For the final lesson of the term, we had a creative session focusing on two distinct artists and how their styles can be used for design work.
Saul Bass
American graphic designer and filmmaker Saul Bass (May 8, 1920 — April 25, 1996) was perhaps best known for his design of film posters, title sequences and corporate logos. His extensive career led him to work alongside some of Hollywood’s greatest, including Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, and Martin Scorsese. But during his 40-year career, he became well known in 1995 after creating the title sequence for Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm. Bass went on to secure his reputable name in the film industry by designing effective and memorable title sequences, inventing a new type of kinetic typography, for North by Northwest, Vertigo (working with John Whitney), and Psycho.
Here are some examples of his work. It’s no surprise to me that this man became perhaps the most successful graphic designer throughout history. His bold, simple style is striking and direct, using colours, strong imagery and text to deliver the information to the audience and I really like his interesting use of shape. Everything is thought out and appealing, even if seemingly irregular or asymmetrical.
His style has become so well-known and popular, that there have been many movie posters created inspired by his work.
We were told to note the use of colour and layering. People took recognisable moments from the film and used relevant colours, silhouettes and text to make unmistakable posters. I like the one in the middle especially, since the merging of the character running, the stairs and the shadow creates a really foreboding effect due to the foreshadowing of death.
Roy Lichtenstein
Our second artist, Roy Fox Lichtenstein (October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was an American pop artist who became a leading figure in the new art movement. His work defined the premise of pop art through parody during the 1960s, alongside Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist amongst others, who also influenced and shaped modern art greatly. His style was greatly inspired by popular advertising and the comic book style and he produced precise compositions that documented while they parodied, often in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Lichtenstein described pop art as “not ‘American’ painting but actually industrial painting”. Whaam! and Drowning Girl are generally regarded as his most famous works and they, as well as Look Mickey, are seen as his most influential works. His most expensive piece is Masterpiece, which was sold for $165 million in January 2017. His paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City.
Once again, it is evident why this style gained such popularity; the distinctive lines and solid block colours make the artwork distinct and staggering, similarly to Bass’s works. His comic book approach gives the paintings a fun and unique look, which is quite interesting to look at in my opinion and gives a dramatic flair to the scenes, such as the girl who is drowning, whose beautiful distress is exaggerated and enhanced by the thick black lines of her face, hair and the waves.
My Posters
Our task was to create a poster for a favourite movie or TV show in the style of either Saul Bass or Roy Lichtenstein’s work. The poster could be inspired by a particular scene, preferably an iconic or recognisable one, so that it is more efficient and interesting, and the audience knows which movie/show is being presented right away. I chose to do Midnight in Paris for this task, since it is one of my favourite films and doesn’t have a lot of posters, except for the odd fan-made one. I compiled some of these together for inspiration, hoping to get some ideas about composition and colour, which they did help me a lot with. I also found a few scenes which I think are important to the film and fairly recognisable, which I could choose from and use.
I wanted to do both artists’ styles and make a large variety of posters, but I only had time to complete a couple in Bass’s art style, which I am not annoyed about since his techniques work best for poster designs and were personally more eye-grabbing to me than Lichtenstein. Since he doesn’t have a lot of organic/soft shapes in his work, I opened up Adobe Illustrator, where I could create those rigid forms. My plan was to import an image and trace over the most important elements with the pen tool and this method was a huge success. For the first poster, I did Gil and Adriana dancing and whilst I certainly considered adding other aspects, such as the Eiffel tower or some faint glow, or gradient, I tried to keep it simple and minimalist what could be seen, at least for the first poster, to better reflect Bass’s style. Most of his posters only include one main subject, and text, which makes them so visually different – they’re unafraid, singular and stand out because of it.
Bass had a different font for each film, one best suited to the genre and story, so I used the pen tool to create uneven block letters for the title. I think that it suits the carefree, dreamlike quality of the film and enforce the theme of freedom in creative people, and how different they are for deviating from the rigid rules of society. They naturally looked best underneath the image, so I left them in that position. For the colours, I used the official poster of the movie and the eye-dropper tool to pick up certain blues and play around with where I added them. I think the navy works really well, but I also love the strong juxtaposition of the black and white. I felt really proud to have discovered that there were exactly four ‘i’s in the title, like the four main characters of the story. I made sure to highlight this by making them a different colour, and I think it creates a really funky and bold effect.
In the end, I decided on white, light blue and navy blue, in this coordination. The link between Gil and the title (making them both the same colour) show that the movie is about his journey and experience in Paris, whilst the background and Adriana being blue show that they are disconnected from him, but part of his reality. Albeit not being the same, they are both important to his story and give life and colour to Paris, and the way he sees it. They are what change him and I think the bright colours reflect this. I decided to leave the text without any coloured embellishments because I wanted the focus to remain on the characters, and also to keep it as minimal as possible.
However, looking at the inspired posters created thanks to Saul Bass made me want to do something more detailed, so for my second poster, I included a scene, instead of just the subjects. Out of the scenes I had chosen, I chose to do the one of Gil and Adriana (again) walking in the streets at night. I love this scene since Gil admits his love and awe for the city and says a beautiful couple of lines about Paris. It has a very romantic quality, yet down to Earth as well, and my aim was to translate that mood. I had to think about how much of the scene to include, and how to create ambience using simple shapes. I decided to create the rough layout of the street using two main shapes, which represented the stone walls, and include the lamp as well since it is a prominent part of the shot and adds to the Parisienne vibe.
Once the scene was completed with the pen tool, there was the matter of the title. There was no obvious space to put it, since almost every corner of the canvas was occupied, or too near something to have enough space for the text to sit comfortably. I had to get creative and add the text inside one of the objects. Luckily, the wall furthest to the left seemed perfect for this, which I hadn’t planned at all, but decided to use to my advantage. I roughly sketched out the letters and used the pen tool to get the more refined block font. Using the verts, I also tweaked the corners to make them accurate to the perspective.
In my opinion, this completed the scene perfectly and added a nice finishing touch to the poster. It all came together, and with the dark colours, I managed to put across an accurate representation of the atmosphere in the scene. The characters were alright in their original positions in the scene and could be clearly seen whilst giving attention to the street as well, so I kept them at the bottom. This created a natural line of vision; the eyes travel from the bottom left corner to the top right, drifting along with the text which is all pointing to the lamp, with the added light details that break up the angular lines and add some variety, being circular.
I think the silhouettes look best in black and match with the lamp so that the colours are more balanced, I wasn’t planning on changing the grey of the walls or the yellow of the lamp and lights either, since not only were they realistic to the scene but also matched the palette of the movie and posters too, making it signature to Midnight in Paris. Both examples are quite prominent and eye-catching, but I was looking for something a bit more elegant or alluring, so I changed the background to the light blue that I used for the first poster.
This works perfectly in my opinion since it has the more well-known light blue that reigns the official poster of the film. It adds that magical manner that I wanted to imbue, making the otherwise normal scene more lively and vibrant, like Gil’s emotions during his travels and conversations with Adriana. True to Saul Bass, I kept the shapes simple, with only straight lines and not too many small details (the dress is much simpler than in the picture) and I was surprised at how effective and recognisable everything is despite this. You can clearly tell who the silhouettes are, especially with the street and lamp lights. I love how simplistic everything is, yet it all works in the composition because of the directions and angles of the lines. It puts across the cinematography as well as the iconic scene and feels of the movie and I’m really pleased with how it turned out!
I feel like I have a much better grasp of Bass’s, and even Lichtenstein’s styles and I am more confident with my poster design skills. I’m not sure if I’ll be using posters for my brief, but if I add that to my plan, I look forward to adding a couple of examples with this bold, unique technique.