Style combination · Contrasts
Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics × West German Conceptual Film
Hillmann's posters also refuse star portraits and reduce a film to one sign, but they are static sheets set in grotesque type that often find the sign in a grainy photograph; Bass draws and cuts the sign by hand and builds it as a moving title before it becomes a poster.
Mix them and make something Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics West German Conceptual Film
01
What each style brings
Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.
Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow)
- Type from West German Conceptual Film
- Colour from Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics
- Form from Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics
- Composition from Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics
- Surface from West German Conceptual Film
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · West German Conceptual Film
Yay!
Inter Tight, standing in for Condensed bold grotesque for titles, set tight and often stacked (Panzerkreuzer Potemkin, 1967; Sturm über Asien; Der Malteser Falke, 1972; Rambow's Die Hamletmaschine, 1980)
Text · Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics
The film-title and poster language Saul Bass built in Los Angeles from Preminger's Carmen Jones (1954), later made with Elaine Bass. Instead of star portraits, a film gets one symbol (a jagged arm, a body cut into pieces, a spiral) that runs through the poster and an opening sequence in which bars, cut-paper shapes and ragged hand-cut letters move and assemble to the score and set the mood. Their Scorsese titles, up to Casino (1995), carried the same single metaphor into filmed water, flowers and neon. Kuntzel + Deygas's Catch Me If You Can titles (2002) later transposed its handmade look.
Archivo; Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics used Ragged, paper-cut display lettering with a 'subtly jagged imprecision', drawn and cut in the studio and by freelance letterers and Plain sans-serif credits moved as graphic elements
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics, with a counter-accent from West German Conceptual Film. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow)
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#111111ground · 36% -
#efe9dcink · 14% -
#e0461faccent · 18% -
#e8a92caccent · 14% -
#e3d34eaccent · 10% -
#2d4f8eaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #111111;
--ink: #efe9dc;
--accent-1: #e0461f;
--accent-2: #e8a92c;
--accent-3: #e3d34e;
--accent-4: #2d4f8e;
--font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics: The posters, title sequences, film scores and corporate marks are in copyright, and several logos are still registered trademarks: borrow the method (one cut symbol, a flat ground, bars that assemble in time), never a specific arm, spiral, dissected body or logo, and do not present new work as a Bass design. Credit Elaine Bass and the letterers where the record names them rather than attributing everything to Saul.
West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow): Some posters turn Nazi imagery against itself: a swastika of broken pencils over the 1938 member list of the exiled German PEN (P.E.N. im Exil, 1983) and an egg given Hitler's forelock and moustache (Sein oder Nichtsein, 1964). Displaying Nazi symbols is restricted by law in Germany and several other countries outside contexts such as art, satire, education and history, so keep any such sign unmistakably critical and check the rules where the work will be shown. Rambow's Othello poster (1978) appears to show a face in dark stage make-up, the blackface convention for the role that is now widely rejected: do not borrow it. The posters and their photographs (Hillmann, Rambow, Lienemeyer, van de Sand, Abisag Tüllmann) are in copyright: stage and photograph your own object or cut your own silhouette instead of recreating a poster.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics
- Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC) Contrasts · ICAIC's film posters also read a film through one silhouette or pun, but in saturated, clashing screenprint colour for a revolutionary public; Bass keeps to one or two flat colours and black, and the symbol's real home is the moving title.
- UPA & Cartoon Modern Pairs well · Its Los Angeles neighbour in flat, modern animation: borrow UPA's caricatured cast when a title needs characters, and keep Bass's single symbol and bars when it needs suspense.
- Corporate Identity Modernism Pairs well · Bass carried the same reduction to one symbol into the Bell System, Continental and United logos; pair the two when a brand needs an animated mark rather than a static emblem.
- American Mid-Century Modernism Pairs well · Its print parent, which already counts Bass among its makers: take Rand's or Lustig's cut-paper wit on the page, and the Bass branch when the single idea has to move, assemble in time and set a mood before a story begins.
- Polish Poster School Contrasts · The Polish film poster also distorts the body into a metaphor, but paints it in loose brushwork with painterly texture; Bass cuts it into hard, flat paper shapes on an empty ground.
With West German Conceptual Film
- Basel Object Poster (Swiss Sachplakat) Contrasts · Both isolate one object on a plain ground, but Basel paints a product in glossy lithographic realism to sell it; here the object stands for a film's theme, is cut to a flat silhouette or a grainy photograph, and rarely flatters.
- AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield) Pairs well · Heartfield tied four bloody axes into a swastika in 1934; Rambow's broken pencils laid into a swastika over a 1938 PEN list (1983) make the same move of an object turned into an emblem. Borrow the AIZ caption when the poster must accuse, and Rambow's wordless object when it should commemorate.
- Polish Poster School Contrasts · Its contemporary in art-film posters: the Polish school paints the metaphor and letters the title by hand in loose brushwork; take the Kassel route when the same single idea should come from a cropped photograph or a hard silhouette with set grotesque type.
- Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve Pairs well · Hipgnosis also builds impossible scenes for the camera and lets the photograph vouch for them; add Rambow's plain ground and one line of set grotesque when such a staged photo has to work as a street poster rather than a record sleeve.
- Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC) Contrasts · The ICAIC film posters of revolutionary Cuba also read a film metaphorically and reduce it to one silhouette or visual pun in screenprint, but they let flat, saturated, Pop and psychedelic colour carry the energy and draw or hand-cut the title letters; the Kassel poster mostly keeps to black and one or two inks, a photograph or a hard silhouette and set grotesque type.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Shares the set grotesque, flat inks and ornament-free ground, but rejects Swiss objectivity: each poster carries one visual metaphor and a new typographic choice per film instead of a grid and a neutral system.
- French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan) Contrasts · Savignac's visual gag is drawn and painted to make people smile at a product; the Kassel poster finds its pun in photographs and silhouettes, and its humour is darker and aimed at a film's or play's subject.
- Israeli Political Poster (Tartakover to Lemel) Contrasts · Both can concentrate a poster into a photographed paradox and a set sans-serif title; choose the Israeli dissenting core when Hebrew slogans, national visual memory and the artist as critical witness must carry the argument, rather than a sign extracted from a film or play. Lemel's exhibition and pandemic images remain points of overlap, not a uniquely Israeli photographic technique.