Saul Bass, Graphic Artist, Honored In Google Doodle Video Sequence

Saul Bass, the graphic artist that inspired the art of modern title sequences, is honored in today’s Google Doodle with a video that commemorates some of his best work. Today would have been Bass’s 93rd birthday.

The video on Google’s homepage pays homage to a number of Bass’s best-known title sequences, featuring the Google logo and the sounds of Dave Brubeck’s “Unsquare Dance.” The title sequences featured in the short video are Psycho, The Man with the Golden Arm, Spartacus, West Side Story, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Anatomy of a Murder, Ocean’s 11 and Around the World in Eighty Days.

“I had felt for some time that the audience involvement with the film should really begin with the very first frame,” Bass had once said. “There seemed to be a real opportunity to use titles in a new way — to actually create a climate for the story that was about to unfold.”

Bass also served as the movie poster artist for many of the films for which he developed title sequences. He worked with famed directors Otto Perminger, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder and Stanley Kubrick on movie posters for their films.

Prior and during his career in film art, Bass designed logos for corporations. Most notable were his designs for AT&T in 1969 and 1983, and Continental and United Airlines.

Matt Cruickshank is the designer/director who took the lead on the Saul Bass Google Doodle, even selecting the music by Brubeck, who he says was a favorite of the late artist, according to The Washington Post.