Bass Logo History

Starting With B                                 Bass Recent Logo

This native New Yorker was educated and worked in his home city until 1950, when he moved to California. Two years later, he opened his own studio focusing on advertising films, trailers, posters and logos. He reinvented the movie title as an art form (The Man with a Golden Arm, Psycho, Vertigo, Cape Fear). Paul Rand's use of shape and asymmetrical ballance during the 1940s was an important inspiration for Bass. But while Rand's carefully orchestrated compositions used contrast of shape, color and texture, Bass frequently reduced the graphic design to a single dominant image, usually centered in the space. His mastery of elemental form was applied to corporate identity problems as his firm - Saul Bass & Associates, later renamed Saul Bass/Herb Yeager & Associates - produced iconic and often widely imitated trademarks. Bass believes that a trademark must be readily understood yet possess elements of metaphor and ambiguity that will attract the viewer again and again. Many Bass logo designs have become important cultural icons. His corporate work included the design of highly successful logos for United Airlines, AT&T, Minolta, Bell Telephone System, Quaker, United Way and Warner Communications.