Inspiration: Saul Bass

Saul Bass, film director and graphic designer, is most well known for his design of title sequences and film posters.



His work is full of bold use of solid colours and the clever placement of text to either symbolise and form shapes of relevant objects or move along with objects with a fluid motion that also links in.

His most famous work is probably the work he designed for Alfred Hitchcock films 'Psycho' and 'North by Northwest' as well as the many title sequences designed for the films of Stanley Kubrick.

His work may be characteristically his but he still manages to add an element of individuality to each and every piece, showing how clever his mind was even with the most simple of his designs.

Saul Bass has been a major influence and figure in the art world, graphic design and film making, that it is no wonder that many contemporary films and artists have paid homage to him including ones such as Steven Spielberg's 'Catch Me if you Can', Pixar's 'Monsters Inc.' and television series 'Mad Men'.

Bass' most famous saying is...
'Design is thinking made visual.'

I think it is important that I adopt this saying for my own work ethic in progress of my animation because this art direction is so simple yet so effective and so if I try and over complicate things it will not work as successfully. I need to be clever with the placing of things such as the words to describe what is happening. Even if these turn out to become the forms of some of the science components in my animation.

I have to really play with the visual element with this as this could really make people understand the science topic better. I know that I myself struggled with science unless I could see it so the simplified textbooks and revision guides and the diagrams my teachers drew for us we're great for me. This style is perfect for this, I just need to really make it work!

Some influence maps of past Saul Bass work and contemporary Bass inspired pieces.