Saul Bass

1. What it is — A single-sheet poster for Preminger's film about heroin addiction, lithograph, 1955; the first time a poster and a title sequence share the same graphic system. Signed Bass (signature visible next to the blue band).
2. Composition — Cream surface divided into irregular "collage" blocks: a petroleum-blue and black rectangle at top, a jagged black band across the middle out of which an arm is "cut," reaching diagonally downward, two narrow photographs (Sinatra on the right, Novak/Parker on the left) wedged into the black block, a blue and purple horizontal strip at the bottom with a third photograph. The eye doesn't follow the centre but the diagonal of the arm, from the upper black block to the tiny black hand at the bottom of the title text.
3. Colour — Four flat colours (petroleum, black, indigo-blue, purple) on a cream base, without gradient and without photographic colour reproduction — the photographs are black and white, inserted as material, not as tone.
4. Typography — Hand-lettered condensed capitals (Harold Adler), gold on black, with jagged edges that follow the jaggedness of the arm itself — the letter and the symbol share the same cut, they are not two separate crafts joined afterward.
5. Message — The three-second test: a jagged black arm on a light ground reads as "a broken body" before a single letter of the title is read. From five metres the silhouette of the arm and the film's name remain recognisable.
6. Why exactly this way — The studio wanted to sell the stars (Sinatra, Novak, Parker); Preminger agreed that the symbol of addiction should be more dominant than the actors' faces — a rare concession for a Hollywood poster in 1955.
7. What would kill it — Replacing the jagged, broken line of the arm with a smooth, "tidy" silhouette — precisely the tremor of the cut is the visual equivalent of the "broken" life of the addict that Bass speaks of in his own statement of intent.

Principles: redukcija-na-jedan-pokretni-gest fragmentacija-tijela-kao-simbol dizajn-po-otkucaju-muzike To verify against the image: the exact dimensions of the poster are not given in any available record.

1. What it is — Single-sheet poster for the Hitchcock film, 1958; shares the spiral motif with the title sequence Bass made with John Whitney (Lissajous curves generated on a mechanical analogue computer — one of the first uses of computer graphics in film).
2. Composition — The whole surface is one saturated orange plane; in the centre a concentric spiral of white/cream lines that pulls the eye in toward the middle, where a black silhouette of a man falls together with an outline (not black, just a contour line) silhouette of a woman — two different drawing techniques for two bodies in the same fall. The film title in a narrow hand-lettered face at the bottom, the actors' names in the same lettering at the top — the text frames the spiral, doesn't cut into it.
3. Colour — Essentially two values: the orange field and the whiteness of the spiral, with a small red oval at the very centre of the vortex — a minimal palette that heightens the optical vertigo effect without a single extra colour.
4. Typography — Narrow, hand-lettered capitals, the same texture as Golden Arm but less jagged — here the subject is dizziness, not breakage.
5. Message — Three-second test: spiral + falling body = a physical sense of vertigo before a single word is read; the title "VERTIGO" arrives only as confirmation of what the eye has already felt.
6. Why exactly this way — The film is about obsession and loss of balance; the spiral is the only geometric shape that literally simulates that state on a static poster surface, without a single figurative scene from the film.
7. What would kill it — A static, concentric target without falling figures — the spiral alone would be decorative; only the fall of two bodies through it turns it into a psychological symbol, not an optical toy.

Principles: redukcija-na-jedan-pokretni-gest sekvenca-je-dio-filma To verify against the image: the exact split between Bass's and Whitney's contribution to the technical execution of the spiral is not separated out in the available sources — Whitney built the curves on the machine, Bass ran the graphic concept.

1. What it is — Single-sheet poster for Preminger's courtroom drama,
2. The PGDA record gives the wrong year (1955, the year of Golden Arm) — corrected here to the film's release date.
3. Composition — A human figure taken apart like a broken toy: torso, two legs, two forearms placed separately on the orange surface, each part slightly shifted from its neighbour as if the body has literally been dissected — the film title lettered inside the torso itself.
4. Colour — Orange gradient (lighter at top, darker at bottom) with a black silhouette of the figure; the lower half of the poster shifts into a more saturated orange field with the cast list in outline lettering.
5. Typography — Hand-lettered type placed inside the figure's body — the title isn't separate from the image but literally sits "in" the cut torso.
6. Message — Three-second test: the dismembered body = "anatomy" literally shown before the word "murder" is read — the poster stages the film's own title as a visual cipher.
7. Why exactly this way — The film is a courtroom drama about murder, not an action film with on-screen violence; the fragmentation is abstract and graphic, not literal blood — it allows the subject without censorship risk in 1959.
8. What would kill it — Reassembling the figure into a whole body — the moment the parts join, the exact image is lost that turns the title "anatomy of a murder" into a picture, not a metaphor.

Principles: fragmentacija-tijela-kao-simbol rez-britvom-kao-faktura To verify against the image: exact poster dimensions are not given in the record.

1. What it is — Single-sheet poster for Preminger's political drama about confirming a cabinet appointment in the Senate, 1962.
2. Composition — Red surface; above, an arm (just forearm and hand) holds a handle as if from a bag or briefcase, from which hangs a price tag with a silhouette of the Capitol dome and the film title — the cast list is lettered directly on the "bag" between the arm and the tag.
3. Colour — Saturated red surface, black arm and text, white tag — only three values, maximum contrast between the "goods" (red field) and the "price" (white tag).
4. Typography — Hand-lettered type for the cast list, fitted into the outline of the bag; more compact, outline lettering for the film title on the tag.
5. Message — Three-second test: politics (the Capitol) has a price (the tag) and someone holding it in hand (the bag) — the whole political intrigue of the film reduced to a transaction before a single actor's name is read.
6. Why exactly this way — The film is about voting, blackmail and trading influence in the Senate; the buying metaphor is a direct translation of the theme into an object, not an illustration of a scene from the film.
7. What would kill it — If the tag didn't hang from the arm but stood separately — the link between "someone holds/controls" (the arm) and "what's being sold" (the tag) must be physical, not just compositional.

Principles: predmet-kao-metafora redukcija-na-jedan-pokretni-gest To verify against the image: exact poster dimensions are not given in the record.

1. What it is — Corporate mark for American Telephone & Telegraph and its 23 regional companies ("Bell System"), 1969 — the sixth version of the bell since 1889. Accompanied by a logotype in Helvetica with customised spacing; rolled out through the largest rebranding programme in American history (roughly 135,000 vehicles, 22,000 buildings, 1.25 million payphones, over twelve manuals).
2. Composition — A solid bell silhouette (not a line drawing of a bell but a solid shape) set inside a circle, both elements built with the same, uniform line weight — the circle and the bell share the same "wall" thickness, so at small size (the mark on a payphone) no detail disappears.
3. Colour — Essentially one colour, "Bell Blue" on white for the mark; black text on white for the logotype — the system is built to work in a single colour too (stamped into metal, engraved, etc.).
4. Typography — Logotype in Helvetica, with hand-adjusted letter spacing (not the font's standard kerning) — documented in the source as part of the identity manual.
5. Message — One object (the bell) recognisable at any distance and in any application — "every impression contributes to the whole, every signal is part of the mosaic" (Bass's own formulation in the pitch film for AT&T management).
6. Why exactly this way — In 1969 the company had 23 different regional versions of the bell with no unified typography; the task wasn't "a new symbol" but one symbol that could withstand thousands of different materials and sizes without losing legibility.
7. What would kill it — Detailing the bell (shading, an outline instead of a solid silhouette, a circle line thinner than the bell line) — any inconsistent line weight breaks the impression that the mark is one continuous cut, not an assembled illustration.

Principles: znak-od-linije-promjenljive-debljine To verify against the image: the exact number/appearance of the earlier five versions of the bell (1889-1969) is not separated out in the available sources.

1. What it is — Corporate mark for AT&T Corporation, 1983, a direct consequence of the antitrust breakup of the Bell System (1982-84), when AT&T could no longer keep the "Bell" name or mark. AGI (the professional association Bass was a member of) lists the mark as Bass's own, "successor to his 1969 Bell System mark".
2. Composition — Horizontal bands of varying width arranged so that the density and spacing of the bands alone create the illusion of a sphere (globe) without a single curved line literally drawn — the principle is the same as with the bell (line builds form), applied to a completely different object.
3. Colour — In a blue version (the best known) and a black-and-white version for single-colour reproduction — the same test as 1969: the mark has to work in one colour.
4. Typography — The "AT&T" logotype in Helvetica, a heavier weight, placed directly next to the globe in a horizontal arrangement.
5. Message — "Global communication" expressed without a single literal element (no telephone, no cable, no continents) — the sphere form built from lines alone carries the meaning.
6. Why exactly this way — The company was transforming from a regional telephone monopoly into a global player; the bell was tied to American telephony, the globe isn't tied to any technology or territory.
7. What would kill it — A solid, closed sphere silhouette instead of bands — that would lose exactly the quality (transparency, the "network" of lines) that makes the mark more modern than a solid, "corporate" ball.

Principles: znak-od-linije-promjenljive-debljine To verify against the image: the number of bands and the years of revision are given inconsistently across sources (twelve bands 1983-1999 according to one source, a change to eight bands in 1999 according to another; the Wikimedia record for the file itself mixes them up further) — treated here as a construction principle, not as an exact band count.

1. What it is — Record sleeve for the music from Preminger's film (composer Georges Auric), lithograph, gift from the designer himself to MoMA; 29.2 × 30.8 cm. Note: the copy circulating on PGDA and collector sites is a later reissue (label "Milan") with the same drawing — MoMA's copy is the authentic 1957 one.
2. Composition — Simplified face in three strokes: eyebrow, eye with a tear, nose/mouth — all crammed into the upper half of a square area, the lower half empty yellow.
3. Colour — Mustard-yellow ground, turquoise-blue face line, a single teardrop in black as the only accent outside those two colours.
4. Typography — Hand-lettered condensed type for the film title, composer, and "original motion picture soundtrack" — bolder than poster titles, legible on the small surface of a record sleeve.
5. Message — "Tristesse" (sadness) read literally as a tear on the face before the title is even read — the sleeve translates the novel's/film's title into a single pictogram.
6. Why exactly this way — The format is a record sleeve, not a poster — a smaller surface and a square format demand an even greater degree of reduction than a poster by the same designer in the same year.
7. What would kill it — A more realistic face (nose, lips, eyebrows drawn in full) — the moment the face becomes a portrait rather than a pictogram, the direct link between form and the single word of the title is lost.

Principles: gest-rukom-nasuprot-rezu predmet-kao-metafora To verify against the image: whether the RCA Victor pressing from 1957 is identical in every detail to the drawing on the later "Milan" reissue (the ground colour on the reissue is more saturated) not measured with an instrument, only visually.

1. What it is — Single-sheet poster for Wilder's Cold War comedy, 1961, filmed in West Berlin.
2. Composition — A crudely felt-tip-drawn woman's face at the top; three white balloons with the words "ONE TWO THREE" hand-lettered; a black silhouette of a hand at the bottom holding the balloon strings.
3. Colour — Saturated orange ground (the same colour family as Anatomy of a Murder from the same decade), black-and-white figures with no shading or gradient.
4. Typography — Hand-lettered, deliberately unpolished letters (felt-tip pen, imperfect spacing) — the opposite of the precisely cut posters for dramas.
5. Message — The three-second test: a childish drawing (balloon, crude face) = comedy, before a single actor's name is read — the register of the drawing itself announces the genre.
6. Why exactly this way — The film is a farce, not a drama; the same reductive method (one gesture, few colours) is translated here into an unskilled, quick drawing rather than a precise paper cut — proof that the method adapts to tone, it isn't a fixed style.
7. What would kill it — A more precise, "tidier" drawn face — the humour that comes precisely from the drawing's clumsiness would be lost; this poster works because it looks unfinished.

Principles: gest-rukom-nasuprot-rezu To verify against the image: nothing crucial; the composition and technique are clearly visible on the available scan.