Analysis by Molly Ruby

Saul Bass was an American graphic designer who became famous for his logos. Saul Bass used a lot of simple geometric shapes in his work and their symbolisms. He often hand drew his work to create a casual appearance. He also revolutionized the way that people viewed title credit sequences.

Saul Bass’s most popular work

• The Man with the golden arm

• North by North west

• Psycho

• Anatomy of a murder

• West side story

• The shining

Movie PostersSaul Bass mainly focused on movie posters for his work. One of his most famous posters he designed was for the man with the golden arm. In this poster it shows a jagged arm and bars. This represents the main characters arm which is a key aspect of that film as it represents his heroin addiction. This poster much like his other work is done using very basic simple shapes such as squares and rectangles to create certain images for a quick sharp view of the film that may entice a particular audience. He also often included horizontal and vertical lines throughout his movie posters to create certain effects. Saul Bass also used very simple primary colours such as Blue, Red, Green and Yellow in his posters which make his work look almost child like.

Title sequences Not only did Saul Bass design film posters, he also designed some title sequences such as The man with the golden arm

In this title sequence it is very simple and consistent through out of the same thing happening over and over again of white rectangles appearing across the screen. This is a perfect example of Bass’s use of simple shapes in his work as he did so here. The white rectangles may represent many different things for this film, such as the cocaine addiction of the main characters has in the movie, the lines may reflect the cocaine itself. They also may represent the many different events that may occur in the story that all link together in some way as the lines interlink and cross over each other, showing that there may be multiple stories within the film that all somehow join together in the end.

Saul Bass chose to use very plane and dull colours like black and white which does not indicate very much for an audience as it is so simple and not detailed, this makes the title sequence seem really mysterious and dark.Over all what Saul Bass created for this film title sequence was not very clear for the audience as it does not give much information away about the film/ what the film is about at all. The fact that his work is very simple makes it a lot more difficult for people to understand the main features of a film.