“I want to make beautiful things,
even if nobody cares.”
-Saul Bass.
Saul Bass, born in May 8, 1920, might be the single most accomplished graphic designer in history. Working in the mid-20th century, when the importance of graphic design was just on the upswing, Bass branded a staggering array of major corporations with his iconic, minimal designs. The logos for Bell, Kleenex, AT&T were all deigned by Bass. For about 50 years, a clean, thoughtful design that was made to last, called for Saul Bass. Logo design, however, is not all he was known for. Bass went on to create dozens of iconic film posters and title credits. His final projects before his death in 1996 were credits for four Martin Scorsese films: Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993) and Casino (1995). His most widely known posters were perhaps for Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958).
Bass continues to influence art, music and film today. The most significant example of this is perhaps vivid in Taylor Swift’s lyric video for ‘Look What you made me do’ that came out last year. The video uses strong colors and silhouette animation that pull deeply from Bass’ style. The deep red and black is familiar from many of his posters — “Vertigo,” “Anatomy of a Murder” and “Spartacus.”