Saul Bass (ɔː l b æ s ; May 8, 1920 – April 25, 1996) was an American graphic designer and Academy Award winning filmmaker, best known for his design of motion picture title sequences, film posters, and corporate logos.
During his 40-year career Bass worked for some of Hollywood’s most prominent filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder,Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. Among his most famous title sequences are the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict’s arm for Preminger’sThe Man with the Golden Arm, the credits racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of a skyscraper in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, and the disjointed text that races together and apart in Psycho.
Bass designed some of the most iconic corporate logos in North America, including the Bell System logo in 1969, as well as AT&T’s globe logo in 1983 after the breakup of the Bell System. He also designed Continental Airlines’ 1968 jet stream logo and United Airlines’ 1974 tulip logo, which became some of the most recognized airline industry logos of the era. He died from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in Los Angeles on April 25, 1996 at the age of 75.
