The
New York, starting in the 1940’s while not a direct response to modernist
design, did look to do away with some of the concepts of modernist design in
favour of a more casual and informal design philosophy. When looking at
Modernism, it is very easy to see that there is a very strong focus on
structure and order. The use of strong geometric shapes give modernist design a
very structured look and the use of sans serif lends to that look even more.
The New York School attempts to do away with less focus on geometric shapes and
wider use of photography and photomontage. The New York School also opened the
doors for more culturally diverse designs
Saul Bass was a designer during the time that had a very
distinct style that allowed him to stand out from the rest. Here we see an example of his work. This is a
captured frame from the opening credits of the movie ‘Anatomy of a murder’. When looking closely at this work we can see
some of the characteristics of his style and some of his influences. We can see
that while the style is very simple in nature, it is still a lot more
figurative than the modernist works we have previously seen. An interesting
point of note is the use of typography in this work and many of Saul Bass’s
other works. He tends to use a selection of sans serif typefaces but as opposed
to modernist typography, the typefaces he uses tends to be a bit more organic
in nature due to the irregular nature of the lines that compose them. Another
thing to not of Saul Bass’s style is how he deals with figures and forms in his
work. He very often employs the same irregular lines from the type into the
other shapes to create this whole cut-out aesthetic that we see in this image
over here. His use of colour in this image and most of his other work is generally
composed of a solid bright colour mixed with black figures and shapes.
Due to his unique style, Saul Bass was very popular with the
film industry and hence he was asked to design the opening credits and posters
of several films just like the example we discussed above.
As a personal note I am very fond of the general aesthetic
that Saul Bass employs in his work which is probably the reason I chose to
write this blog post about him instead of other designers of the time. His work
generally uses a very simple aesthetic yet it leaves a very memorable
impression in my memory which tells me that his work has a lot of character
that is very cleverly conveyed.
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