Graphic designer Saul Bass‘s film work is widely regarded as the most iconic ever created, from his bold poster and ad designs (above) to his attention-grabbing, mood-setting opening credit sequences (video below). That there has not been a biography of the man until this point is a mystery, but his daughter, designer Jennifer Bass, has seen fit to preserve his legacy in print with the weighty coffee-table book Saul Bass: A Life In Film & Design (out now). The great revelation in this book is that Bass’s design impact was not limited to the world of film, but also included everyday products that we had no idea came from his visionary mind: AT&T, Quaker Oats, Continental and United Airlines, Dixie Cups, Kleenex, United Way, The Girl Scouts of America, and the list goes on (graphic below). Fifteen years after his 1996 passing, many of these logos are still part of our daily lives, and his film work remains unsurpassed (check out the fanboy homages to his work where the opening credits of contemporary films, like Star Wars, get re-imagined as Saul Bass designs). One quibble about the book: for celebrating the work of someone whose designs were so bold, especially in the case of films (where his type and graphics seem billboard-ready), the images presented here are oddly small, and the font size throughout the book is tiny; there’s a lot of unused space in the minimal page layout that could have benefitted from everything being larger. Regardless, this is likely to be the definitive book on Bass’s work for quite a while.
