In all its guises, design’s intention is to portray... to represent something for a viewer to decode, to connect a signifier to a signified. For this subject’s major project, I chose to pursue the visual medium of film posters. Inspired by my font, Curved’s design — which has a certain space-age, 1960s feel to it — I looked at creating film posters for, initially a 1969 “Doctor Who” story The Seeds of Death then, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The latter, being a seminal piece of cinematic history, comes with a ready made arsenal of iconic moments and imagery to draw upon. In the creation of the series of posters, I was inspired by the work of mid-century designer Saul Bass — both his film posters and title sequence designs.
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The work of Saul Bass had a minimalist aesthetic which appealed in its simplicity and precession of form and ideas. Bass famously worked on posters for Alfred Hitchcock’s films in the late 1950s and 60s as well as producing graphically innovative title sequences during the same period, notably for Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958), North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959) and Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960). Bass’ graphical style is punctuated by the bold use of a single, often red, colour pallet combined with black and white. With such a refined and simple aesthetic, the small details and choices made by the designer are more important as they carry more significance. A busy design distracts the eye, a carefully curated and minimalist composition draws the eye to certain elements and details. For example, in Saul Bass’ title sequence for Psycho the use of singular repeating elements within a monotone colour space highlights key ideas for the film. The black and white parallel stripes which cut across the screen echo the motion and effect of the knife used in the later murder scene. The lines slice through the credits, dislocating sections of words and names — literally cutting through people like the knife. The word Psycho is left scarred by the lines even as they disappear from the screen, hauntingly twitching back and forth along the cut-line. These techniques combine with the instantly …show more content…
Individually, works maintain a balance of elements that work together — this is more of an inherent and intuitive cohesiveness, where forms reach a sense of harmony. In the case of Bass’ poster for Vertigo, the descending spiral pattern is offset by the left justified text and right leading figure in the centre of the spiral. It is not symmetrical as a whole, but cohesive and balanced. Collectively too works are cohesive when they share common elements or techniques. In creating my series of posters I chose to have a consistent layout, a strong sense of centrality and the use of a red colour scheme to tie the works together. In repeating these elements across the works I wanted to suggest their conceptual importance to 2001. In order; the cinematic aspect ratio was chosen by Kubrick as the shape for the Monolith; the film focuses on symmetrical and perspectival images that often mimic the shape of Hal’s camera-eye; finally the red colour reflects both the sun and Hal’s camera-eye. Cohesiveness suggests a sense of care and intent in a design — a notion that could be problematised by looking at the abstract expressionist movement of the 1940s and 50s. Artists such as Jackson Pollock’s works are far from ordered, but cohesion still exists in the pallet of colour used and most importantly between the works he produced. Pollock’s oeuvre encapsulates a set of aesthetics present across the artist’s body of
The work of Saul Bass had a minimalist aesthetic which appealed in its simplicity and precession of form and ideas. Bass famously worked on posters for Alfred Hitchcock’s films in the late 1950s and 60s as well as producing graphically innovative title sequences during the same period, notably for Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958), North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959) and Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960). Bass’ graphical style is punctuated by the bold use of a single, often red, colour pallet combined with black and white. With such a refined and simple aesthetic, the small details and choices made by the designer are more important as they carry more significance. A busy design distracts the eye, a carefully curated and minimalist composition draws the eye to certain elements and details. For example, in Saul Bass’ title sequence for Psycho the use of singular repeating elements within a monotone colour space highlights key ideas for the film. The black and white parallel stripes which cut across the screen echo the motion and effect of the knife used in the later murder scene. The lines slice through the credits, dislocating sections of words and names — literally cutting through people like the knife. The word Psycho is left scarred by the lines even as they disappear from the screen, hauntingly twitching back and forth along the cut-line. These techniques combine with the instantly …show more content…
Individually, works maintain a balance of elements that work together — this is more of an inherent and intuitive cohesiveness, where forms reach a sense of harmony. In the case of Bass’ poster for Vertigo, the descending spiral pattern is offset by the left justified text and right leading figure in the centre of the spiral. It is not symmetrical as a whole, but cohesive and balanced. Collectively too works are cohesive when they share common elements or techniques. In creating my series of posters I chose to have a consistent layout, a strong sense of centrality and the use of a red colour scheme to tie the works together. In repeating these elements across the works I wanted to suggest their conceptual importance to 2001. In order; the cinematic aspect ratio was chosen by Kubrick as the shape for the Monolith; the film focuses on symmetrical and perspectival images that often mimic the shape of Hal’s camera-eye; finally the red colour reflects both the sun and Hal’s camera-eye. Cohesiveness suggests a sense of care and intent in a design — a notion that could be problematised by looking at the abstract expressionist movement of the 1940s and 50s. Artists such as Jackson Pollock’s works are far from ordered, but cohesion still exists in the pallet of colour used and most importantly between the works he produced. Pollock’s oeuvre encapsulates a set of aesthetics present across the artist’s body of