Design for Society: Research, Saul Bass

I asked my tutor to take a look at my storyboards and she gave me some advice and feedback back. Some of which was to do some more research, she suggested that I look at a designer called Saul Bass, known for creating title sequences for films in a very graphic style of animation. Here are a couple of the many that he made..

"The Man With The Golden Arm" 1955

This is a very simple piece but at the same time very effective. I feel that what makes it what it is, is the layout of the shapes and words, and the shapes in relation to the words (and the other way round too) and the movement. This certainly makes the title sequence more interesting than just words coming up one after another. 

"Around The World In 80 Days" 1959

This one was some what longer and had a lot more going on. I liked the combination of different textures, some flat clean images with the more traditional line drawings all animated with very limited and simple movement. My favourite part was the bit with the boat on top of the sea and you could see various animals beneath. It had a very limited colour palette and I found it quite visually strong and striking. 

"Anatomy of a Murder" 1959

This title sequence is a lot like 'Man with the Golden Arm', it combined the simple shapes laid out with the words to create an effective solution. Saul Bass used the cut out technique for this particular animation. I have to say that this one didn't particularly do much for me, I found it quite visually boring. 

"Ocean's Eleven" 1960

I loved this one, its very simple by using lots of dots (or maybe not so simple to animate) to create different shapes, numbers and words. I found this very effective. 

From this I can take how effective a graphic style animation can be just by the use of simple shapes, where they are positioned and how they move. Keeping things simple can have a brilliant visual effect if done right.