Saul Bass (1920-1996) was a graphic designer from New York. After making a poster for director Otto Preminger’s movie ‘Carmen Jones’, he was asked to do a title sequence for the movie too. Saul could be called the first to realize the true potential of a good title sequence for a film.

He said: “My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film’s story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it.”

When he did the poster and titles for the movie ‘The man with the Golden Arm’, also by Preminger, his star started to rise. The sequence was very creative and symbolic.

After this, he got asked to work for famous directors such as Hitchcock, Kubrick and Scorsese.

In addition to his movie business work, Bass did also make a number of company logos

Here are some examples of his poster work, which remind me a lot of some of the modern posters done by small stakes.