Saul Bass

Saul Bass was born in in New York in 1920. He worked as a graphic designer right up until his death in 1996. He is well known for his work in films as a title sequence and poster designer but has designed logos and advertisements for companies. Bass was one of the first designers to incorporate the storyline into the poster. His work uses a lot of block shapes and colours, cut-out lettering. He used bold, jagged lines and shapes to create work that was simple yet effective, this was teamed with contrasting colours and symbols. His work set the trend for many of today's designers.

Image Analysis

The Man With The Golden Arm

• Block colours
• Block shapes
• White boarder
• Arm cuts into title
• Cut out letters
• Complimenting colours
• Incorporated actors
• Actors in black and white
• Golden title
• Small actors names
  

Vertigo

• Bright background colour
• Contrasting coloured features
• Cut out lettering
• Large symbol to represent "vertigo"
• Simple shapes
• Leaning man and woman - having "vertigo" feeling

Movie Poster for Move Over Darling by Rachel South in the style of Saul Bass

For my poster I cut out each of the features just as Saul Bass would have done. I used bright colours to attract the eye to all different places and block lettering to make them stand out. I didn't include any detail on the people, other than clothes and hair, as Bass did in some of his work. I used the storyline of the film to create my poster, Bass was one of the first designers to use the storyline as part of the advertisement.

Neville Brody

Neville Brody is a British designer and art director. He has been working in the design industry for over 20 years. Brody out working in record cover design but became better known for his work as an art director for The Face magazine as well as advertisements and posters for films. His work often has titles with upper and lower case letters, as well as being different sizes and font. The words in his work are usually set out in unusual ways, such as, framing an image down the side instead of just beneath in a plain, contemporary way. there is often a lot of white space left in his The Face work, I think this makes the design stand out more, usually there is a lot happening on a page in a magazine.

Image Analysis

Article about Brian Eno from The Face magazine (1983)

• Black and white - magazines are normally in full colour
• ENO - immediately know that it is about Brian Eno
• Plus signs contrast the background colours and frame the mans face and the title
• Writing is broken down into smaller paragraphs
• Page is split into sections by the crosses, titles and picture
• Picture is interesting - the objects in the table are in focus

An advertisement for sunglasses

• black and white
• interesting use of letters and numbers - each mannequin head is labelled, the title is vertical and horizontal
• busy background
• unusual to have mannequin heads

Nike advertisement

• different sized letters
• different colour letters
• horizontal and vertical words
• small pictures of trainers
• large picture of a face
• interesting layout
• not much colour - mainly black and white
• interesting to look at
• clear advertisement

David Carson

David Carson was born in 1952. He is an American graphic designer who graduated with honours and distinction from San Diego state university. Whilst there he received a degree in sociology.

Carson then worked as a teacher in 1982-87, he began experimenting with graphic design in 1983 and he later developed his signature style using "dirty" type and non-mainstream photography. he worked for many skating, surfing and music magazines before becoming the art director of the surf and style magazine Ray Gun in 1992-95.

Image analysis

• Mainly black and white image
• Silhouette of man walking away
• Writing hard to read - different sizes, words spaced out in different ways, upper and lower case
• Writing is like mono prints
• Simple image
• Lots of white space
• The writing shadows the man
  
  

Nike Air Advertisement

• Clearly shows what is advertised
• Bright red brand - drawn to it
• Different sized letters
• Different fonts
• Upper and lower case used
• Hard to read
• Tennis player picture included
• Not a lot of colour used
• A lot of writing
• Question mark
• "TWINS" is repeated
• Interesting to look at

Front Cover from Raygun (issue 25)

• Clear title
• Article begins on front cover
• Singer is off to the side and at the bottom - not in centre like expected
• writing in opposite corner to the man
• In "sepia" colours