ICM - Leeds Design Agency

After writing a blog on Otl Aicher’s finest set of sports posters I thought I’d follow it up with what I consider to be the finest film posters.

Saul Bass (1920-1996) is one of the greatest graphic designers of the 20th century. During his 40-year career he worked for some of Hollywood’s greatest filmmakers, including most notably Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese.

Saul Bass was born in New York on May 8th 1920 and studied Graphic Art at Brooklyn College, NY before moving to Los Angeles in 1946. Bass was a pioneer of the pared down graphic, favouring minimalist symbolic images, which had been in vogue since he began designing for the film industry in the early 1950s.

For The Man with the Golden Arm a film about the struggle of its hero – a jazz musician played by Frank Sinatra, Saul Bass chose to base the design on a black cut-out of a heroin addict’s arm. Knowing that the arm was a powerful image of addiction, Bass had chosen it, rather than showing Frank Sinatra’s famous face, as the symbol of both the movie’s titles and its promotional poster.

For Vertigo Bass used the motif of the revolving Spirograph to evoke the dizzying sensations of the film, in all of his posters he seems to be offering the audiences a taste of the atmosphere and what story was about to unfold.

Unlike most of todays modern posters when looking at these posters it gets to the core of what the film is about, not who is in it or what fancy special effects are used. I think this is why movie posters today are not viewed as an art form any more. Which is a real shame as some of the themes in films are integral to society and what is going on in the wor…

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It was November 1989, my last year of high school, suddenly the news on television has become interesting. The falling of the Berlin Wall was one of the first televised ‘life-changing’ moments I can remember watching on TV.

That same night David Hockney was faxing artwork in a live event witnessed by spectators and masterminded by Jonathan Silver of Salts Mill, Bradford. Hockney sent a 144-sheet composite image, Tennis, to the 1853 Gallery at Salts Mill.

At the time, the fax was an important bit of business kit, faxes were sent then like emails are today – we used to say ‘how did we ever cope before the fax machine?’.

Jump forward twenty years and Hockney is still embracing new media for his art, he has become a fan of an iPhone app called Brushes.

The 71-year-old painter invested in an iPhone earlier this year and has created a host of drawings including landscapes, portraits and images of flowers, all using Brushes.

His exploration of the iPhone culminated in an exhibition ‘Drawing In A Printing Machine’, displaying ten landscapes and eighteen portraits at London’s Annely Juda Gallery in the summer of 20…

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Otl Aicher created possible the finest set of sports posters for the 1972 Olympics, and I’d go as far as saying the finest sports posters ever. He is held in such high regard over his involvement with that olympics that he set the bench mark for many future designs.The posters are timeless and wouldn’t look out of place at this years olympics.

What made them so great was the fact they captured the nature of each event they represented, simplistic yet bold and with great use of typography.

The canoe and 100 metre sprint posters capture the movement of the sport so well because of their simplicity, straight lines on the track give the feeling of speed, and the mass of texture on the canoe poster make you feel the power of the rapids.

The boxing poster has an certain intensity because of the contrasting colours, almost looking like a thermal image you can feel the heat of the two boxers.

In contrast the on archery poster you get a sense of concentration due to the calmness of the olympians face.

I’m really looking forward to the 2012 London olympics posters and hope they live up to the standards set by a truly great design…

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