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Author
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Topic: Today's Google Doodle. (Saul Bass)
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 05-09-2013 09:41 AM
Saul Bass is arguably the most influential movie title designer. I don't think it is as much for his visual style, which seemed very inspired by artists such as Henri Matisse, but more for how he broke movie title design out of a very conventional, stale school of thought into a much more creative, dramatic space.
Let's also not forget Saul Bass was one of the most accomplished logo designers ever. He came up with the AT&T bell logo and its "death star" globe replacement. He did logos for United Airlines, Quaker, the United Way, Dixie, Continental Airlines, the Girl Scouts, Warner Bros., Alcoa, Minolta and many others.
One could take a look at these logos and deliver the predictably ignorant response, "aw my kid to do one of those in 5 minutes." No. Not really. Those logos are simple, but only deceptively so. They go through many cycles of revisions, often with other non-artists trying to add in other extraneous shit that doesn't belong.
It's actually far easier to create a complicated, jumbled looking logo than it is to make a simple one (particularly a simple brand mark that hasn't already existed in some way). The non-designer committee forces the logo to include the address, phone number, a group photo, a map where the treasure in It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is hidden and anything else they haven't forgotten. Nevermind the "logo" or whatever you want to call it is only legible when blown up to cover half a letter sized piece of paper.
Simple brand marks like those created by Saul Bass can literally be reduced to the size of a 10 point letter on a page and still be readable. They're legible on a sign seen from a good distance. They're the real definition of what a logo should be.
I think Saul Bass' work is becoming a little more popular now due to certain areas of the graphic design field embracing what's being called "flat design." Previously "skeuomorphism" was popular -web page buttons and other computer interface features imitating the look of glass, wood and lots of other real world materials. That stuff gets in the way of legibility on small devices like mobile phones. Various companies are working to simplify their brand marks and other things that appear in electronic form. They're getting rid of glassy effects, excess gradients and other embellishments in order to arrive at something more pure and simple.
Rumor has it Apple is doing a lot of radical re-design work with Mac OSX and iOS. The interfaces in both represent the extremes in skeuomorphism. The look was very slick when it was introduced over a decade ago. But now it's looking dated. Microsoft's Windows 8 release has been largely maligned for the functional changes made in the OS, but the company has received much more in the way of compliments for its visual design.
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