Bass Study

The task was to create my own film poster in the style of Saul Bass. Here I chose to do the film Death Proof by Quentin Tarantino. I think the original poster (shown on the left) looks very similar to a Bass style poster, as strong colours such as black and red are used. Also the black silhouettes of the eight women in the background reminds me very much of the cut outs he uses in his film posters. Interesting typography is used throughout this poster.
My Poster
It was hard for me
to recreate this poster without copying some of the ideas
from the original poster.I unintentionally chose the same colours, I realised this when I uploaded them to this blog. I tried to incorperate the same elements Bass uses in his film posters. Particularly 'Vertigo', where he puts the main character 'James Stewart' in bold letters at the top of the poster. I did the same by putting Kurt Russel's name at the top of the page as he is the leading man in this movie. The lettering too were Bass inspired cut outs. I made the 'Kurt Rusell' letters out of a broken windscreen shaped cutout,the idea came from the film poster 'Anatomy of a Murder', where the letters are carved out of a body. I hadn't intended on making a car shape in the begining , it happened accidentally as I was trying to put blocks of bold colours on a bright background. The title 'Death Proof' is at the bottom of the car above the yellow cut out of a severed leg. This severed leg is is from a scene in the movie, again relating to the fact that Bass used key scenes in his poster designs. I chose to add the leg to the poster because I found that scene most memorable throughout the entire movie(severed leg scene is the second video on the right hand side of this blog in the section labled 'VIDEOS-RELATING TO BLOG'). Overall I am happy with the design of my poster , I think I acheived the fifties styled Bass inspired poster I was aiming for. I think I could improve more though if I had taken more time when making this piece.

Saul Bass.

Bass is one of my favourite graphic designers, I love the use of bold colours in his posters
and the typography designs. He was born in New York on the 8th of May 1920. He studied at the Art Students League in New York and Brooklyn College and is famous for designing animated motion picture title sequences. Vertigo

I love the film poster 'Vertigo' by the American graphic designer Saul Bass. The entire image itself connotes the feeling of vertigo, here we see what appears to be a man and a woman spiraling down in some kind of white tornado or vortex. Though this is apparent I think the image of the man and woman look like two people doing a crazy dance. On the other hand it looks like the woman is trying to run away from the man. The man is in bold black whilst the woman on the other hand is just a black outline. Bass uses strong bold colours, which is effective. The red background for instance creates an interesting atmosphere. When I think of the colour red there are a lot of mixed emotions as red connotes many different things such as danger,anger or blood. I also believe red to be associated with love, purely because it is Valentines Day soon and items such as roses and red hearts spring to mind. Plus the image is of a man and woman so maybe there is romance. However the typography used eliminates any feeling of romance because it looks higgledy- piggledy, or unstable.

More of Bass's Film Posters

From left to right (Anatomy of a Murder, The man with the golden arm and Henri's walk to Paris). All of these posters follow the same principle. The use of simple cut outs , bright colours and unique typography is a good way to attract the audience.

The man with the golden arm is excellent, I like how he has used big black blocks to seperate the images from the text and the pop art type photographs in primary colours.

Anatomy of Murder is slightly different, the title is cut out of the black image of the body and he only uses two colours. Again Bass uses really bright colours. Henri's Walk to Paris is pretty similar to this design

David Carson

Born in Texas, Carson started teaching in 1982-1987 and began experimenting with graphic design. "I've always felt I make my living from my hobby." Not only has been awarded for various different acheivments and has created a range of different designs for magazines and television, he has also written books about design. Carson's work has been feautured in over 180 magazines and newspapers world wide.

Personally I love how Carson manages to manipulate, twist and distort text and photography. His experiments with the broken imagery and weird typography that is difficult to read is one of the reasons why I like his work. You can clearly tell that his designs has infact influenced the work of the graphic designers of today. Raygun issue #3

The magazine cover Raygun issue number 3 is an odd design. It comprises of the title 'Raygun' at the top in bold black letters on a white background.Underneath there is an image of girl wearing black with her hand on her cheek. The odd part about it is that she is upside down, yet the rest of the magazine's titles are all the right way up. I'm not quite sure about the effect aimed here, but I'm pretty sure this magazine would stand out on a rack full of other magazines. The bottom left hand corner of the letter 'R' in the title Raygun looks as if it's been chopped off. The black letters of the title merge with the black top the girl is wearing in the foreground. The varying font size in the sub headings is ingenious because they keep decreasing in size, getting smaller at the bottom. I think the use of colours or lack in this case is effective as he has chosen opposite colours, black and white.
More of David Carson's Raygun magazine covers

David Carson Interview - LAYERS MAGAZINE I found some useful information in the article above from Layers Magazine, the link to this article is in the 'USEFUL WEBSITES' section of my blog.

Neville Brody

British born designer and art director Neville Brody is probably one of the best-known graphic designers of his time. He became known for his work as Art Director of 'Face' magazine. At school Brody studied A-Level Art claiming that he had always wanted to do art, 'Ever since I had any self awareness, I've wanted to do art or painting. He went on to do a Fine Art foundation course at Hornsey College of Art in 1957. 'The big decision I took at this stage was whether to follow Fine Art or to pursue Graphics, I thought Graphics would offer a better opportunity' Brody has worked and designed for many big names such as Nike. I love how he experiments with different visual aspects, combining unusual typography, and images. Particularly the way he incorporates typefaces as a part of his design and his unconventional wacky layouts.
Nike Advert

The advert comprises of a close up of someone's face covering half the page whilst the rest of the page is white. Brody has uses a range of different words in this advert, which overlaps the face and the white space. Random phrases starting with the word 'just' are used relating to the product 'Nike' without any form of sentence structure. The text varies in size and are placed at different angles. There is a limited range of colours in the advert as a whole, with just the 'Nike' logo and the phrase 'just zap it' in red. I think all these components used creates an effective advert. The image and layout is very straight forward, I also think the lack of colour makes the image a strong one.

1 2

1.City Limits

-Brody has combined art work in his design as the image of the man smoking is a painting.

- He uses a limited palette in his images, only adding colour to text etc.

2.The Face

- Again Brody has used a black and white image

-Experiments with font eg. the letter 'A' in the title 'FACE' is a triangle.