theme of a movie into one ultra-simple image remains unique. 

Often replicated and rarely bettered, Saul Bass’ movie posters use minimalist collage cutouts, gritty textures, jagged typography, and bold, simple color to communicate the movie’s plot and mood with only a few simple elements.

To replicate the Saul Bass style in your own designs, you can try using:

What else? An experimental, bold attitude to layout and a strict eye for minimalism certainly won’t hurt either. Add to the mix a cinematic color palette, including a notable dash of shocking blood red and mustard yellow, and you’re onto a winner.

For more building blocks for your Saul Bass-inspired designs, check out this curated collection, or look to these retro elements, from fonts and textures to poster templates: