Saul Bass

Saul Bass was a graphic designer and filmmaker, perhaps best known for his design of film posters and motion picture title sequences.

During his 40-year career Bass worked for some of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. Amongst his most famous title sequences are the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict's arm for Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm, the credits racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of the United Nations building in Hitchcock's North by Northwest, and the disjointed text that races together and apart in Psycho.

Saul Bass designed emblematic movie posters that transformed the visuals of film advertising. Before Bass’s seminal poster for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), movie posters were dominated by depictions of key scenes or characters from the film, often both juxtaposed with each other. Bass’s posters, however, typically developed simplified, symbolic designs that visually communicated key essential elements of the film. For example, his poster for a Man with a Golden Arm, with a jagged arm and off-kilter typography, starkly communicates the protagonist's struggle with heroin addition. Bass's iconic Vertigo (1958) poster, with its stylized figures sucked down into the nucleus of a spiral vortex, captures the anxiety and disorientation central to the film.

The Great Wave Of Kanagawa

Hokusai the artist behind the wood block painting, was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period. He was influenced by such painters as Sesshu, and other styles of Chinese painting. Born in Edo (now Tokyo), Hokusai is best known as author of the woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji which includes the internationally recognized print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, created during the 1820s.





Hokusai created the "Thirty-Six Views" both as a response to a domestic travel boom and as part of a personal obsession with Mount Fuji. It was this series, specifically The Great Waveprint and Fuji in Clear Weather, that secured Hokusai’s fame both in Japan and overseas. As historian Richard Lane concludes, "Indeed, if there is one work that made Hokusai's name, both in Japan and abroad, it must be this monumental print-series...". While Hokusai's work prior to this series is certainly important, it was not until this series that he gained broad recognition and left a lasting impact on the art world. It was also The Great Wave print that initially received, and continues to receive, acclaim and popularity in the Western world.

Contemporary Designers

Barnbrook founded his design studio, Barnbrook Design (now Barnbrook), in 1990. His typefaces were originally released through the California innovator Emigre. In 2010, his most famous typeface, “Mason” (originally “Manson”), released by Emigre became one of the first digital acquisitions of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Additionally, his stone carving is on permanent display in the 20th-century gallery of the Victoria and Albert Museum.


A monograph of his work, Barnbrook Bible,was simultaneously published. In 2008 he was given an honorary doctorate by Staffordshire University for services to typography. During 2009, the exhibition “Collateral Damage” presented a retrospective of Jonathan Barnbrook’s more political design output, and traveled to multiple countries, including France, Slovenia, and Croatia.


He also has stated that he believes “design can change the world when it works in service of the right people and gets an issue on the mainstream political agenda.” In acknowledging this responsibility, Barnbrook has art directed for the anti-corporate magazine Ad busters

Pop Art

Pop Art was born in Britain in the mid 1950s. It was the creation of many artist like Andy Warhol. The first application of the term Pop Art occurred during discussions among artists who called themselves the Independent Group (IG), which was part of the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, begun around 1952-53. Pop Art appreciates popular culture, or what we also call “material culture.” It does not critique the consequences of materialism and consumerism; it simply recognizes its presence as a natural fact. This would be recognizable imagery, drawn from popular media and products mainly after the world war as anything new was a craze among people as it was different and new. Usually the pieces of art used very bright colours to one draw the viewer in and two as a form as advertising again to draw the viewer in. Flat imagery influenced by comic books and newspaper photographs were widely used as they were very popular among people and was also something new and the style was something different in art. Images of celebrities or fictional characters in comic books, advertisements and fan magazines were also used for example Marilyn Monroe was used in one of Andy Warhol's pieces of art, as she was seen as what a "women" was.